From Mark Potash…
Thanks for the tip on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I finally saw it at the Music Box Theater in Chicago last weekend and it was well worth the wait to see it on the big screen. What a great movie to watch with a crowd! I do think it would have tickled me more if I had seen it when I was 11 — I imagine many movies are like that — but still great entertainment.
The Music Box showed what I think is the entire 1963 version of the film, with the overture and the intermission audio, but not the credits. There were credits after that movie, right? With a cast like that, that would be one of the highlights of the film. I couldn't find any film of the credits — though I did find out that Barrie Chase, the last surviving cast member (right?) was born the same day as my mother. (And my dad graduated from the same high school as Mel Tormé).
Thanks again for your passion for that movie that inspired me to see it. It's one of those films I'll have to see again to process the whole movie. I hope I get the chance.
I dunno what the demand for it is like in your neck o' the woods but at least once a year, some theater in Los Angeles runs it and they always get a good crowd. I tell people that even though the Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray versions are superb and wonderful for repeat viewings, this film is best experienced for the first time on a big screen with a big crowd. My lady friend Amber has never seen it even though we've been going together for years and she's heard me discuss it, ad infinitum. She's just never been available when it's been screened locally in the ideal presentation.
What you saw in Chicago though could not have been the entire 1963 version of the film just the way it opened. That does not exist. A few weeks after it debuted on November 7, 1963 — and after I first saw it at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on November 23, 1963 — a large chunk was cut out and while pieces of that chunk have been found, not all of them have.
One good indicator is a now-missing scene in the second half of the film in which Spencer Tracy and Buster Keaton have a phone conversation. I saw it on 11/23/63 but it was among many that were cut. The version that existed after that is usually referred to as "The General Release Print." The Criterion set contains a beautiful copy of The General Release Print and another, longer copy of the film that restores as much of the original footage as possible even if it means that some of it is a bit fuzzy and some of it is missing audio or video.
The Tracy/Keaton phone conversation is on this version of the film with audio over still photos and on the commentary track, you can hear me explaining all this. (Last I heard, the only known copy of this footage is in such terrible condition that the best restorers-of-film in the world couldn't make it look good enough to include it on the Criterion edition.)
Yes, sadly…Barrie Chase is the only cast member still with us. She occasionally turns up at screenings to tell of her experiences on the film. Well, actually, she was turning up at such events for years but when Mickey Rooney was alive, he was usually present too and he never let anyone else say much.
Glad you enjoyed it. Part of the fun for me of seeing it for the quadrillionth time is hearing the laughter of folks who are present and experiencing it for their first…and you can tell the difference. There's a scene — in fact, it's right after where the Tracy/Keaton scene was — where Phil Silvers is hitchhiking. A car appears in the distance and when it stops for him, we see who's at the wheel. Audience members who've seen the film before laugh when they first see the car appear because they know it's going to turn out to be Don Knotts. First-time viewers don't laugh until they actually see it's Don Knotts.
Last time I saw it at the Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood — a theater built to show this movie, a theater we keep hearing will reopen some day — I took a lady who was thirty-five years old and had never seen the film. When it was over, my pal Mike Schlesinger (sadly, the late Mike Schlesinger) asked her who she recognized from the cast. She said, "The Three Stooges, the rich guy from Gilligan's Island and Barney Fife." But she was also eager to see more of Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, etc. That's one of the things that movie is great for — an introduction to great comedians of another era.