It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Having already covered larger than life studio spectacles such as “Cleopatra”, “Giant” and “Doctor Zhivago”, it should be noted that the romantic drama/war were not the only genres covered by this method of filmmaking. The comedy, perhaps a peculiar choice for lavish, some would say overblown treatment, also benefited from the style, most successfully with 1963’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. Directed by the usually politically conscious filmmaker Stanley Kramer, the film boasts arguably the greatest comedic cast ever assembled. Where other studio epics spent their money on lavish sets, costumes and locations, MGM instead gathered every comedian from the current and previous generation, and threw them into a high concept premise: mysterious outlaw Smiler Grogan dies while eluding police. After crashing his car on an isolated stretch of California highway, he tells the random group of people who stopped to help of a buried treasure some hundred miles south. The group sets off on an all out race, covering land, sea and air, all while being pursued unbeknownst to them by Captain T.G. Culpepper, the lawman who had been chasing Smiler Grogan for years. In a clever twist, this is the only role played by a non-comedian, but to give credit, they found quite a capable actor: Spencer Tracy. Released at a whopping 192 minutes, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” definitely offers plenty of laughs, although as with most “bigger is better” comedies, not all of them always work. The difference is that this film has over three hours or material, as opposed to 90 minutes, so while you may end up feeling overwhelmed, the laughs are still there, provided by such luminaries as Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Phil Sivers, Jonathan Winters and Jimmy Durante as Smiler Grogan, plus a multitude of cameos by, among others Buster Keaton, the Three Stooges, Buddy Ebsen, Don Knotts and Jerry Lewis.

The film really can be described as a three hour mad dash. The first 15 minutes establish Smiler Grogan, Captain Culpepper, and the four parties that stumble upon him: vacationing dentist Melville Crump (Sid Caesar) and his wife, hen pecked husband J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle), his wife, and her domineering mother, Mrs. Marcus (a screeching Ethel Merman, subject of perhaps the longest gestating gag payoff in cinema history), two dim bulb buddies (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney), and a furniture mover, Jonathan Winters. Over the course of the film the group grows to include Mrs. Marcus’ overprotective son, Sylvester, an exasperated British military man, J. Algernon Hawthorne (played by the great Terry-Thomas), a smarmy salesman (the suitably smarmy Phil Silvers), a stuttering cab driver (played by famed black comedian Eddie Rochester Anderson), and Mr. Magoo himself, Jim Backus, as blind, oblivious millionaire Tyler Fitzgerald. A knock on the film is that the comedy is not based on jokes and situational comedy as much as it is huge set pieces, arguably huge set pieces that are played for maximum laughs. My favorite of the bunch involves Jonathan Winters’ character, Lennie Pike. After being swindled into telling about the buried treasure by Phil Silvers’ Otto Meyer and being left on the highway, Lennie is in quite a bad mood when he arrives (via a little girl’s bicycle) at a gas station seeking a phone and a means of transportation. Suspected of stealing by the two grotesques working the station, they subdue Lennie in a stack of tires, only to see his rage boil over. Lennie absolutely trashes the station, destroying everything that will break, knocking down all the walls, and the highway sign in his wake. This scene epitomizes the comedy of the film: big and broad. There is nothing witty about Lennie smashing through walls, but the scene is undeniably funny. Similar scenes such as Crump and his wife stuck in the basement of a hardware store trying every means possible to escape (jackhammer, blowtorch, dynamite) and the outrageous finale which finds the entire cast clinging to a seriously unstable fire escape, follow this same brand of humor, which is light years removed from the sophisticated laughs of a Woody Allen film, or the stylized word play of the Marx Bros., yet hilarious in its own right.

After allowing the characters to pursue the treasure for the majority of the film, Culpepper, we find out, has his own plans. An underpaid, overworked lawman his whole life, with a nagging wife and chaotic children, Culpepper plans on following the gang to the scene, arresting them all, and making off with the loot himself. And he very nearly does, until spotted at the scene too soon (two palm trees, crossed to form a gigantic W), setting off the chase that results in every hanging from the precarious fire escape. After violently depositing everyone in various locales, a brief epilogue shows all of the characters in full body casts laid up in the same hospital room. After 191 minutes of physical humor and broad slapstick, the film throws in one last gag, one of the oldest gags: slip on a banana peel. The recipient is Mrs. Marcus, who has berated Finch the entire film, and who slips as only someone in the movies can, full body up off the ground, before crashing loudly on her caboose, prompting spontaneous laughter from all. This method of bigger is funnier filmmaking would show up again throughout the years, in films such as “The Great Race” starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood, and Steven Spielberg’s underrated “1941” starring John Belushi. Essentially disregarded by critics because of a perceived lack of wit, these films actually embrace the anarchy inspired by comedians like the Marx Brothers more than the sophisticated “ha ha” style of Woody Allen, a celebrated disciple of the Brothers. Re-watch the last scene of “Duck Soup” or “A Night at the Opera”, and you will see remarkable similarities between that comedy and Stanley Kramer’s epic, yet it is largely forgotten today. The long running time is enough to scare off most people today, however anyone curious enough is in for quite a treat, given the broad laughs and the chance to see scores of classic comedians acting on the same screen; remember, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”!