It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Cindy and Marty settle on a favorite large cast comedy, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Film Overview

• Title: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) | Director: Stanley Kramer | Screenplay: William & Tania Rose

• Stars: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters

• Supporting: Jimmy Durante, Peter Falk, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Jack Benny, The Three Stooges, Edie Adams, Carl Reiner, ZaSu Pitts, and more

• Budget: $9.4M | Box Office: $60M | Format: Technicolor / Ultra Panavision 70

• Runtime: 192 min (premiere) / 163 min (release) / 197 min (2014 Criterion restoration)

• Opened November 7, 1963 at the Cinerama Dome — the very first film shown there

Production & Behind the Scenes

• Working titles: "Where, But In America?" then "One Damn Thing After Another." Kramer briefly considered a fifth "Mad."

• His first comedy as director — and the hardest, he said, he ever made.

• Shot summer 1962 during TV hiatus. Desert scenes in Palm Desert, CA — now mostly country clubs and golf courses.

• Kramer let Silvers run crap games to keep actors nearby. Jerry Lewis, uncredited, reportedly lost $500.

• ~80 of ~100 working U.S. stunt people appeared — 39 performers, $252,000.

• Title animation by Saul Bass, executed by Bill Melendez, who hid his crew's names in the letters for three frames. Schulz saw it, called Melendez, and the Peanuts specials followed.

• The NY premiere was attended by Robert and Ted Kennedy. President Kennedy was assassinated five days later.

• UA cut the film from 192 to 163 minutes against Kramer's wishes; the 2014 Criterion restoration (197 min) is closest to his 202-minute original.

The Cast

• Spencer Tracy received top billing; co-stars listed alphabetically. He worked nine days at three to four hours daily, sharing no screen time with any co-star until two hours in.

• Ethel Merman's role was written for Groucho Marx as a doctor. When that fell through, Kramer swapped the gender — Groucho later joked he was to have played Mrs. Marcus.

• Terry-Thomas got the role after Peter Sellers asked too much. His stunt double painted a tooth black to match Thomas's famous dental gap.

• Jack Benny's cameo went first to Stan Laurel, who pledged never to perform again after Hardy's death. The bowler hat was already in the scene — shot for a stand-in before the offer was made.

• The Three Stooges, as firemen with no dialogue, drew the biggest audience reaction in the film. Their 1930 debut Soup to Nuts also had them as firemen.

• ZaSu Pitts and Willis H. O'Brien both died before release — the final film for each.

• Arnold Stang broke his forearm days before filming and wears mechanic's gloves throughout to hide the cast.

Stunts, Effects & Locations

• Frank Tallman flew the plane-through-the-billboard stunt. A miss meant a sheared wing; impact stopped one engine and the plane barely made it back.

• The water tower fell before the truck hit it; Linwood Dunn used optical split-screen to sync them in post.

• The blowtorch-into-stairs gag took 86 takes.

• The fire escape finale used miniatures, reuniting King Kong (1933) pair O'Brien and Marcel Delgado — O'Brien's last film.

Script & Story Notes

• Durante's dying closeup is Ultra Panavision — the largest-format shot in the film and his final theatrical feature.

• Allen Jenkins, Arnold Stang, and Marvin Kaplan had all starred in Top Cat (1961), inspired by The Phil Silvers Show. Silvers is also in this film.

• Jim Backus as the drunken pilot says "It's the only way to fly" — the slogan of Western Airlines, whose animated mascot Backus voiced.

• Six Oscar nominations. Walter Elliott won Best Sound Effects: "From all of us in the mad, mad, mad world... Thank you very, very much."

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