It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
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| It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World | |
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| Directed by | Stanley Kramer |
| Produced by | Stanley Kramer |
| Written by | William Rose Tania Rose |
| Starring | Spencer Tracy Milton Berle Sid Caesar Jonathan Winters Mickey Rooney Buddy Hackett Jimmy Durante Dick Shawn Edie Adams Barrie Chase Ethel Merman |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | November 7, 1963 |
| Running time | 192 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9,400,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is an American motion picture directed by Stanley Kramer about a madcap pursuit of $350,000 by a diverse group of strangers. The ensemble comedy premiered on November 7, 1963.
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[edit] Plot
The film begins as the occupants of four vehicles on a narrow road in a southern California desert stop to help Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), a man who has just careened off the highway after honking his horn incessantly for everyone to get out of the way.
With his dying breaths, he tells the bystanders (two traveling buddies played by Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett; a moving van driver played by Jonathan Winters, a dentist played by Sid Caesar and a businessman played by Milton Berle) about "Three hundred fifty G's" ($350,000) hidden in the fictional town of Santa Rosita, less than a day's drive away, under a mysterious "big W”. As the soon-to-be-treasure-hunters ponder their next move, Smiler Grogan expires, kicking an old metal bucket down the side of the mountain. A wild race follows after an argument on how to split the money, as each carload of people tries to be first to get to Santa Rosita and find the money for themselves. Many others, including an eccentric Englishman played by Terry-Thomas and a sneaky con man played by Phil Silvers join in the chase as it progresses.
Berle's character, J. Russell Finch, owns a company that processes edible seaweed and is recovering from a nervous breakdown. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Marcus, is played by Ethel Merman, whose character is loud, overbearing and opportunistic, to great comic effect. Marcus' son, a beatnik-like lifeguard played by Dick Shawn, is introduced by means of a wild, frenzied dance sequence with his girlfriend (played by Barrie Chase) to rock n' roll music, "Thirty-one Flavors," sung by the Shirelles.
Unbeknownst to the treasure-hunters, Captain Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) of the Santa Rosita Police, has been working on the Smiler Grogan case for years. He suspects the various people who heard Grogan's last words may know where the money is hidden and has them followed by various police units (including helicopters).
On the way to the treasure, the two buddies enlist the aid of a wealthy pilot, played by Jim Backus, who has a penchant for drinking while flying; Caesar's character and his wife (played by Edie Adams), charter a Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" World War I-era biplane which almost falls apart, and later get locked in the basement of a hardware store once they arrive in Santa Rosita. Peter Falk and Eddie Anderson (who played Rochester on Jack Benny's radio and TV shows) appear as local Santa Rosita cab drivers.
Silvers' character stops to pick up the bicycling Winters, whose van is kaput, but when the dim-witted van driver spills the beans about the treasure, Silvers tricks Winters into getting out of his car. The clever Silvers leaves Winters on the lonely desert road while speeding off to get the money for himself (Winters' facial expressions provide the bulk of the humor in his role, especially during this sequence). Winters later catches up with Silvers at a newly opened gas station (owned by two nerdy attendants played by Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang) and tries to attack him. Stang's character knocks Winters out with a bottle of lubricating oil and the two try to tie him up with duct tape, but Winters gets free and goes on a rampage that destroys the service station.
Captain Culpepper is anticipating a nice vacation since the Smiler Grogan case -- which he has worked on for 15 years -- will soon be solved once the travelers find the hidden treasure.
At the last moment, it becomes apparent that, having snapped due to a refusal by the mayor to raise his pension and squabbles with his wife and daughter, Culpepper wants to steal the cash himself and flee to nearby Mexico. His scheme unravels and he is pursued by the large group of treasure-seekers, who chase him to a building in downtown Santa Rosita. In a madcap conclusion, all the men are tossed off a fire escape and wind up in the hospital. The film ends at a hospital, where Culpepper and the other men are in traction and facing punishment. But they are still able to laugh when Ethel Merman slips and falls in front of them after another bombastic tirade.
[edit] Background
Although well known for serious films such as Inherit the Wind and Judgment at Nuremberg, Kramer set out to make the ultimate comedy film with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. At more than three hours in its original roadshow version, including overture, intermission and exit music, the result is certainly one of the longest.
Filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 and presented in Cinerama (becoming one of the first Cinerama films originated with one camera), it also had an all-star cast, with literally dozens of major comedy stars from all eras of cinema making appearances in the film.
The film followed a Hollywood trend in the 1960s of producing "epic" films as a way of wooing audiences away from television and back to movie theaters. Television had sapped the regular moviegoing audience and box-office revenues were dropping, so the major studios experimented with a number of gimmicks to attract audiences, including widescreen films.
The title was taken from Thomas Middleton's 1605 comedy A Mad World, My Masters. Kramer considered adding a fifth "mad" to the title before deciding that it would be redundant, but noted in interviews that he later regretted it.
The film's theme music was written by Ernest Gold with lyrics by Mack David.
In the 1970s, ABC broadcast the film on New Year's Eve. The last reported showing of the film on major network television was on May 16, 1978.
[edit] Production
The early scenes in which Grogan goes off the road and the four vehicles briefly speed before slowing down to stop and talk were filmed on the “Seven Steps” section of the Palms-to-Pines Highway (state highway 74), a generally east-west route mostly south of, and west of, Palm Springs, California. Captain Culpepper (Tracy) forecasts the vehicles - going east - will turn south (a right turn), but the movie shows them turn left.
Sid Caesar's role was originally intended for Adams' real-life husband, fellow TV comedy pioneer Ernie Kovacs. Kovacs was tragically killed in a 1962 automobile accident.
Many of the actors performed some of their own stunts, including some crashing falls by Sid Caesar, antics by Jonathan Winters and Phil Silvers' drive into a flowing river where he almost drowned. Caesar injured his back severely while filming the hardware store scene and was unable to return to the film for some time. Silvers injured himself shortly before the shooting of the scene (one of the last) where the male characters chase Culpepper up several flights of stairs and onto fire-escape ladders. As shot, the scene features Silvers' stunt double.
The gas station scene with Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang was filmed at a specially constructed set built on composer Jimmy Van Heusen's property near Palm Springs, California. Van Heusen first saw the completed gas station on his Friday drive from Los Angeles out to his weekend retreat. He did not know the gas station was a movie set, thinking instead that his business manager had leased a portion of his property for an actual service station. The destruction scene with Winters, Kaplan and Stang was filmed that weekend, with the site cleanup scheduled for the next week.
On Monday morning's return trip to L.A., Van Heusen saw the destroyed gas station lying in a pile and thought something terrible had happened. As the property owner, he believed he might be sued by injured parties.
The airport terminal scenes were filmed at the now-defunct Rancho Conejo Airport in Newbury Park, California, though the control tower shown was constructed only for filming. Other plane sequences were filmed at the Sonoma County Airport north of Santa Rosa, California.
In one scene, a Beech 18 model C-18S flies through a billboard. The plane was flown by stuntman Frank Tallman, but a communications mixup resulted in the use of linen graphic sheets on the sign rather than paper, as planned. Linen is much tougher than paper, and the plane was nearly destroyed on impact. Tallman managed to fly it back to the airstrip, discovering that the leading edges of the wings had been smashed all the way back to the wing spars. Tallman considered that the closest he ever got to dying on film.
In the movie the airplane is shown crashing through an airport restaurant plate glass window and stopping abruptly. Careful viewing will show an arresting cable that was tied to the tail of the airplane at just the right length to make the aircraft stop as it hits a curbing while smashing through the restaurant windows.
The final chase scene was filmed in Santa Monica, most notably at the California Incline, and downtown Long Beach. The cars can be seen passing the Pike amusement park with its wooden rollercoaster and traveling around Rainbow Pier. The Arcade under Ocean Boulevard near Pike Street also is part of the scene.
[edit] Versions
The film ran 192 minutes in its roadshow release and later was re-edited by United Artists for a 154-minute wide release. At the film's premiere, radio transmissions between the film's fictional police played in the theater lobby and rest rooms during the intermission.
Some of the cut footage remains missing, although 20 minutes of material (much of it from the roadshow release, but including some scenes never before seen in any release version) was found in the late 1980s in an abandoned warehouse slated for demolition. While not officially referring to it as a "director's cut", Stanley Kramer helped oversee the re-incorporation of this missing footage into a 182-minute "restored" video version for VHS and LaserDisc. Because of the nature of the missing scenes (they came from a workprint of the film), the extended version was mastered only on digital tape and not using film restoration techniques of the time, which is why this version is not available on DVD, although it has aired on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Comparisons between the two show that the extended version is of inferior video quality to that of the DVD.
Currently, the best existing footage is in the form of original 70mm elements of the general release version (recent restored versions shown in revival screenings are derived from these elements). However, some, if not all of the remaining footage does exist in some form, although it is deteriorating because of the passage of time. A restoration effort currently is under way by preservationist Robert A. Harris in an attempt to bring the film back as close as possible to the original roadshow release.
The official release from MGM is the 161-minute general release version, taken from its original 35mm elements. Because of this, it's presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, as opposed to the full 2.75:1 in anamorphic 70mm form. Two versions of the film have been released on DVD. The first, from 2001, is a double-sided disc containing an hour of missing scenes on the second side, along with the original documentary "Something A Little Less Serious", and trailers and TV spots. In 2003, the film was re-released as a movie-only edition, with disc art on the disc as opposed to being dual-sided. It should be noted that the 2001 release had a yellow spine and is now hard to find, while the 2003 release had a blue spine and is relatively easy to find in stores.
Fans on message boards such as us.imdb.com have listed the differences between the TCM and DVD versions, since the DVD's deleted scenes are not properly organized to explain their context and some scenes are essentially the same as seen on the DVD, only extended with a bit of material. However, even without the deleted scenes the current DVD version contains what general audiences saw in 1963.
According to one fan's analysis of the TCM extended version (70mm 2.55:1 aspect ratio) and the DVD theatrical version (35mm 2.35:1 aspect ratio):
- The DVD does not contain the overture, and the main titles are in red, as opposed to the original multi-colored sequence.
- The TCM version opens with the 1980s animated MGM/UA logo, while the DVD version opens with the familiar MGM Leo The Lion logo (United Artists releases are now part of the MGM library).
- Part One of the TCM extended version has 14 minutes and 2 seconds of added footage.
- Part Two of the TCM extended version has 3 minutes and 49 seconds of added footage.
- The longest stretch of time in the film without added material is 25 minutes and 3 seconds, from timecode 1:53:45 to timecode 2:18:48.
It has been rumored that Kramer's original cut lasted more than five hours, but no evidence has been found to support this.
[edit] Cast
In alphabetical order:
- Edie Adams as Monica Crump, wife of Melville Crump
- Milton Berle as edible seaweed company owner J. Russell Finch
- Sid Caesar as dentist Melville Crump (a role originally meant for Ernie Kovacs before his death in a car accident)
- Buddy Hackett as gambler Benjy Benjamin
- Ethel Merman as Mrs. Marcus, mother-in-law of J. Russell Finch and a very cranky woman
- Dorothy Provine as Emeline Marcus-Finch, wife of J. Russell Finch
- Mickey Rooney as gambler Dingy 'Ding' Bell
- Dick Shawn as Sylvester Marcus, Mrs. Marcus' son and Emeline's brother
- Phil Silvers as Otto Meyer
- Terry-Thomas as Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne
- Spencer Tracy as Captain C.G. Culpepper
- Jonathan Winters as truck driver Lennie Pike
Secondary characters:
- Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson as a cab driver
- William Demarest as Santa Rosita's chief of police (Aloysius)
- Jimmy Durante as Smiler Grogan
- Peter Falk as a cab driver
- Paul Ford as Col. Wilberforce
Cameo appearances by:
- Jim Backus as boozy airplane owner Tyler Fitzgerald
- Jack Benny as a man who drives by in a Maxwell, offering to help
- Paul Birch as a policeman
- Ben Blue as the biplane pilot
- Joe E. Brown as the union official
- Alan Carney as a police sergeant
- Chick Chandler as detective outside of Chinese laundry
- Barrie Chase as Sylvester's love interest
- John Clarke as helicopter pilot
- Stanley Clements as squad room detective
- Lloyd Corrigan as the mayor of Santa Rosita
- Howard Da Silva as airport official
- Andy Devine as the sheriff
- Selma Diamond (voice only) as Ginger Culpepper
- Minta Durfee
- Roy Engel as patrolman
- Norman Fell as a detective
- James Flavin as patrolman
- Stan Freberg as a deputy sheriff
- Nicholas Georgiade as detective
- Louise Glenn (voice only) as Billie Sue Culpepper
- Leo Gorcey as a cab driver
- Don C. Harvey as policeman
- Sterling Holloway as the fire chief
- Edward Everett Horton as Mr. Dinckler
- Allen Jenkins as police officer
- Marvin Kaplan as garage man Irwin
- Robert Karnes as Officer Simmy
- Buster Keaton as Jimmy the Crook (boatman)
- Tom Kennedy as the traffic cop
- Don Knotts as the nervous motorist
- Charles Lane as the airport manager
- Harry Lauter as police dispatcher
- Ben Lessy as George the steward
- Bobo Lewis as pilot's wife
- Jerry Lewis as the man who runs over Culpepper's hat
- Mike Mazurki as the miner bringing medicine to his wife
- Charles McGraw as Lt. Matthews
- Cliff Norton as a reporter
- Barbara Pepper
- ZaSu Pitts as the switchboard operator
- Carl Reiner as the tower controller
- Madlyn Rhue as Secretary Schwartz
- Roy Roberts as a policeman
- Eddie Ryder as air traffic control tower staffer
- Arnold Stang as garage man Ray
- Nick Stewart as migrant truck driver
- The Three Stooges as firefighters
- Sammee Tong as a laundryman
- Doodles Weaver as a hardware store employee
- Jesse White as an air traffic controller
[edit] Taglines
- It's the biggest entertainment ever to hit the Cinerama screen! (70mm Cinerama version)
- The biggest entertainment ever to rock the screen with laughter! (35mm general release version)
- Everybody who's ever been funny is in it!
- If ever this mad, mad, mad, mad world needed It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World it's now! (1970 re-release)
[edit] Homages
- The plot of the novel Florida Roadkill by Tim Dorsey is an homage to the film, with a wide variety of characters chasing after a suitcase containing $5 million in stolen drug money, which was hidden by the thief before he died. There is even a direct reference to the movie, in a scene in which a man drives over a turtle "like Jerry Lewis running over Spencer Tracy's hat in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
- The New Avengers episode "The Tale of the Big Why" seems to have borrowed part of its storyline from It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World — at the end of the episode the characters realise they are looking not for a metaphysical "big why" but a physical "big Y".
- In an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, the characters, following a treasure map, find that they have not been looking for an X marked in the sand, but the location where the shadows of two crossed palm trees falls. Of course, this would change throughout the day, but that does not matter in the greater scheme of the plot (see suspension of disbelief).
- The crossed palm trees are also used at (real world) In-N-Out Burger restaurants. Founder Harry Snyder's favorite movie was It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which is why many stores have crossing palm trees in front, and some have two.[citation needed]
- A 1993 episode of Cheers, titled "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Bar," had the Cheers gang tearing up the bar to find a money belt with $6,000,000 supposedly hid there by Robin Colcord several years earlier.
- A 1994 episode of The Simpsons, "Homer the Vigilante", features money supposedly hidden beneath a "big T", along with other elements borrowed from the movie, such as Otto Meyer driving into the river while yelling at Bart. The big "W" is in the background. Caricatures of Milton Berle and Buddy Hackett also appear during the scene where the money is being dug up.
- Several references to the film have been made in episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000:
- In Godzilla vs. Megalon there is a car chase of cars driving downs stairs and Crow T. Robot says in a Phil Silvers voice, "This is no place for a convertible!" The same line is used during Master Ninja when a car flies off of a dock into the water.
- Similarly, during the film Eegah, there is a scene that takes place outside a hotel where some palm trees are shown, and Crow says (this time imitating Jimmy Durante), "It's under a big W!" The same reference is made during The Thing That Couldn't Die.
- During the film Laserblast, a gas station is blown up. One of the characters is heard to remark that the place had just been rebuilt "after Jonathan Winters' rampage."
- At various times, characters in the series can be heard to say the line "out, baby, out, out, out!" which (if not a direct reference) bears more than a passing resemblance to a line Dick Shawn's character says during the "digging" sequence.
- A 2005 episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Hotel", has the group searching for a hidden treasure.
- MAD Magazine issued a book titled "It's a World, World, World, World Mad" and made numerous references to the movie during the 1960s and 1970s. Mad artist Jack Davis illustrated the film's poster, as well as the book-cover parody of the poster.
[edit] Trivia
- Judy Garland, Groucho Marx, Stan Laurel, George Burns, Bob Hope, Jackie Mason, Don Rickles, Judy Holliday, and Red Skelton were among the many celebrities offered or considered for roles in the film.
- Norman Fell and Don Knotts both have cameos in this film. They would be known to a later generation as landlords in Three's Company.
- This was Jimmy Durante's final film appearance.
- The shortest celebrity cameo in the film is an approximately 5-seconds long shot of The Three Stooges as firemen in the airport scene. There is no dialogue and they do not even move. Apparently, it was felt that the mere sight of their very familiar faces in the guise of protectors of life and limb was sufficient to convey the humor.
- Phil Silvers had a running craps game going during the production of this film. It is said that Jerry Lewis stopped by the set and left $5000 poorer.
[edit] Sequel
On January 9, 2007, Karen Sharpe Kramer, widow of Stanley Kramer, and film producer Edward Bass announced that a sequel entitled It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD World is in the works. The film would be, like the original, a large ensemble movie mixing comics and dramatic actors. The story follows the descendants of the characters from the first movie who are thrust into another madcap chase to find a cache of money after it is revealed that the bills found in the first movie were counterfeit. Original (surviving) cast members Sid Caesar and Jonathan Winters, amongst others, may reprise their original roles.
