Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is the 1963 epic comedy extravaganza, "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, and featuring a host of comedians and comic actors in leading, supporting, and cameo roles.

The film stars [inspirational music] Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney both long established and well-known film actors, but also Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, and Jonathan Winters, in his motion picture debut.

Among the supporting players are Jimmy Durante, Eddie Rochester Anderson, William Demarest, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan, Paul Ford, Peter Falk, and Carl Reiner.

And then there was a multitude of cameos including Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotz, Zasu Pitts, Joey Brown, the Three Stooges, Stan Freberg, Doodles Weaver, Edward Everett Horton, and Buster Keaton.

The film begins unusually for a comedy film, with a high speed car chase on a highway in the southern California desert.

Smiler Grogan, who has just been released after 15 years in prison for armed robbery, weaves in and out between cars and trucks, attempting to shake the police on his tail.

But on one final fatal curve, his car crashes through a barrier and down into a ravine below.

Five motorists stop to help him.

They are Jay Russell Finch, a harried businessman, traveling with his wife and obnoxious mother-in-law, Ding Bell and Benji Benjamin, two pals on their way to Las Vegas, Melville Crump on a second honeymoon with his wife, Monica, and Lenny Pike, truck driver.

Just before he dies, Grogan manages to tell the five men about $350,000 buried in a park in the town of Santa Rosita under a big W. The five men agree to say nothing to the police about what Grogan has told them, but then get into an argument about how best to divide the money among the five of them.

When the police arrive, the men tell them Grogan only set a few incomprehensible words before he died.

They then set off in their separate vehicles, each one trying to work out how to get to Santa Rosita first and take all the money for themselves.

Each one of them faces a series of increasingly complicated obstacles, some created by themselves, and others created by their traveling companions, and a series of others who learn about the buried money and decide to fight it themselves.

And keeping a close eye on all of this chaos is Captain TG Culpepper of the Santa Rosita police who put Smiler Grogan in prison in the first place.

He coordinates efforts by various law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on the five men and their rivals and monitor their actions without interfering in hopes that one of them will lead the police to the cash buried under a big W. Producer and director Stanley Kramer, born September 29th, 1913, was known in the late fifties and early sixties for what he called petty dramas, and many others called message films about social or political issues.

These included "The Defiant Ones" with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in 1958, "On the Beach" with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in 1959, "Inherit the Win" with Spencer Tracy and Frederick March in 1960, and "Judgment at Nuremberg" with Tracy Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark in 1961.

By 1962, Kramer was ready for a complete change of pace, seeking, like many other filmmakers, to imitate the success of multiple Oscar winner "Around the World in 80 Days" in 1956.

Kramer decided to make a star-studded comedy that was big in every respect.

It would feature as many comedians and comic actors as he could cram into it, and there would be comic action piled on top of comic action and a crescendo of frantic slapstick.

To match it's story, the film would be shot in large format the one-camera Cinerama process called Super Panavision 70 and it would be long, over three and a half hours in its initial cut.

Kramer intended it to be the ultimate comedy movie.

In the eyes of many of its fans, that is exactly what it is.

I'll be back after the film, but now from 1963, The screenplay for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was written by William Rose, an American expatriate, who wrote the scripts for a number of England's Ealing Studios' comedies, including 1955's, The Lady Killers.

His original idea was a single day of frantic high-jinks set in Scotland.

Stanley Kramer liked the idea, but wanted the action relocated to Southern California and the frantic high-jinks to be both higher and more frantic, wild, wacky, zany.

And yes, even madcap.

Rose and his wife, Tania, wrote the screenplay with this in mind, and provided opportunities for a plethora of comedians and comic actors in leading, supporting, and cameo roles.

The title of film changed from its original, So Many Thieves, to, Something a Little Less Serious, to, Where, but in America?, to an appropriate, One Damn Thing After Another, to, It's a Mad World.

Kramer added three more Mads, and seriously considered adding four, for a total of five, but decided not to.

Reportedly, he later regretted his timidity.

Although Kramer said the central theme in his film was greed, it in fact gives the overwhelming impression that its theme is slapstick, the wilder and more violent, the better.

His conviction is clearly that screen comedy is primarily slapstick, it's primary form back in the early days of silent films, but arguably, only one form of movie comedy among many by the time It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was made.

Kramer's film is in some ways an argument for the earlier sillier days of motion picture comedy.

But at the same time, Kramer occasionally provides opportunities for his leading actors to shine in some fine verbal humor, either on their own, as an ensemble, or one-on-one.

Milton Berle's extended frustrated interactions with Terry-Thomas provide a good example of that.

In supporting roles and cameos, the film features some comedians, like Ben Blue as the biplane pilot, who have fallen into obscurity.

Others, like Joe E. Brown and Edward Everett Horton, remain familiar to old movie buffs.

Some of the comic actors included appear on screen so briefly that their faces hardly register.

But according to film exhibitors at the time, the movie's shortest cameo, only five seconds, was also the most popular with audiences, often prompting laughter and applause.

That's the brief silent shot of The Three Stooges dressed as firemen, just as they were for their screen debut in Soup to Nuts, in 1930.

It's worth noting some of the famous film comedians Kramer was not able to secure for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Although Buster Keaton appears, two other silent comedy greats, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, declined.

Stan Laurel also passed up the opportunity, staying true to his vow, never to appear on screen again after the death of his partner, Oliver Hardy.

Also absent for various reasons are other comedy notables active in the early '60s, including Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Martha Raye, Red Skelton, and Imogene Coca.

It sometimes seems as if Kramer, once he had his assembly of comedians, often didn't know quite what to do with them.

Stan Freberg, for instance, who was famous for his song parodies and classic comedy record albums, appears in the background as Sheriff Andy Devine's deputy, and never says a word.

Doodles Weaver, renowned for his work with Spike Jones in the City Slickers, and his own spoonerism filled monologues, has a single line.

Other more famous comedians hardly fare better, although cameos by both Jerry Lewis and Jack Benny really stand out.

The critical reception to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World when it was released was mixed, in part due to its flagrant flaunting of the adage, brevity is the soul of wit.

The remarks of a critic in Variety are typical.

He wrote, there are a number of truly spectacular action sequences.

And the stunts that have been performed seemed incredible.

The automobile capers are some of the most thrilling and daring on record, Mack Sennett notwithstanding.

However, he continued.

Certain pratfalls and sequences are unnecessarily overdone to the point where they begin to grow tedious.

But the pluses outweigh by far the minuses.

Audiences seemed to agree.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was the third largest grossing movie of 1963, trailing two other lengthy, star-stuffed, big screen spectaculars, Cleopatra, and, How the West Was Won.

There have been efforts by fans over the years to find missing scenes and restore Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to its original 202 minute running time, and many of them still consider the film to be the best movie comedy of all time.

Please join us again next time for another Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.