Trivia for
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) More at IMDbPro »

• The first Cinerama film using anamorphic lenses.
  
  
• Film debut of Jonathan Winters.
  
  
• The cameo by Leo Gorcey marked his first appearance on film since he left the Bowery Boys series in 1956.
  
  
• Zasu Pitts' final film appearance. Suffering from cancer, she died shortly after all her scenes were filmed and just days before filming wrapped up.
  
  
• Premiered at and was the first film ever shown at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California, 7 November 1963.
  
  
• Arnold Stang broke his left arm just days before his scenes were shot; in all shots his arm is forever crooked and held in place by a cast under his uniform.
  
  
• Melville Crump was originally to be played by Ernie Kovacs, but he died in a one-car accident before principal shooting. In real life he was married to Edie Adams, who played Monica Crump.
  
  
• Phil Silvers held regular crap games on the set.
  
  
• Peter Falk improvised much of his dialog in the cab scene.
  
  
• The billboard that the twin-engine Beechcraft flies through was made of thin balsa wood, except for a thicker frame for support. Stunt pilot Frank Tallman had to fly the aircraft directly through the center of the billboard or the thicker frame would shear off a wing. Since the shattered wood would clog and stop both engines, the billboard was built just east of the Orange County Airport (now the John Wayne Airport. After flying through the billboard, Tallman simply lowered the landing gear and safely touched down on the runway.
  
  
• The actors were given two huge scripts, one with all the dialogue, the other with the action.
  
  
• The car that Jack Benny drives in his cameo is a Maxwell, the same defunct brand of automobile as his famous jalopy on his radio show.
  
  
• Buster Keaton had a longer, earlier scene (cut after premiere). In it, Culpepper telephone's Jimmy at his dockside warehouse and discusses his plans to use Jimmy's boat to escape to Mexico with the stolen money.
  
  
• Cameo: [Jerry Lewis] deliberately drives over Culpepper's hat.
  
  
• Cameo: [Jack Benny] stops to offer help.
  
  
• Jack Benny's cameo at the wheel of a Maxwell was considered inaccurate by his fans because it was missing one thing: Mel Blanc. Blanc supplied the sound of Benny's antique car on radio.
  
  
• The scene where Melville knocks the blowtorch into the stairs with the sledge hammer took 86 tries to get it just right.
  
  
• In the opening title animation, when the figure blows up the world and the actors' names scatter on the screen, there is a very brief moment - only three frames, in fact - when the letters form the names of the animators, including Bill Melendez, Bernie Gruver [ Bernard Gruver ], and other animators.
  
  
• Phil Silvers injured himself in one of the later scenes of the movie and was replaced by a stunt double. In those later scenes his face is always away from the camera.
  
  
• In the scene where Jonathan Winters backed the truck into the water tower, it actually fell too soon, before the truck actually hit it. To compensate, special effects split the screen and slowed down the side with the water tower so that the fall would coincide with the hit.
  
  
• Phil Silvers, while filming the scene where he drives his car into the river, nearly drowned because he couldn't swim.
  
  
• The fictional Santa Rosita State Park was located at Portuguese Bend in Rancho Palos Verdes. It was landscaped for the movie, and is off limits to the general public today.
  
  
• Only one of the four palm trees that made up the "Big W" exists today. The owners are planning to replant the other three.
  
  
• Besides supervising all stunts, Carey Loftin was stunt double for Terry-Thomas.
  
  
• It became well known that Stanley Kramer was casting nearly every comedy performer he could think of. Some famous stars actually contacted Kramer to volunteer for the project, or to inquire as to why they had not been contacted.
  
  
• When the cast first assembled for a meeting with the director, they were shown the stunts and second unit footage that had already been shot. One of the performers was so impressed they asked "Why do you need us?"
  
  
• The main part of the film was shot during the summer because many cast members were on hiatus from television series.
  
  
• Stan Laurel turned down an invitation to appear in this film. When his partner Oliver Hardy died in 1957, Laurel pledged never to perform again. He never did.
  
  
• Edie Adams almost didn't accept the role of Monica because her husband Ernie Kovacs was killed in an auto accident a few months earlier.
  
  
• During filming of the infamous "gas station" destruction, Jonathan Winters was accidentally left on stage and completely bound in thick tape. Hours later, when the cast returned from lunch, they found that he had not even been able to free his arms from the chair. In retaliation, Winters gave a three-hour lecture to Arnold Stang and Marvin Kaplan on forced potty training.
  
  
• On 17 November 1963, the day before the movie opened for the public in New York, there was a much-publicized gala charity premiere benefit at the Cinerama Theater for the Kennedy Child Study Center in New York and the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Institute of Washington. In addition to the stars in attendance, most of President Kennedy's family was there, including his mother, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and brothers Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas five days later.
  
  
• Milton Berle said in an interview that in the scene where Ethel Merman hit him with her purse, it left him with a bump that lasted six months.
  
  
• Ethel Merman's role was originally written as the father-in-law, and Groucho Marx was one of the choices to play it.
  
  
• Don Rickles reportedly wanted to be in the movie but was never asked. He never let Stanley Kramer live it down, either, even heckling him about it from the stage whenever Kramer came to see Rickles' show.
  
  
• A dance sequence featuring The Shirelles was filmed but never used and appears to no longer survive. However, their uncredited performances of the title song and "31 Flavours" can still be heard on the soundtrack album.
  
  
• Despite being released by Cinerama, this film was not shot in the three-strip Cinerama process, nor was it projected on the deeply curved original Cinerama screen. It was shot in Ultra Panavision 70, a one-strip process that in no way resembled the original Cinerama effect.
  
  
• Marvin Kaplan said that he and Arnold Stang were given the job of "entertaining" Jonathan Winters during the periods in between his scenes.
  
  
• The famously stone-faced Buster Keaton was originally set to play "Smiler Grogan." When the part was re-assigned to Jimmy Durante, Keaton was given another role as "Jimmy", a former smuggler who Captain Culpepper forces to help him in his plan to run away with the money.
  
  
• Many of the locations for "Santa Rosita" were filmed in Long Beach, CA. The "Santa Rosita" Police Department was in real life the main branch of the YMCA at 6th and Long Beach Blvd. The hardware store the Crumps were locked in was at 5th and Locust.
  
  
• Bob Hope, Jackie Mason, George Burns and Red Skelton were all offered roles, but declined. Judy Holliday turned down a part because of poor health.
  
  
• Most of the "chase" scenes - the sequences with the cars - were filmed near what is now Palm Desert, CA. If you look closely, you will see a road sign for Highway 74, which runs south from the heart of the city of Palm Desert. The vast open spaces are now largely residential country clubs with golf courses.
  
  
• The Three Stooges play firemen in the airport scene and have the shortest cameo in the movie: five seconds.
  
  
• The roles of Melville and Monica Crump were originally larger roles and written for Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in mind. However, when production on Garland's TV variety show ran into trouble, she had to turn down the part. Rooney was eventually given the supporting role of Ding "Dingy" Bell. Edie Adams, who was originally cast in the role of Emeline, was given the role of Monica. Ernie Kovacs was then cast as Melville but was tragically killed in a car crash before shooting began and was replaced by Sid Caesar.
  
  
• There is a wonderful homage to "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" in "The Simpsons: Homer the Vigilante (#5.11)" (1994), where the town of Springfield is being plagued with a rash of cat burglaries. After being apprehended and held prisoner in the town jail, the thief tricks the Springfield police department, and in fact much of the population of the town itself, into leaving him unguarded and in a position to escape. He did this by letting slip that he had all of his stolen fortune buried somewhere in Springfield under a "Big T." The good people of the town then grab shovels, pick-axes and anything else they can find as they rush to find the treasure.
  
  

• SPOILER: The "big W" is visible almost the moment the cast arrives at the park. In a wide shot showing the first ones to arrive (Edie Adams, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney) you can see three of the four palms to the extreme left of the screen, albeit obscured by bushes.
  
  

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