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1. And I'm very excited today. I am joined by author James Curtis, who's well known as a biographer of many, many people, and we'll get into that.
2. But his latest is called Comedy is a Grim Business, the Making of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
3. What a terrific, iconic film that is.
4. And that's actually going to be screened this Sunday at the Fine Arts Theater at 1 p.m.
5. That's part of Cat Kramer's wonderful series on films that change the world.
6. And so we'll be giving away some tickets for that screening a little later on in the show.
7. Before we get to my guest, I did want to announce that this week on LA Theatre Works on Sunday at 10 p.m. is that play that you just heard the promo for, Dr. Cerberus, and it stars Simon Helberg.
8. and it's quite a fanciful tale and it involves a 13-year-old Franklin Robertson
9. who's trying to survive adolescence and his parents don't understand him.
10. His brother torments him.
11. He has no friends and he's more interested in the high school quarterback than any girl.
12. So the one bright spot in his life is the glow of the black and white TV in his parents' basement
13. And here he worships at the altar of the Saturday night horror movie hosted by the eerie Dr. Cerberus.
14. And before long, he's convinced that only by going on the show will his life be redeemed by Dr. Cerberus himself.
15. And it's a good one. It's a lot of fun.
16. Again, that's Dr. Cerberus starring Simon Helberg, who many of you know.
17. and it is presented by LA Theatre Works this Sunday at 10 p.m.
18. A great thing to listen to over this 4th of July weekend, this holiday weekend.
19. And I did want to mention that I would recommend at some point,
20. there's some great things on television.
21. I know ABC is doing some 24-hour coverage of events across America
22. and there's a lot of, of course, fireworks and that sort of thing.
23. Also, the FIFA, the soccer is going great guns, as is Wimbledon.
24. So that's probably what I'll be doing for most of the weekend.
25. But I also suggest that you might take a look at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.
26. If you don't have pocket versions of these, you should get them.
27. because even if you have never read it cover to cover, and I admittedly have not,
28. you can open it up to just about anywhere and be astounded.
29. And our outro music actually today will be that great version of The Fifth Dimension singing that preamble.
30. But we will get to that in just a little while.
31. And before I bring on my guest, let's get in the mood with a little music of Tears for Fears.
32. It's a mad world.
33. Tomorrow what tomorrow will be I want to tell my son Tomorrow I find it kind of sad
34. Dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
35. I find it hard to tell you cause I find it hard to take
36. When people run in circles it's a very very
37. Mad world
38. Mad world, mad world
39. You know, these days it really is a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, extra mad world.
40. And I'm so happy to welcome to the show via Zoom author James Curtis,
41. whose book I've been reading.
42. It's really wonderful.
43. Comedy is a grim business.
44. You know what they say, what is the phrase?
45. Death is easy, comedy is hard.
46. And so is the making of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,
47. an iconic film by the great, the legendary Stanley Kramer,
48. who happened to be the father of our friend Cat Kramer,
49. whose series Films That Changed the World is just terrific.
50. The last one I went to, also at the Fine Arts,
51. was the 80th anniversary screening of the Nuremberg Trials,
52. a judgment at Nuremberg,
53. and also the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
54. which is really the subject of his film On the Beach,
55. starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins.
56. Those are must-see films, as were so many of Stanley Kramer's films,
57. including Inherit the Wind, Ship of Fools, The Defiant Ones, High Noon.
58. He was either producer and or director on many of these films,
59. one of the greats of all time in the movie business.
60. And this screening for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is, as I mentioned,
61. coming up this Sunday, July 5th, in 70mm Ultra Panavision
62. at the Fine Arts Theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills,
63. 8556 Wilshire Boulevard.
64. The screening starts at 1 p.m.
65. There's going to be Q&A with special guests,
66. book signing with my guest,
67. who'll have copies of his book there for purchase.
68. And the guests included are Karen Sharp Kramer, who was the wife of Stanley Kramer and Kat's mother.
69. Lovely Karen Sharp Kramer.
70. And our guest, author James Curtis.
71. Also Barry Chase, Sandy Hackett, the son of Buddy Hackett, and many, many more.
72. So we'll be giving away a couple pairs of tickets at the end of the show.
73. So stay tuned for that.
74. And without further ado, I am so pleased to welcome via Zoom my guest author James Curtis.
75. Welcome.
76. Thank you, Dawn.
77. I'm happy to be here.
78. Well, this is very exciting because I know Kat has not done a presentation of this film as part of her series Films That Change the World.
79. And it's always a treat to see any Stanley Kramer film.
80. But this one is one of the rare comedies that he did And not only was it a comedy it was an epic comedy on the scale that had never been seen before Why did you decide that you wanted this to be your latest book Because you done gosh everybody from Buster Keaton W Fields
81. many, many biographies of notes.
82. So what brought you to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World?
83. Well, it started when I was 10 years old.
84. I was taken to see it at the Cinerama Dome in November of 1963.
85. So it had just opened.
86. And my father, I remember, went under protest.
87. He thought it was going to be lousy.
88. And he got caught up by it very quickly, however.
89. He laughed so hard in places he had trouble catching his breath.
90. So that made a big impression on me.
91. And I've enjoyed the film on countless occasions in the ensuing 60-plus years.
92. And I've always been curious to know more about how Stanley Kramer pulled off such an achievement.
93. Not everybody, as true with any comedy, not everybody likes this film, but there is a vast sea of people who do.
94. And in many cases, people will tell you, oh, that's my favorite film or one of my favorite films.
95. And so it's got a lot of staying power to it.
96. And it certainly was unique in the time in which it was made.
97. And I really don't think it's been duplicated ever since.
98. No, it really is extraordinary.
99. And it never gets old, not the least of which is because of its incredible cast.
100. This group of all-star, all comedians of the day, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas, and the great, great Jonathan Winters.
101. What a cast.
102. But from the outset, that was the idea, to assemble.
103. Yeah.
104. That was the idea. And it's important to note as well that when you're watching the film that you're seeing in some cases veterans of silent comedy going back into 1914, 1913 in some cases where they first started.
105. uh minted durfee who was a early female comic on screen uh later married fatty arbuckle uh
106. she was his first wife and uh she's in it and she's an extra at the end but you can see her
107. in the crowd she's wearing a yellow hat tom kennedy who was a perennial cop in comedies
108. starting around 1916 i'd say he has a nice close-up when he's blowing a whistle at
109. caravan of cars chasing after each other in a search of the loot and uh and trying to recover
110. it and uh and uh zazu pitts who starred as a dramatic actress in the i think 1916 and uh
111. uh is is had a really uh lengthy career in comedy and uh this was her last movie
112. um you see you see all kinds of people in it who are uh really kind of bridging uh
113. most or a lot of entire century in terms of performance that stretch right up to the present
114. day. You had modern people in it, like A.D. Adams, as you mentioned, Dorothy Provine, they were
115. current figures in television and film. And so it happened at a moment where all of this could
116. have come together. And if you had delayed it a couple of years, or if you tried it a couple
117. years earlier, it wouldn't have happened.
118. But the timing was right and the right guy was chosen to pilot it And I think that made a big difference Otherwise we wouldn have anything to show on Sunday I afraid
119. And one of the things that you talk about in the book, because you go heavily into
120. the background, not only of the screenwriters and how the script evolved, which I really
121. appreciated because I really honor, I come from the theater background and the text is all. So I
122. really honor screenwriters, even when it's a committee of 10. But in this case, the screenwriters
123. were vitally important to the story. And you really delve really from the beginning and then
124. also into Stanley Kramer's background and process, which I found so interesting. Because here he is,
125. he's generally known as a workaholic. He's working on three, four pictures at the same time.
126. He's coming off of Judgment at Nuremberg and A Child is Waiting.
127. You know, very, very heavy films.
128. Absolutely.
129. But he was really determined to make a comedy.
130. Well, one of the principal questions you have to answer if you're doing a history like this is why Stanley Kramer?
131. Why didn't they go to Billy Wilder?
132. Why didn't they go to any one of a dozen people?
133. Perhaps it might have been perceived as being better qualified.
134. But there was a confluence of interesting circumstances, including the fact there was a big strike going on at the time that the film was ready to propose.
135. Both the actors and the screenwriters were on strike.
136. And one studio settled early.
137. That was Universal.
138. And then the independent producers settled early because they couldn't afford to be shut down for an extended period.
139. And so you have people like Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Burt Lancaster, and Stanley Kramer who were available and at that point could be submitted material by members of the Guild.
140. And so they were limited in who they could take it to.
141. And of the people that were available at that point that they could take a Bill Rose script or an idea, a story, let's say, and submit it, Kramer became quickly kind of emerged as the guy that might be willing to take this on.
142. maybe because he was getting itchy to do a comedy
143. and also because he had the wherewithal to emotional
144. and otherwise to take on something that was so outlandishly conceived,
145. you know, something that initially they had thought would be four hours in length.
146. Bill Rose suggested two intermissions, so it would be like a play.
147. And with every comedian you could possibly gather into a single film
148. And it would cost for what at that time would be considered quite a fortune.
149. Yeah, and which was very, very surprising and unusual.
150. But, you know, that's the power also of Stanley Kramer, too.
151. And, you know, it's funny, you talked about, we talked about some of the comedians.
152. But, you know, it's fun to watch the film and then just spot them as they fly by.
153. Andy Devine.
154. And for those of you who grew up during that era of television, it's just a feast.
155. Andy Devine, Selma Diamond, Peter Falk, Norman Fell, Stan Freeberg, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts,
156. as you mentioned a few, Carl Reiner, The Three Stooges, and we won't spoil one of the funniest
157. scenes ever, and Jimmy.
158. I mean, Durante, among many others, but really anchoring it is the great Spencer Tracy.
159. Ironically, when I saw the film, I was 10 years old.
160. I watched a lot of television at that age.
161. And so I knew who all the comedians were, or certainly the bulk of them.
162. I didn't know who the white haired man was that was in the midst of it.
163. And I discovered him a little bit later.
164. And I think I made up for it in future times.
165. But in 1963, I didn't know who he was.
166. I just thought he was an effective fellow at that particular moment and certainly brought a certain gravitas to the center of the film, which is very necessary when you have unruly assemblies like that.
167. But it's just one of those things that everything seemed to work right in the sense of getting it made.
168. The people that needed to be available turned out to be available.
169. Not a given by any sense of imagination.
170. And I can't think of one part in the film, either small or large, that's miscast.
171. You know, it is amazing that it got made, but as you mentioned, the timing was absolutely perfect. And I want to get to one of my favorite aspects of the film, which is actually where you start off.
172. And that's with the great Jonathan Winters.
173. And I want to talk about him momentarily.
174. But let's talk about, begin at the beginning with these screenwriters, Bill Rose and his wife, Tanya.
175. Because you really do spend a lot of time on his background.
176. He's an American expat in Britain and his whole history with the Ealing Studios.
177. Is that?
178. Yeah.
179. Yeah.
180. Yeah, E. Lennon. And he was an unusual guy in the sense that he was born and reared in Jefferson City, Missouri. And his mother was secretary to the governor of the state at one point. And he ended up in the war. After the war, he settled in England.
181. And over time, he became the author of a number of original screenplays that turned into some of Britain's most memorable films of the 1950s, including the original Lady Killers with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers and Genevieve, which was a very big surprise hit.
182. And that was about an antique car rally.
183. It's based on a true story in some respects.
184. And in fact, they still do it every year.
185. And that gave him the idea from the standpoint that you've got these antique cars and the last third of the picture is where they have a bet going, an illegal bet between two members of the society to the extent that they're going to race back to London from Brighton.
186. And whoever wins the race wins the bet.
187. And so they start out their way back and start to sabotage each other along the way.
188. And Bill Rose started thinking, well, how much could you sustain this?
189. In other words, okay, we've got a third of our picture working that way, but could you do an entire film with just a chase?
190. And how long could you sustain it?
191. and it became kind of an academic problem for him that he mulled over for years And finally in 1958 he had the chance for a few days to sit down and try to put it on paper in some form And that was the start of it
192. Yeah.
193. And who knew, you know, in those early, early days that that would give rise to what later became this classic film.
194. And it's interesting.
195. He's a really interesting writer because he was nominated for a lot of Academy Awards.
196. I think he won for, of all things, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
197. again with Stanley Kramer
198. but you know
199. so he was certainly
200. a screenwriter of note and you also
201. talk about his wife Tanya's
202. contributions
203. the woman behind the man
204. really
205. long suffering
206. yeah as her daughter said
207. to me she was his muse
208. and when she left him
209. finally he suffered from
210. bipolar
211. symptoms and
212. And when she left him, he couldn't write another word.
213. Wow.
214. That was his last.
215. By the time, it's ironic, by the time he was given the Academy Award for Guests Who's Coming to Dinner, his career was effectively over.
216. Wow.
217. Wow.
218. She was really the ballast that kept him kind of together.
219. Yeah.
220. That's right.
221. And she lived the longest of the three creative, three people who comprise the creative core of the film, Bill and Stanley and Tanya.
222. And Tanya actually wrote a memoir later about her years with Bill Rose.
223. He was a fascinating individual and Tanya was an equally fascinating individual.
224. And between the two of them, they had the kind of chemistry that enabled great things to happen.
225. And I think he is one of our major post-war screenwriters, one of our great ones from that period.
226. Well, one of the things I really love, in addition to kind of doing a deep dive into how a screenwriter's mind ticks, also just the logistics of the movie business.
227. You know, we go through what Stanley Kramer, basically the financing of the films and the production companies that he set up and all the ins and outs of how a picture comes together.
228. And I found that absolutely fascinating.
229. But you start off the book with the best story about the late, great Jonathan Winters.
230. Winters. Talk a little bit about Jonathan Winters and how Stanley Kramer, because there's a classic
231. story of when he got the call from Stanley Kramer. So talk about that a little bit.
232. Well, it's just that Jonathan Winters suffered from depression and also from a mind that I think
233. had no off switch. He was perhaps tormented by it because he was constantly in a performance
234. mode. It was, I'm not sure he ever got much in the way of rest, it seemed, at least from a mental
235. standpoint. And it wore on him because he was, he had kids at home, he had a wife, and he rarely
236. saw them. He was on the road all the time. And so, you know, an empty motel room or whatever he was
237. staying in at a particular stop. And he started to self-medicate with alcohol and that got him to
238. the point where he was practically non-functional at one point and he joined AA, got sober to
239. an extent anyway but he had relapses and that what he suffered He used to tell this story about Mad World and how he got the part And he condense it down to one incident And this was one thing that he was dealing with when Stanley Kramer phoned him
240. And I learned when I went back and saw the news coverage that the event that I thought was the event that Stanley Kramer came in on actually took place in 1959 up in San Francisco.
241. That was – it was 1962, early 62, before he and Stanley Kramer talked.
242. So it was evident to me that there was more to it than just the one incident.
243. And it turned out there were three.
244. And the last one required him at one point to self-commit for a period of about eight months where he was behind bars.
245. He was locked up.
246. And it was into that environment, which is pretty grim.
247. And I've got – there's some quotes there about his commentary toward what it was like to be a patient at what was called at the time the Institute of Life.
248. And into that grim environment, the uncertainty that he had that he might not work again ever, this great incomparable comic talent that Stanley Kramer called and offered him one of the biggest films of the year.
249. And he had never done a picture before.
250. No, the closest he came, he did a voice part in a Japanese animated feature called Alakazam the Great. But he wasn't seen on camera in that one. So this was the first time out for him. And he was so good at it that there was very serious talk of an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Mad World for him.
251. Yeah, and he gets this phone call, and he thinks he's scared.
252. He's kind of terrified, and his wife says, yeah, but you better take it because you might not ever work again.
253. And I love this exchange.
254. He says, Mr. Kramer, listen, I'm in a sanitarium.
255. They've declared me certifiably insane.
256. And Kramer says, Jonathan, every actor I've ever worked with is certifiably insane.
257. So I think you'll do just fine.
258. And that's also indicative of Stanley Kramer because everybody, you know, felt that he was very, very, he was a great guy.
259. He was very easy to work with.
260. Some were even frustrated that he was a little too hands-off.
261. And then others were frustrated that he was too hands-on.
262. So he's an interesting character.
263. And we've only got a couple more minutes.
264. I just wanted you to talk about briefly some of the logistics of the locales, just the magnitude, even the stunt people.
265. I mean, the people involved in making this happen logistically are quite just mind boggling.
266. Yeah, well, you could call it actually the fantasia of stunt doubles because there are so many of them.
267. And Kramer came up with the idea of having distinctive masks made for them because ultra panavision was anamorphic 70 millimeter.
268. And so you're taking these figures and blowing them up to big screen proportions.
269. And he decided that having masks on them would help achieve the illusion that these were actually the actors that were put in such dangerous situations.
270. And so it was one of the problems they had to face was they needed Sid Caesar to play Crump who was Edie Adams husband in the film And he was always the guy that they wanted for that part but he was so overcommitted at the
271. time that they had to negotiate with the producers of a Broadway musical that was going to be
272. starring Sid Caesar called Little Me to delay rehearsals for a few weeks so that they could,
273. Sid Caesar could take the part.
274. And so they had to finish with Sid Caesar by Labor Day,
275. which was a difficult thing to do.
276. And they started out by doing all the automobile stuff first.
277. There was a lot of chasing around between autos
278. and the stunts that they did with the cars.
279. They wanted to get those out of the way early,
280. in which they did so.
281. And then in order, because of the restrictions on the use of Sid Caesar, they started out with the famous episode in the basement of the hardware store that they get trapped in, he and Edie.
282. And they shot that first and then they got everybody together and went out to Palm Springs.
283. And that's where they started shooting with the entire cast.
284. Yeah, and they obviously, the famous, and when you watch the film, it's kind of a fun game to determine where everything is filmed, from Palm Springs to Long Beach to San Diego.
285. And honestly, we could talk for another hour, and I want to encourage people to come out for this screening on Sunday, because you will be there.
286. And you'll be there with your book, which they can purchase, and you'll sign.
287. Comedy is a Grim Business, the Making of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
288. There'll be Q&As.
289. There'll be special guest stars.
290. If you're a listener subscriber and you haven't won anything in the last couple of months, you can call 818-985-5735.
291. Press 1 for a pair of tickets to this July 5th screening at the Fine Arts.
292. I want to thank you so much, James.
293. I'm going to be there, so I hope to meet you.
294. Absolutely.
295. I'm sure you'll have plenty of stories to tell on Sunday.
296. So I urge people to get out and meet you and see this remarkable, remarkable film.
297. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
298. Thank you so much, James.
299. I look forward to seeing you.
300. And we're going to go out with, appropriately enough, The Fifth Dimension singing The Declaration of Independence.
301. So have a great holiday.
302. Stay tuned for the Pocho Hour of Power.
303. Unalienable rights
304. That among these
305. Are life
306. Liberty
307. And the pursuit
308. Of happiness
309. That to secure these rights
310. Governments
311. are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the
312. Oh