The year was 1963. Producer and Directer Stanley Kramer, producer and director of acclaimed movies like Judgement at Nuremberg, The Defiant Ones and High Noon, decided that he was going to create an epic comedy. What is an epic comedy, might you ask? Get together as many of the comedy-minded actors of the era and previous era as well, and throw them into a large-scale chase across California, all of them seeking a lost stolen fortune that is hidden underneath a “Big W”. What is a “Big W?” Therein lies the question.
This is the story and the plot of one of my favorite movies of all time, It’s a Mad Mad Mad World.
The movie suffered some troubles and issues before its general release. Its original roadshow length, complete with an overture and Entracte break in the middle, was over three hours, and deemed too long. The movie was cut from a “roadshow” of 210 minutes to a theatrical cut of 161 minutes, and a lot of the nearly hour of film cut off has been lost (but not all, some has been found and restored!). Even at the 161 minutes there is plenty of movie to see and enjoy.
The plot kicks off with a motley set of ordinary people who witness the car crash of “Smiler” Grogan (played by Jimmy Durante) in the California Desert. The witnesses to the car crash are a who’s who of actors—Jonathan Winters, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Edie Adams, and Dorothy Provine. Durante’s Grogan literally kicks a bucket in telling them about the $350,000 he has buried in Santa Rosita. (About $2,800,000 in today’s money). Although the group is skeptical at first, they argue and debate about a cooperative approach, the witnesses eventually decide on a winner-take-all race to the money.
And watching them all, and waiting for the revelation of where that money is, is Captain Culpeper, played by Spencer Tracy. For you see, he has been waiting decades for Smiler Grogan to reveal where the money from a tuna factory robbery has been buried. A sum of $350,000…
Along the way the witnesses foil and plot against each other, and get themselves into all sorts of predicaments on their way to their goal. Memorable scenes are many in the movie and bring a smile to my face, such as Jonathan Winters getting truly angry and demolishing a desert gas station, Sid Caesar and Edie Adams blowing up a hardware store basement, and Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney trapped in a plane where the pilot, Jim Backus (from Gilligan’s Island), has knocked himself out in midair, and much more. There is lots of physical comedy; the style of the comedy trends toward slapstick and inexplicable predicaments.
Others wind up joining the quest as well, getting themselves into predicaments, such as Phil Silvers having his convertible start to go down a river he unwisely tried to ford.
Aside from the main cast, the movie is filled with cameos. Seemingly everyone wanted a walk-on role in this movie, and anyone familiar with movies and television of the era are going to recognize the people they encounter (and terrorize). Even if you don’t recognize many or any of them beyond the Three Stooges, it is the chaos that the principals cause in their wake and to each other that makes this film fun.
And while it’s not usually highlighted, we do get lots of scenic shots of the California desert, the beautiful fictional Santa Rosita State Park and lots more eye candy. It’s a real slice of life of what California looked like in the early 1960s.
All roads eventually lead to Santa Rosita; Culpeper has for reasons of his own decided to join the quest, and so the movie culminates in a fantastic final chase sequence as Culpeper tries to get away with the money himself. This, as you might expect, goes hilariously wrong for all involved. Painfully, painfully, wrong.
And did I mention the wonderful Saul Bass animated credits at the beginning? Or the jaunty title music?
“It’s a Mad Mad Mad World” was one of my late father’s favorite movies, and he inculcated in me a love of this movie as well.
There has been at least one attempt at a revisit to this concept (Rat Race), but that movie could not and did not capture a hundredth of the magic and fun of this movie. Lightning only strikes once, I suppose, but lightning did strike here. It’s a Mad Mad Mad World is a movie guaranteed to buoy my mood every time I put it on. It is a movie that brings me joy.and perhaps it might bring you joy as well.
