It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Ben Mankiewicz introduces It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

Ben Mankiewicz introduces It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

Ben Mankiewicz introduces It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

Robert Osborne introduces It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

The second scene of motorist-witnesses Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, and Buddy Hackett (Edie Adams and Dorothy Provine not talking) finally not agreeing on how to split the loot from the dead gangster’s stash, in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

It’s not always remembered that there’s a title song, by Ernest Gold and Mack David, presented here as the Overture, before the credits and everything, sung by an uncredited chorus, from the Stanley Kramer all-star mega-comedy It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

We’ve just seen director Stanley Kramer’s all-star comedy cast observing the desert car-crash death of gangster “Smiler,” so now we meet the head local cop, Spencer Tracy as Culpepper, Charles McGraw his assistant, getting the news, and the Jerry Lewis cameo, in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

After director Stanley Kramer’s opening car wreck, he rolls out comic all-stars, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett, then Jonathan Winters, Ethel Merman left behind, scrambling to dying Jimmy Durante, as “Smiler,” and a premise, in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

Desperate to find the dead gangster’s loot, Ding and Benjy (Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett) have enlisted boozy pilot Fitzgerald (Jim Backus), and would-be seaweed tycoon Finch (Milton Berle) loses it with Hawthorne (Terry-Thomas), whom he’s promised a share, in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963.

Milton Berle and Buddy Hackett appear in this previously unseen commercial created by Stan Freberg for It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

A group of greedy clowns tear up the countryside in search of buried treasure in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) featuring an all-star cast including Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle & Jonathan Winters.