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The Fine Arts Theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is running my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at 2 PM on Sunday, April 14. I mention this because folks keep writing me to let me know. I know, I know. I doubt I'll be attending. The Fine Arts is a lovely place to see most movies but I'm spoiled. I need my favorite movie on a bigger screen and will probably wait for the reopening of the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood even if, as it now appears, that ain't happening in '24.

I also don't think my ankle will be up to going by then. It's getting steadily better and I'd know that even if the surgeon who reassembled it hadn't said as much in a post-op visit last Wednesday. But it's still going to take a while…

For those of you who live in Southern California — say, anywhere between Crockett County and Santa Rosita — the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood is showing my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on Friday evening, December 22. Tickets are on sale now at this link and they will probably sell out. Every time some local theater shows this movie, tickets sell out quickly and I am at a loss to explain why more houses don't show it more often.

And yes, I've bought my tickets. As you may know, this is a movie that I believe needs to be seen on a big screen with a big audience that appreciates its big cast of big stars. Watching it at home without a big audience and/or a big screen is okay if you've already seen it a few times The Right Way and you're just refreshing your memory of that viewing. And if you do, watch the Criterion Collection DVD or Blu-ray of it which, among its other features, has a really, really long and detailed commentary track by Yours Truly and my pals Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo.

Some of you, by the way, have clued me in that the film can be viewed for free on YouTube. The reason I haven't embedded it here is that I can't think of a worse way to experience this film, especially if you watch it on your phone while waiting for a dental appointment.

And there's another reason why I'm going to the Egyptian that evening. That theater has been completely remodeled and it's supposed to be beautiful and a grand place to watch movies now. We're going to get there early to see the place…and by the way, they're running Mad World as a 70mm film print. That's about half the size of Jimmy Durante's nose.

While searching my cluttered hard drive for some info on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for a post here the other day, I came across a JPG of this newspaper clipping…

Some of you may be thinking, "Jackie Mason? Barbara Heller? I don't recall either of them in the movie!" That might because they weren't in the movie. Jackie Mason was originally signed to play one of the gas station attendants but it turned out that his schedule was so full of club dates and bookings that they couldn't know if they'd have him when they needed him. I got the impression from Stanley Kramer that he thought Mason's agent had misled them about his availability. Anyway, Mason was replaced.

Originally, the two gas station attendants were to have been Mr. Mason and Joe Besser but Besser was then a regular on The Joey Bishop Show, a sitcom at the time. Mr. Bishop would not allow Mr. Besser the necessary days off to be in Mad World so he was out. I think the way it worked was that Arnold Stang was hired to replace Besser and then a little later, Marvin Kaplan was hired to replace Mason.

Rumor has it that Ms. Heller was signed to play the wife of Ben Blue, who played the airline pilot…a role ultimately played by Bobo Lewis.  But there were a lot of scenes cut from Mad World — some filmed, some not — and she might have been in or intended for one of them.

And speaking of people who were cut from the film: When I showed you the Jack Davis poster in this posting here, I meant to point out the officer on the ground below the car driven by Milton Berle. That was Allen Jenkins, a character actor probably best known for voicing the character of Officer Dibble in the cartoon show Top Cat…which also featured voices by Stang and Kaplan. A photo of Mr. Jenkins was in the souvenir book for Mad World sold at the roadshow engagements but he was cut from the movie just before its release.  He apparently played a policeman or sheriff.

And I haven't figured out where Herbie Faye might have been in the movie.  Faye, seen above with his long-time friend Phil Silvers on Sgt. Bilko, is in several stills taken during the desert scenes in Mad World. It's unlikely he would have schlepped out there in 105° heat just to say hi to Phil. Whatever he did never made it into the movie. He had to be content to guest star on just about every sitcom of the sixties and about half of the funny movies made in that decade. In show biz, he went back to the days of burlesque when he was First Banana (lead comic) and Phil Silvers was Second Banana (supporting comic).

There were others who didn't make it in…and before someone asks, as people seem to do hourly on Facebook, about Don Rickles: Don Rickles was never going to be in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the reason he was never going to be in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is that when the film was casting, he was still an unknown, especially in the comedy world. He didn't even appear on The Tonight Show until 1965.

I have a couple of folks who send me e-mails and sign them "Smiler Grogan," which was the name of Jimmy Durante's character in my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  There are at least two, maybe three, and one of them wrote to ask me…

I've heard you in interviews say that when you got into the TV business, you tried to work with or at least meet everyone you could who was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Could you furnish us with a list of who you met? And how many of them told you that they were very proud to have been in the movie?

In the immortal words of Curly Howard, "Soitenly!"  Here's a list of everyone in the film who wasn't a stunt person or extra.  I have boldfaced the names of those who I worked with and/or got to spend a decent amount of time with and I have italicized the names of those I met in what I would consider brief encounters…

Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Edie Adams, Dorothy Provine, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Jim Backus, Ben Blue, Joe E. Brown, Alan Carney, Chick Chandler, Barrie Chase, Lloyd Corrigan, William Demarest, Andy Devine, Selma Diamond, Peter Falk, Norman Fell, Paul Ford, Stan Freberg, Louise Glenn, Leo Gorcey, Sterling Holloway, Marvin Kaplan, Edward Everett Horton, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Charles Lane, Mike Mazurki, Charles McGraw, Zasu Pitts, Carl Reiner, Madlyn Rhue, Roy Roberts, Arnold Stang, Nick Stewart, Sammee Tong, Jesse White, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Stanley Clements, Joe DeRita, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Nicholas Georgiade, Stacy Harris, Tom Kennedy, Ben Lessy, Bobo Lewis, Jerry Lewis, Eddie Rosson, Eddie Ryder, Jean Sewell, Doodles Weaver and Lennie Weinrib.

Of those I met, the only two who ever expressed negative feelings about the film were Mickey Rooney and Carl Reiner, both of whom seemed to feel that the film was loud and crowded and not as funny as it could or should have been. Mr. Rooney made some great films in his career but he was not, shall we say, the most stable human being, always announcing wacky business ventures and show business productions that never materialized. His appearances at Mad World revival screenings were punctuated with all sorts of strange anecdotes that never happened including the ridiculous assertion that he and his co-stars had ad-libbed the entire script. A copy of the entire script — yes, of course, I have one — shows that this was not so.

I never found much logic in anything Rooney said about the movie and the one time I got to speak with him about it, he was somewhat incoherent and he wound up screaming and running out of the room about another matter. Mr. Reiner, I think, was imagining what he, as a writer-director, might have done with the cast and budget that Stanley Kramer had. It would have been a very different film and I'm not saying it would have been a bad one.

Both of those gentlemen somewhat recanted late in their lives, saying only good things about the picture. I suspect this was because they kept being invited to screenings full of fans who pledged undying allegiance to the movie. This is just a theory on my part but I think they came to realize they'd been a part — in Rooney's case, a rather large part — of something that meant so much to so many and they decided to stop being negative about the experience.

They may also have noticed that some of their co-stars — folks they truly respected like Jonathan Winters and Don Knotts, to name but two — were bursting with delight to have been part of the film. So to demean the film was to demean Jonathan's or Don's gratification and pride. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion but they're also entitled to change their minds.

We wish the folks who run the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood would reopen that fine movie theater and we further wish they would resume their occasional screenings there of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. That theater was literally built to show that film and seeing it there is the best way to see it.

There is no news about the Dome reopening…just a few rumors that aren't worth raising one's hopes for. But it is a fact that the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is showing my fave film in 70mm on Saturday, July 30 at 7:30 PM. Details and tickets are here. I have not been in a theater of any sort since The Pandemic descended upon us. This may be when I break my fast.

From Robert Rose…

The subject of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World came up in a Marx Brothers discussion group I participate in. Opinions on the movie varied (the most interesting to me was the fellow who says he loves the film but that it isn't funny; I'm not sure how that works) but of course in that group the burning question was "Why wasn't Groucho in it?" There were various explanations and theories advanced, but rather than list them I thought I'd toss the question your way, as an acknowledged expert on the film who also seems to have come across the occasional stray fact about the Marx Brothers, too.

(I did first try to search through your blog to see if you'd addressed the question before, but eventually gave up, defeated by the sheer number of posts that mention Groucho, some of which even do so without mentioning Frank Ferrante.)

I hope people understand that even an "acknowledged expert on the film" can't know everything for certain and that if you'd asked Stanley Kramer at the time about the movie, there are some things even he wouldn't know. A movie involves a thousand decisions and you can't track and dissect every one of them.

I can tell you that a lot of the casting decisions were last minute "get anyone you can" decisions. On a film like that with so many set-ups and so many players and so many stunts and tech problems, you can never be sure when you'll get to certain scenes. A lot of folks who were not in the film weren't in it because they were shooting another movie or a TV series at the time.

I asked Dick Van Dyke and he said he was never approached. (Carl Reiner was in it but since Carl wasn't in every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he did a lot of other things while that series was in production. Morey Amsterdam recorded a voiceover for Mad World that was cut from the film but that was a voiceover that might have taken an hour.) Anyway, that's probably why people like Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas and Jackie Gleason weren't in it. Joe Besser was cast as one of the gas station attendants but couldn't get time off from The Joey Bishop Show.

Stan Freberg walked onto the set one day to discuss the commercials he was producing for the film. When Kramer had a break in filming, he instead said to Stan, "What size shirt do you wear?" They needed someone to fill a role they were prepping to shoot an hour or so later.

Howard Morris is nowhere in the film, nor did he ever appear before the cameras. But on two separate occasions, they booked him for a day's work (and paid him) because they thought they might need him to replace someone else, depending on scheduling. He never knew what the role was and the following is just my theory…

I suspect he was engaged in case the schedules on Mad World and The Andy Griffith Show didn't come into proper alignment so Don Knotts was available. If when they needed to shoot the scenes with Don, he couldn't get away from Mayberry, Howie would have been in that part and people would be asking, "Why wasn't Don Knotts in the film?" Or maybe Knotts would have wound up in a different role.

Either of those would have been a shame because he was so perfect in the part he played. Don made such a strong impression in the movie that people think he was in a lot more of it than he was. His total on-screen time totaled exactly 120 seconds.

Mr. Kramer told me that Sterling Holloway's casting as the fireman was one of those "we couldn't find anyone else when we needed someone" moments and that he hoped there'd be an opportunity to reshoot it later with a bigger star — and there wasn't. I theorize the part was written for Ed Wynn…and hey, that might have been a good spot for Groucho. I've heard there do exist script pages for a never-filmed scene where Groucho would have cameoed as a doctor treating all the major male cast members at the end.

It would have given Groucho the last line of the movie and they might have decided that at that point, the focus of the last scene should have been on the stars of the film instead of on an interloper. Or Groucho might not have been available. Or Groucho might have wanted too much money. Or there might have been some reason no one could have imagined.

At some point during the filming, a small role was apparently offered to Jack Carter. Mr. Carter was fiercely competitive with other comedians and he wasn't about to come in and do two lines in a movie starring guys like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar with whom he had what we might call "rivalry issues." He turned the job down saying something like, "Call me when you have a real part." They never did, either because one did not come along or because they just decided not to deal with someone who took that attitude. The one time I got to talk to Stanley Kramer, I asked him about it and he said, "I don't remember. I probably had too many things to think about." That's the way it is with some things.

The Palace Theatre, a restored art deco-style 1940s theater in Dallas-Fort Worth runs classic/vintage movies. This Saturday at 4 PM, they're running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on what I'm told is a big screen. That's one of my two requirements for enjoying this film at its maximum strength. The other is a large, enthusiastic audience.

The Palace is currently operating at 75% capacity so people don't have to sit so close to strangers. Their website also says "While masks are no longer a requirement, they are highly recommended. Staff will continue to wear masks." Even fully-vaccinated, I don't think I'd take the risk but you do what you want to do. And either way, let's thank Dan Koller for letting me know about it.

Turner Classic Movies is running my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Monday. The schedule says that, at least on my cable service, it starts at 5:15 PM and is followed at 8 PM by It's Always Fair Weather. That would suggest they're running the 2 hour and 42 minute version of Mad World — which is the version I'd show if I were them.

On the TCM site, they list the running time for the movie as 3 hours and 12 minutes. I know a lot of people don't believe in science anymore but I believe it's still impossible to show a 192 minute movie in a 165 minute time slot.

The running time of this movie is actually difficult to discuss because there are all these different elements: The overture, the Intermission, the recorded police calls during the Intermission, the Entr'Acte, the Exit Music and a couple of different versions of the movie, trimmed and untrimmed. When someone cites a running time, they're sometimes counting some of those elements and not others. I believe though the version that TCM always shows is 162 minutes from the first note of music to the last. I could easily be wrong.

I would ordinarily tell you not to watch it, especially if you've never seen it before or haven't seen it in a very long time. I love this movie but I love it on a huge screen in one of these things we used to go to called a "movie theater." Google that term if you don't remember what that is. And it should also be seen with a packed audience that's primed to laugh. It's greatly diminished when viewed alone or with one other person on a small home screen.

However, it may be some time before it's possible to see it that way. And if they show it that way in the next few months at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood — a theater that was literally built to show this movie — I'm not sure I'll even go.

It would be nice to. I first saw this film at the Cinerama Dome on 11/23/63 — the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a day when the entire world was still in shock. One of the reasons I love it so much is that for for 201 minutes (the running time at that point), I was living in a world of very funny people…a world where insane things happened but at least no one shot the President.

Some but not all of my affection for this movie flows from that. The rest has a lot to do with the age I was when I first saw it, my affection then and now for the performers, my affection for how fascinating every moment of the film is to me, and affection of other factors too numerous to mention.

I'm not recommending watching it on TCM but because it may be a while before you can see it the right way. I'm also not recommending not watching it on TCM. Proceed at your own risk. And if you don't like it there, don't judge it by that.

As you know, I'm a big fan of the 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World…though really only when it's on a big screen in an actual movie theater with a lively, packed audience.  As far as I'm concerned, if you haven't seen it that way, you haven't seen it.  I still recommend the superb Criterion DVD/Blu Ray release of the film with me and two pals on the commentary track…but please experience the film as God and Stanley Kramer intended it before you watch it in your den.  (God, by the way, is the only filmmaker who really and truly gets "final cut.")

The fine writer Craig Shemin informs me that the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York is showing a 70mm print of my beloved film on August 31, September 1, September 7 and September 8.  Details are here…and if/when you visit, check out the Jim Henson exhibit they have there.

Keith Enright has a question about the Criterion release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on DVD and Blu Ray. As you may recall, I am heard on the commentary track. (If you don't have a copy, I highly recommend it. You can order a copy of it here. And now, let's tackle Keith's question…

Maybe my memory is failing and you can just point me to a previous post, but I'm wondering if you have any further stories about working with Criterion on this? I'm a huge Criterion fanatic and have also loved this movie since childhood. I have the previous MGM Laserdisc boxset as well as the Criterion set and consider them both essential to telling the story of the film.

I think the Criterion set is amazing and I love that you're a part of it. Any tidbits on how you got involved, whether they paid you in discs, or if you were involved in anything that didn't make it to the final product?

There were a few hunks of the commentary track that didn't make it in due to time limits. People think that such tracks are recorded in real time while the commenters are watching it once…and some are. This one was done in long chunks in three sessions and we did some sections over and over until everyone was satisfied with them. Then there was a lot of editing to move certain speeches closer to the on-screen action they were describing. I was very impressed with how Criterion sets a high standard and then spends the time and money necessary to achieve it.

They paid me in money and sent me some discs. And how I got involved is not that interesting a story. My friend Mike Schlesinger was at a film screening and he ran into a friend of his — Karen Stetler, who is a producer for Criterion. She told him, "We're doing a restored version of Mad World." He said, "You have to have a commentary track by Mark Evanier and me." She said fine. They called me and I said yes and suggested we also get Paul Scrabo on the track. They said yes.

We recorded the track over several days…in the same recording studio where I voice-direct The Garfield Show and most of the other cartoons I've done. It felt a little odd to be on the wrong side of the glass but I got used to it after an hour or so.

If I didn't make it clear in past posts, let me state clearly that this was one of the great thrills of my life, being involved in the super-deluxe release of a movie that meant so much to me. Don't tell Karen but I would have paid them for the privilege. If you don't like this movie, fine. I probably don't like at least one of your favorite films and you're not going to convince me it's not wonderful just as I'm not going to convince you that yours is not a great movie. I'm just real, real glad that I had the chance to "give back" a little to this film.

Jeffrey Martin, a reader of this site, informs me that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is being run in Chicago a little more than a month from now at the Music Box Theater. There are three showings — February 26, February 27 and March 2. Sounds like another opportunity to view this film as nature intended it: On a big screen with a big audience. Tickets are on sale now here. I'd be there but I only go to Mad World screenings within two thousand miles of my home and this one is 2,032 miles.

What a night, what a night.  Last evening (12/4), around 600 fans of the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World crammed into Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.  The occasion was a special 39th anniversary screening and panel discussion of one of the longest, richest comedies ever made.  And what fans they were of it, as expertly produced and directed by the late Stanley Kramer.

One of the interesting things about this movie is that a certain amount of its humor flows from having some knowledge of the actors involved.  For example, there's a scene where Phil Silvers — cast in his eternal role as an avaricious con-artist — is in desperate need of a ride somewhere, lest he lose out on his shot at the $350,000 everyone is chasing after.  (I'm assuming here you already know the plot.  If not, basically, it's that that amount of money is buried somewhere and one person after another gets caught up in mad pursuit of it.)

So Silvers flags down a car and as it pulls up, we see that its driver is Don Knotts.  Enormous laugh.  Even before anything is said or done to Mr. Knotts by Mr. Silvers, the audience is laughing…because they know that Phil Silvers is a predator and Don Knotts is prey, and the match-up just seems so perfect as to be funny.  It's like a joke where the set-up is so good, you're chuckling long before you get anywhere near the punch line.  Mad World is full of such moments in which the audience is one notch ahead of the film.

Tonight, some in the house knew the film so well, we were two notches ahead.  In the above scene, we were laughing before we even saw that the driver was Don Knotts.  We all knew it would be Don Knotts because we all knew the movie.  So we laughed before we saw Don and when we finally did, we applauded him.  Matter of fact, most of those present applauded the first on-screen appearance of each great comedian and character actor, which meant a lot of applause.

Some of it was for folks who were actually present.  Not all those who were announced showed…but Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters and Peter Falk were there at the beginning, and Mickey Rooney, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg and Edie Adams were there throughout.  The latter four participated in a panel discussion that followed the screening, where they were joined by casting director Lynn Stalmaster, editor Robert C. Jones, agent Marty Baum and one of the stuntmen.  (I am embarrassed that I missed the stuntman's name, especially since I enjoyed talking with him afterwards.  But he was the person who, though Caucasian, donned a rubber mask and doubled Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.)  [UPDATE, later: It was Loren Janes.]

Here are some general thoughts and revelations from the discussion…

Marvin Kaplan revealed that he replaced Jackie Mason (!) who was originally slated for his role as one of the gas station attendants.  I'd never heard that before.  I also didn't know that Arnold Stang's stunt double was Janos Prohaska, who later gained fame playing animals (like Andy Williams' bear) and creatures in science-fiction movies.  I worked with Janos many years ago and never heard him mention this.

Marty Baum, an agent who represented many of the stars of the film, told a very funny story about how Stanley Kramer wanted character actor Ed Brophy for a key role.  Baum didn't represent Brophy but, smelling a commission, fibbed that he did and almost made a deal, only to find out later than Brophy had passed away.  The punch-line to the anecdote was Kramer shouting, "You sold me a dead actor!"

Mickey Rooney said…well, I'm not sure just what Mickey Rooney said, except that he loved It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,which was a total departure from his past comments on the movie.  He also told us his life story and mentioned something about Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable being dead.  Basically, Mr. Rooney seemed to be doing the Dana Carvey impression of him, only not as well.

The stuntman whose name I have thoughtlessly forgotten [Loren Janes] said that the stunt crew — maybe the best ever assembled for a movie — loved working for Stanley Kramer.  At one point, a clip Kramer showed on a TV talk show was found to be a few seconds over the length that the Screen Actors Guild allows without additional fees to its members.  Kramer was ordered to make a substantial payment to all the stunt folks, all of whom tried to decline the extra bucks.  Kramer insisted…so when they received the checks, the stuntmen all endorsed them over to Mr. Kramer and sent them back.

Stan Freberg told the tale of trying to direct the commercials for the film — a difficult task, for it involved getting the actors to stick to his script.  At one point, watching Freberg floundering in the attempt, Kramer wandered over and told him, "Now you know what I go through."

And of course, there were other fine tales that were a part of the discussion.  Kramer's widow, Karen Sharpe Kramer, co-hosted and accepted an award on his behalf.  She spoke of how pleased her late husband — known primarily for dramatic films with a "message" — would have been proud that so many people turned out for his one grand attempt at comedy.

It really was a nice evening.  It had been too many years since I'd seen the film with a live audience and I enjoyed it far more than any home video viewing.  I had forgotten just how funny most of those people were in the thing.  You remember the stunts and the "big" gags and the special effects…but the most wonderful part of it all is watching great comic actors wringing every dram of humor out of their roles — the little "takes" by Milton Berle, the perfectly-timed facial tics of Sid Caesar, the voluminous smile of Phil Silvers, etc.  I know a similar kind of film (The Rat Race, which I didn't see) was recently attempted but I think it's futile.  There simply aren't the kind of great character thespians now that they had then.  Sad but true.