Neville recalled the early-Depression bank failures of 1929 through 1932 from his own time in New York: banks closing overnight, depositors with ten, twenty or fifty thousand dollars left with nothing, and assurances that the government stood behind the institutions proving worthless. Among the names he listed was the Bank of United States. He contrasted the depositors' losses with the fate of his dancing partner's father's friend, whom he named as Jackson E. Reynolds of the First National Bank of New York City: the bank wrote off forty million dollars in bad debt, survived, and Reynolds kept his job.