The 1977 film "Rolling Thunder" is set in Texas and Mexico in 1973. US Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns to Texas after spending seven years in a Vietnamese prison. He is given a welcome home ceremony by a group of Texans who give him a new Cadillac automobile and a box of 2,555 silver dollars, one for each day he spent in prison. Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes), a local beauty queen, gives him another silver dollar "for good luck." Bandits break into Major Rane's house, kill his wife and son, and steal the coins. Major Rane and another ex-prisoner, Master Sergeant Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones), locate the bandits in Mexico and exact revenge. The welcome ceremony includes a wooden box with the silver dollars arranged in rows. The coins are actually not silver dollars but copper-nickel clad Dwight Eisenhower dollars.

Linda Forchet welcomes Major Rane home to Texas with a wooden box on a table.

The plate reads: "Presented to MAJOR CHARLES RANE by GRIMMS DEPARTMENT STORES 1973"

The coins are lined up by baffles.

The coins have the obverse bald head facing left of the copper-nickel clad Eisenhower dollar coins.

An Eisenhower dollar:

Copper-nickel clad, 38 mm, 22.68 gm, minted from 1971 to 1978

Eisenhower dollars are the same size as silver dollars and the film producers probably used them as they could be purchased for face value or borrowed from a bank in 1977 and were thus cheaper than using silver dollars which had gone out of circulation.

Linda tells the major that the extra silver dollar is for "good luck."

William Devane as Major Charles Rane
Tommy Lee Jones as Sergeant Johnny Vohden
Linda Haynes as Linda Forchet
Director: John Flynn
Writers: Paul Schrader, Heywood Gould