It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963 American epic comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, from a screenplay by William and Tania Rose. The film, starring Spencer Tracy with an all-star cast composed largely of comedians, is about the madcap pursuit of a suitcase full of stolen cash by a colorful group of strangers. The principal cast features Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, and Jonathan Winters.
The film marked the first time Kramer directed a comedy, though he had produced the comedy So This Is New York in 1948. He is best known for producing and directing, in his own words, "heavy drama" about social problems. His first attempt at directing a comedy film paid off immensely as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World became a commercial success and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning for Best Sound Editing, and two Golden Globe Awards.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World premiered on November 7, 1963, at the Cinerama Dome with a running time of 192 minutes. However, against Kramer's wishes, the film was cut by its distributor United Artists to reduce the film's running time to 163 minutes for its general release. In 2014, the Criterion Collection released a restored version that is closer to the original 202-minute cut envisioned by Kramer. The film ranked at number 40 in the American Film Institute's list 100 Years...100 Laughs.
Plot
Smiler Grogan, a recently released convict, crashes his car on California State Route 74. With his dying breath, Grogan tells a group of motorists who stopped to help him about $350,000 (equal to $ today) buried in Santa Rosita State Park under "a big W". Failing to negotiate a satisfactory way to split the money, the four cars begin a mad dash to the park.
Melville Crump, a dentist on a second honeymoon with his wife Monica, charters a rickety biplane to Santa Rosita. Despite arriving in Santa Rosita first, they get locked in a hardware store's basement. After several attempts to break out, they blow out the basement wall with dynamite, and hire a cab to get to the park. Ding Bell and Benjy Benjamin, two friends on their way to Las Vegas, charter a small airplane. When their alcoholic pilot knocks himself out, they struggle to land the plane themselves; once on the ground, they also hire a cab to get to the park.
Lennie Pike, a driver of a furniture truck and witness of Grogan's crash, crashes into the convertible Imperial Crown of J. Russell Finch, a businessman traveling with his wife Emmeline and her mother Mrs. Marcus. Finch persuades British Army Lieutenant Colonel J. Algernon Hawthorne to drive them to Santa Rosita. After a nasty argument, Mrs. Marcus and Emmeline exit the car to hitch their own ride. Hawthorne crashes the car while driving through a tunnel, and he and Finch come to blows.
Pike stops motorist Otto Meyer for a ride and tells him about the money; the greedy Meyer decides to search for the treasure himself, and abandons Pike, convincing two service station attendants to detain him. Pike destroys the station, steals a tow truck, and picks up Mrs. Marcus and Emmeline. Mrs. Marcus calls her son Sylvester, who lives close to Santa Rosita, but he misunderstands and drives to meet her. Eventually, the group reunites with Russell and Hawthorne, and continues to head to the park. Meyer stops to help a stranded miner get back to his very rural cabin. Trying to get back to the highway, Meyer fails at crossing a deep river and his car is swept away, leading him to steal another motorist's car.
Santa Rosita Police Captain T. G. Culpeper, hoping to tie up the Grogan case before his impending retirement, secretly has the motorists shadowed throughout their various adventures. After a furious argument with his wife Ginger and daughter Billie Sue, Culpeper learns that his pension will be a pittance and has a mental breakdown.
The entire group, now consisting of 14 people (including the two cabbies), arrives at Santa Rosita at nearly the same time, and searches frantically for the "big W", which turns out to be a gathering of four palm trees. Culpeper arrives shortly after and observes the group. After the group digs up a suitcase full of cash, Culpeper identifies himself and informs the group that they are wanted by the police. He convinces them to turn themselves in and hope for leniency.
The motorists realize that Culpeper is not returning to the police station with them, but is stealing the money for himself. The men chase him into an abandoned building and onto a rickety fire escape, which starts to collapse under them. The briefcase containing the money falls open, scattering the cash to the wind. When Culpeper and the men all pile onto a fire department ladder sent to rescue them, their combined weight causes it to spin uncontrollably and fling them all off, leaving them heavily injured.
In the prison hospital, the men bemoan the loss of the money and blame their injuries on Culpeper, who responds that due to his lost pension (which his boss had successfully negotiated back, thus making his illegal actions unnecessary), the ruined relationship with his family, and the likelihood that the judge will probably let the other men off easy and give Culpeper the harshest sentence, he may never laugh again. Mrs. Marcus, flanked by Emmeline and Monica, enters and begins berating the men, only for her to slip on a previously discarded banana peel and fall. All the men except Sylvester roar with laughter, and, after a brief hesitation, Culpeper joins in.
Cast
Principal cast
Supporting cast
Cameo/uncredited appearances
Cast notes According to Robert Davidson, the role of Irwin originally was offered to Joe Besser, who was unable to participate when Sheldon Leonard and Danny Thomas could not give him time off from his co-starring role in The Joey Bishop Show. Jackie Mason was then cast in the role, but was replaced by Kaplan when the filming schedule conflicted with his touring commitments.
Actress Eve Bruce filmed a scene as a showgirl who asks Benjy Benjamin and Ding Bell to help her apply suntan lotion. The scene was cut, and she is uncredited. Cliff Norton is listed in the opening credits but was deleted from the film; Norton had a role as a detective who appears at the Rancho Conejo airport. King Donovan, playing an airport official, appeared in the Rancho Conejo scenes but was cut from the film. Don Knotts originally shot a second scene in which he tries to use a telephone in a diner. Also featured in the scene was Barbara Pepper.
The first of the credited cast to die was ZaSu Pitts, who died on June 7, 1963, five months to the day before the film's release. With the death of Carl Reiner on June 29, 2020, and Nicholas Georgiade on December 19, 2021, Barrie Chase is the film's last surviving cast member, credited or otherwise. Mickey Rooney was the last surviving member of the main cast at the time of his death on April 6, 2014.
Stan Laurel was offered a cameo role, but he declined. He reportedly said he did not want to be seen on screen in his old age, especially as he had decided to retire after his longtime comedy partner Oliver Hardy had died in 1957. It appears, however, his involvement reached the stage of filming a background matching shot of his old time convertible, with a body double seated at the wheel, donning a bowler hat. The cameo appearance was then given to Jack Benny, who wore Laurel's signature bowler in the scene.
Production
Background In the early 1960s, screenwriter William Rose, then living in the United Kingdom, conceived the idea for a film (provisionally titled So Many Thieves, and later Something a Little Less Serious) about a comedic chase through Scotland. He sent an outline to Kramer, who agreed to produce and direct the film. The setting was shifted to America, and the working title changed to Where, but in America? then One Damn Thing After Another and then It's a Mad World, with Rose and Kramer adding additional "Mads" to the title as time progressed. Kramer considered adding a fifth "mad" to the title before deciding it was redundant but noted in interviews that he later regretted it.
Although well known for serious films such as Inherit the Wind and Judgment at Nuremberg (both starring Tracy), Kramer set out to make the ultimate comedy film. Filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 and presented in Cinerama (becoming one of the early single-camera Cinerama features produced), Mad World had an all-star cast, with dozens of major comedy stars from all eras of cinema appearing in it. 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. The film's theme music was written by Ernest Gold with lyrics by Mack David. Kramer hosted a roundtable (including extensive clips) on the film with stars Caesar, Hackett and Winters as part of a special The Comedians, Stanley Kramer's Reunion with the Great Comedy Artists of Our Time broadcast in 1974 as part of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. The last reported showing of the film on major network television in America was on ABC on July 16, 1979, and before that, on CBS on May 16, 1978.
Filming
The airport terminal scenes were filmed at the now-defunct Rancho Conejo Airport in Newbury Park, California, though the control tower shown was specially constructed for filming. Other airplane sequences were filmed at the Sonoma County Airport north of Santa Rosa, California; at the Palm Springs International Airport; and in the skies above Thousand Oaks, California; Camarillo, California; and Orange County, California. In the Orange County scene, stuntman Frank Tallman flew a Beech model C-18S through a highway billboard advertising Coca-Cola. A communications mix-up resulted in the use of linen graphic sheets on the sign rather than paper, as planned. Linen, much tougher than paper, damaged the plane 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 incident the closest he ever came to dying on film. (Both Tallman and Paul Mantz, Tallman's business partner and fellow flier on Mad World, eventually died in separate air crashes over a decade apart.)
In another scene, Tallman flew the plane through an airplane hangar at the Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa. Some scenes were filmed in San Diego.
The fire escape and ladder miniature used in the final chase sequence is on display at the Hollywood Museum in Hollywood. Also, the Santa Rosita Fire Department's ladder truck was a 1960s Seagrave Fire Apparatus open-cab mid-mount aerial ladder.
Production began on April 26, 1962 and was expected to end by December 7, 1962, but took longer, apparently conflicting with the notion that Tracy's trip down the zip line into the pet store on December 6, 1962, was the last scene filmed. Veteran stuntman Carey Loftin was featured in the documentary, explaining some of the complexity as well as simplicity of stunts, such as the day he "kicked the bucket" as a stand-in for Durante.
Widescreen process