Word: capered
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When the tote payoff was announced at the staggering odds of 9,872 to 1, the stunned bookmakers realized they were on the hook for a possible $28 million. Gleeful gamblers were already calling the caper "Operation Sandpaper" because it rubbed the bookmakers the wrong way. Fifty of the biggest bookies in England-from Joe Coral and Ladbroke's to Jack Swift and William Hill-gathered that evening at London's Victoria Club. The bookies agreed to call the betting on that particular race null and void. All money wagered on the race would be refunded...
...bookmakers labeled the Dagenham caper a "builder play," and have occasionally taken a licking from the same technique. The most notable builder play took place in 1932 at Agua Caliente race track in Mexico. Staged by West Coast Gamblers Baron Long and Harry Fink, it boosted the odds on a horse called Linden Tree from a logical 7 to 10 to almost 10 to 1. By betting Linden Tree heavily with U.S. bookmakers, Long and Fink made a killing...
...boatfuls of arms. The invasion failed, of course; Dame Margot, who was along for the ride, was expelled from the country, while Tito scampered into the Brazilian embassy until the storm blew over. Since then, he has been linked with various gunrunning efforts and last year, still another caper-alleged whisky smuggling-landed him in a Panama jail for three days until charges were dropped...
...right there and then ended the efficiency of the caper that would have gone down in history as the nation's greatest jewel robbery. For the hopeless fact was that the robber who was designated as the "wheel man"-the "cop" assigned to drive off with the boodle-the excruciatingly exasperated hood with a huge fortune in his grasp-the sad simpleton upon whom everything depended-couldn't drive a 1951 Ford...
...vintage Hollywood gangland formula, crooks are 98% repulsive and viewers can't wait to see them burn. In the French switch on this, as refined in Rififi (1956), things are the other way round: attractive criminals get girls, gats and a clockwork plan for a caper, and the audience roots for them to The End. French clockwork, however, is not always reliable, and this amoral little melodrama starring Jean Gabin and Alain Delon ticks only intermittently...