Trivia for
Trading Places (1983) More at IMDbPro »

• The punch line of Bunny's story ("...and she stepped on the ball") is a reference to Auntie Mame (1958), in which Gloria Upson tells a joke with the same punch line.
  
  
• While she was making this picture, Jamie Lee Curtis stayed in Marlene Dietrich's apartment (12E) at 993 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She'd been engaged to Dietrich's grandson, production designer J. Michael Riva.
  
  
• The story about the Dukes' cornering of the orange juice market was probably inspired by the "Silver Thursday" market crash of 27 March 1980, during which the Hunt brothers of Texas tried to corner the silver market and subsequently failed to meet a $100 million margin call.
  
  
• The character Clarence Beeks shares his name with a jazz musician who recorded under the name "King Pleasure."
  
  
• The exterior shots of Louis Winthorpe's house are of a real house on a very affluent street in Philadelphia. The wreath on the door was replaced when the producers wanted something bigger and better. They borrowed a hand-made wreath from a house across the street.
  
  
• Richard Pryor was originally considered for the role of Billy Ray Valentine.
  
  
• Ray Milland was the first choice for the role of Mortimer Duke.
  
  
• The main titles are accompanied by the overture to "The Marriage of Figaro" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and in an early scene, as Louis is leaving his office he whistles the beginning of the aria "Se vuol ballare" from the opera. In that aria, Figaro declares his plan to turn the tables on his master - just as Louis and Billy Ray will eventually outwit the Duke brothers.
  
  
• The exterior of the men's club is really the Curtis Institute of Music.
  
  
• The film was conceived as a vehicle for Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. But when Pryor dropped out and Eddie Murphy came on board, he made a motion to get Wilder replaced because he didn't want people to think he was just trying to be another Pryor.
  
  
• The original title: "Black and White".
  
  
• G. Gordon Liddy was offered the part of Clarence Beeks but turned it down after discovering Beeks's fate. Beeks is reading Liddy's book, "Will", on the train. Maurice Copeland, who plays the Secretary of Agriculture, also played Attorney General John Mitchell in the television movie Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy (1982) (TV).
  
  
• When Valentine chases Winthorpe out of the Christmas party he grabs a man in a Santa Claus suit. This man is Mike Strug, a television reporter who still works for a network affiliate in the city of Philadelphia.
  
  
• A scene in the movie not included in the final cut but seen frequently when the movie is shown on television (presumably to fill a longer time slot with commercials) occurs after Clarence Beeks talks to the Dukes via telephone and Billy Ray eavesdrops on their scheme. In the original cut, Beeks goes from the phone booth to the Amtrak train platform, holding the briefcase with the crop report. In the added scene, we see Beeks procure the reports from a secured vault where he pays off a security guard and opens a safe-deposit box.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Landis] [look to camera] When the Duke brothers talk down to Billy Ray Valentine about commodities, he looks directly into the camera as if saying, "These guys must think I'm a complete idiot."
  
  
• In the scene when Louis visits the club to borrow money, the actress who plays "Muffy" is Kelly Curtis, the sister of Jamie Lee Curtis.
  
  
• Don Ameche's strong religious convictions made him uncomfortable with swearing. This proved a problem for the scene at the end of the movie where he had to shout out "Fuck him!" to a group of Wall Street executives. When he did act out the scene, it had to be done in one take because Ameche refused to do a second one.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Landis] [SYNW] on a poster in the apartment.
  
  
• The premise is similar to that of Hoi Polloi (1935), The Three Stooges film. Two rich guys are arguing about what matters most: breeding or upbringing. One bets the other they can take any bum off the street and make him a gentleman.
  
  
• Frank Oz plays a role practically identical to his role in The Blues Brothers (1980), also directed by John Landis.
  
  
• Louis's (Dan Aykroyd) prison number is 7474505B, which is the same prison number as Jake (John Belushi) in The Blues Brothers (1980), also directed by John Landis and starring Aykroyd.
  
  
• In the opening montage of Philadelphia there is a shot of the Rocky statue erected in Rocky III (1982) that was released the previous year and was still sitting at the top of the "Rocky" steps in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The statue now resides at the base of the museum steps.
  
  
• The electronic status board at Duke & Duke's (seen prominently in the Christmas scene) is the "Big Money" board from "Family Feud" (1976).
  
  
• Randolph and Mortimer Duke later appear in Eddie Murphy's movie Coming to America (1988), where, in a cameo appearance, the two are homeless on the street and Prince Akeem gives them a large amount of money to get them back off the streets.
  
  
• The home used in the film is not the Rosenbach Museum and Library, but is a private home two doors west. Both houses, however, were built at the same time and originally had an identical floor plan. During the filming of the movie, DeLancey Place was closed for a few days. Denholm Elliott was the only actor in the film to visit the Rosenbach. The staff of the museum were all given Pennsylvania State Film Commission tee shirts.
  
  
• Cameo: [George Folsey Jr.] The Executive Producer appears as the first man to greet Winthorpe at Duke & Duke. (Dan Aykroyd refers to him by his real name with the line "Morning Folsey".)
  
  
• When Eddie Murphy is released from jail, he stands near three men in trench coats on the steps of the precinct. The man with his back to Murphy holding a briefcase is director John Landis.
  
  
• Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
  
  
• Several scenes were kept in the movie, even though they were considered either goofs or errors. The scene where Mortimer is trying to catch the money clip and having trouble wasn't supposed to happen that way, but both kept going with it and not breaking character, so it was kept in. Another, where Jamie Lee Curtis is doing her lines on the train and is questioned about her accent and outfit not matching, wasn't supposed to be shown either. Curtis couldn't do the correct Austrian accent.
  
  
• Alfred Drake's last film.
  
  
• When explaining how their business works we can see a portrait of the Marquis De Lafayette over the right shoulder of Randolph Duke.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Landis] [breaking the Fourth Wall] Eddie Murphy looks directly at the camera as he is being taken away in a police car and when Randolph Duke explains to him what a BLT is.
  
  
• Randolph Duke has a picture of Ronald Reagan on his side of the Dukes' shared desk, while Mortimer has a picture of Richard Nixon.
  
  
• Jamie Lee Curtis' future brother-in-law, Nicholas Guest, appears as Harry.
  
  

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