Driving through the desert, Melvin sees a battered old man lying by the road. He stops to help and the man tells him he is Howard Hughes, richest man in the world. Melvin laughs, drops him off behind a Vegas hotel, and goes back to his small, unlucky life.

Nine years later, a handwritten will is found, leaving $156 million to a Utah gas-station owner who once gave a stranger a ride and forgot about it.

Jonathan Demme's MELVIN AND HOWARD (1980) is the allegedly true story of Melvin Dummar. It is a tender, funny, clear-eyed portrait of an American nobody forced to defend himself in public for an act of kindness.

Bo Goldman's screenplay and Mary Steenburgen's performance both won Oscars. Critics named it the best film of the year.

In real life, a court ruled the will a forgery. Melvin never saw a dollar. But in 2005 a former FBI man and an ex-Hughes aide came forward to support his account, and the argument that he was telling the truth all along has never fully died.

Melvin Dummar went to his grave in 2018 swearing every word of his story was real.

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A Hollywood studio made Melvin and Howard, but the film's independent spirit and history of neglect earn it a place here.