I saw this for the second time at a drive-in with my parents, and I was a big fan of MAD, MAD WORLD in my early teens, but my Father really hated it. He bitterly and aggressively complained "THAT WAS A BAD MOVIE!!!!", and I didn't understand why he thought that. I mentioned that Jerry Lewis was missing from the print we saw, and he said "IT WAS BECAUSE THE MOVIE WAS SO BAD HE MADE THEM TAKE HIS PART OUT!!" I tried to argue that it was gone because it was at the end of the reel and it probably got chewed off somewhere, but he wouldn't hear that-"NO, HE TOLD THEM TO GET RID OF IT!!". My Father thought everything that came off the top of his head was true!
Reading the IMDB trivia page, I came across this tidbit...who knew there was a Jeff Beck connection?! In guitar legend Jeff Beck's 1999 album "Who Else?", the first track is titled "What Mama Said". The song contains a repeated sound sample of Dick Shawn (as Sylvester) saying, "Y'all hear what Mama said?" This line occurs in the scene where the men are all digging up the money under "The Big W". Beck did this as an homage to this film, one of his favorite movies due in great part to its many crazy car stunts.
I saw Shawn on Carson in the seventies and he said that the first scene(s) he filmed was dancing in his apartment, wherein he had his shirt off. He then mentioned something to the effect that he hadn't worked in a while so he had to watch his budget before IAMMMMW like other starving actors. Now all of a sudden he's getting a steady paycheck and he's also hanging around Craft Service, so he had gained a little more weight, so he or they had him wear a jacket (though opened), to conceal the love handles for his subsequent scenes.
Continuity fail. When they start digging for the money, Shawn verbally throws Winters out of the ditch, and IIRC, they show him climbing out. As witnessed in this clip, Winters is standing outside of it, and also inside of it helping Shawn unearth the loot!
"You're buggin me - cut out - cut out - out baby!". Winters does get out of the ditch; Dick Shawn is the only one digging and hits the briefcase.
This is the only movie I both enjoy and dislike at the same time. It is full of many good things making it enjoyable, while at the same time being so frantic, for so long, it wears me out. I get impatient and irritable as the movie progresses due to the pace and on screen antics...over stimulated I would guess. Still, I have watched it a dozen or so times.
Great story. It's funny, my father saw it in the cinema in 1963. He laughed the whole movie, so he convince his father to go with him, but his father didn't understand the humor and he didn't laughed in the whole 3 hours. It was embarrassing for my father. Then in 1990, my father show me the movie and i laughed the whole movie. This was good karma!
Not mentioned yet are the airplane stunts, specifically the ones by Frank Tallman flying the Beech 18 through the billboard and the hangar. Both were on-the-edge dangerous and would be done with CGI today. Tallman said the billboard stunt was nearly fatal because they used the wrong type of material on the sign which ended up tearing up the wings and killing one of his engines.
I mentioned in an earlier post that Mickey Rooney ended his career playing on the British stage in Pantomime (for Americans that`s a sort of Xmas fairytale comedy farce). I have managed to find a picture........... He was 87 years old at the time......a Trooper to the last!
a little long in discussion still an interesting sit down with Jonathan Winters reflecting on his condition before the film offer and experience later on set of IAMMMMW.
I was 9 or 10 when this came out and was the PERFECT audience for this silly, zany movie! I didn't know most of the actors in it, though I'd seen nearly all of them before. We all tried to act like Dick "I'm comin' Mama!" Shawn for the next week or two after seeing IAMMMMW! Now I watch it about once a decade just so I'm surprised and delighted all over again. Somewhere here years ago I posted this mock-up because Nick Lowe in this photo reminded me of Spencer Tracy as Captain Culpepper.
Reading that IAMMMMW was released after the Kennedy assassination on November 22nd and that it was the third highest grossing film of 1963 had me wondering how this could be. It turns out that it was the third highest grossing film released in 1963. It also debuted just a little ahead of Dallas. Its November 17th premiere at the remodeled New Warner Cinerama Theatre in New York was a benefit on behalf of the Kennedy Child Study Center in New York and the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Institute in Washington. Okashina Okashina Okashina Sekai!
Cantinflas is very famous in Chile! I saw all his movies when i was a kid. Till' this day you can catch his movies on the national tv.
I was perhaps a little younger than you when I saw it. In '63 I was only 5, but we saw it on release. Went with my grandfather and mom & dad. The Gaumont cinema was packed. I wasn't the only child in, but more than anything I remember just how often all the adults laughed. A real communal experience and I hadn't seen anything like that before at the pictures. Of course, I had no idea who any of the actors were - not even the magnificent Terry Thomas. That's not of any importance when you're a nipper. They weren't actors, they were people doing things. Didn't have a clue what actors were. But I knew from the start I hated the awful shouty woman who kept picking on all the men. Things are so much easier to define as a child. It remains a favourite and I still dig out the dvd occasionally. Can't wait to show it my grandchildren.
I first saw in 1976 when I was 11. Some kid in my class talked it up endlessly. So when it was broadcast on the ABC Sunday Night Movie, my boomer parents eagerly approved and made popcorn (and more popcorn as it is a looonnnggg movie). I liked it. It did not seem that old in 1976 and as someone else said, slapstick still appealed to us early GenXers. A good chunk of the cast was still alive and many of them seemed familiar. I do recall being disappointed that the beloved Stooges only merited a brief cameo. I have only seen it one more time since then. It was on Turner Classics some years ago and I sat down and watched the whole thing, this time with no commercials. I still liked it. It is very charming, perhaps innocent. I like movies that capture a certain time and place. I reckon I am ready for a third viewing. Preferably in the theater. And sad to say, I cannot imagine my 12 year old liking it.
MMMMW is one of my all time favorite movies, but the ending of it has never satisfied me. For me the movie is pretty much over when they dig up the money. The final scenes almost seem like they were tacked on and it begins to feel almost like a different movie. I'm not sure what a more suitable ending might have been, however.
I believe the first time I ever saw MMMMW was at the Drive-in around 1969 or '70. I saw it on TV shortly after that and in 1976 it was shown at my local theater. I remember watching it on TV in 1978 and '79, which is apparently the final times it was shown on network TV. When I got my first VCR in 1982, it was among the first films I rented, the old 2 tape release on Magnetic Video in a very poor transfer.
I saw the movie either at the theater, or the drive-in as a 12-year-old kid. I've seen it a bunch of times since, and loved it every time.
