I think that in a scene in the 1953 version of the War of the Worlds movie, there are trucks, crowded with people escaping (but to where?), and a guy with a suitcase full of money offers to pay someone on the truck but is told that money is no good any more. At this point, the suitcase bursts open and indeed no one seems to care, no one is grabbing all the cash that spilled.
Do I have the right film and details? Is there a scene in the War of the Worlds movie depicting a man with a suitcase full of money?
I believe a scene like this may have been in the original novel, but something that occurs to me is that during World War II there were many people doing semi-illegal things and the "trope" of a guy with a suitcase full of money might have existed. In my own experience, I heard stories, in those pre-credit card days when there was a lot more cash floating around, of people keeping a fortune at home that they would be afraid to bank due to legal issues.
The reason I mention the World War II trope idea is that this sort of scene may have appeared in other films also. It is even tangentially related to When Worlds Collide when the millionaire who funded the space ships is, despite this, deprived of his seat aboard.
Even in real life, the inability to use wealth to escape, for example, the Nazis, actually occurred – one was likely to have the money/diamonds simply confiscated.
