"It's a hilarious coast-to-coast, 180 mile-an-hour, outrageous road race. And it's all just for glory, and a gumball machine" read the poster for The Gumball Rally (1976), which stars Michael Sarrazin, Raul Julia, Gary Busey, Tim McIntire, Harvey Jason and Norman Burton, with support from veteran character actors J. Pat O'Malley and Vaughn Taylor. Sarrazin's candy manufacturer Michael Bannon says the word "gumball" into a phone, which starts the action in motion. Underground racers meet up in Manhattan for a mad (and illegal) dash across the country to Los Angeles, during which Bannon's rival, Steve "Smitty" Smith (McIntire) is being followed by LA cop, Lt. Roscoe (Burton). The prize at the end of the race is nothing but the glory of winning and...a gumball machine.

Former stunt coordinator-turned-director Chuck Bail came up with the original idea for the film, which was adapted for the screen by Leon Capetanos. With a $4.5 million budget, The Gumball Rally was produced by First Artists for Warner Bros. It was the first film by that company that did not star any of its founders, including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Sidney Poitier, Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman. The Gumball Rally was shot between December 1975 - February 1976 on location in various places, including John F. Kennedy Airport, Times Square, Broadway, Wall St., Park Avenue, the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge in New York City and the Union Turnpike in New Jersey. Cast and crew returned to Los Angeles briefly, until January 2, 1976, when production was moved to Arizona. There, filming occurred in Flagstaff, Prescott, Yuma and Phoenix before returning to Long Beach and Los Angeles, where production wrapped in February.

According to production notes in the Warner Bros. archives, "it took 61 days to bring the racing drivers and their cars from Manhattan to Long Beach [California]." In addition to professional drivers, director Bail had the actors do their own driving under the tutelage of stunt driver John Morton, who conducted a clinic to teach the actors how to drive at high speeds. Those sequences were shot in live traffic under the watchful eye of the local police departments. Bail told The New York Times, "We had policemen out in front with their lights on." The types of vehicles used in The Gumball Rally included the Porsche 911 Targa, Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster, Dodge Polara, 427 Ford Cobra SC, Ferrari Daytona Spyder convertible, Rolls Royce, a Kawasaki motorcycle, three Chevrolets (a Corvette, a Camaro and a van), as well as identical duplicates for each vehicle in case of an accident, which would have delayed production.

To promote the film, which premiered on July 28, 1976 and went into release in August, Warner Bros. hired the Goodyear Blimp to fly over the Bicentennial celebration in New York City on July 4th. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce promoted The Gumball Rally in August by holding a "Gumball Safety Rally" on a 160-foot stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, featuring newspaper sports editors and radio and television sportscasters. Although many reviews of the film were negative, Roger Ebert gave it two-and-a-half out of three stars. Comparing it against a similar film Cannonball! also released in 1976, he preferred The Gumball Rally , calling it "good-spirited and fun."

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/56017?sid=5e143f25-446a-45e1-bbc0-301c57c88c7c&sr=3.8460267&cp=1&pos=0
"The Gumball Rally" The Chicago Sun-Times 20 Aug 76
The Internet Movie Database
Von Doviak, Scott Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema