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Director Stanley Kramer is probably best known for his serious dramas such as "Champion", "The Defiant Ones", "Inherit the Wind" and "Judgement at Nuremberg" etc so this film came as a complete change of pace for him. Stanley Kramer is to be congratulated for putting together such a brilliant cast of comedians in the one film. This is definitely a movie not to be missed. When Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) crashes his car on the highway an ill assorted group of diverse travellers gather around him to hear his last words. When he tells them of some buried treasure under a "big W" at Santa Rosita park they all resolve to be the first there to dig up the money. The chase is then on by plane, car, truck and whatever means they can find to get them to the park quickly and look for the loot. Police Captain Culpeper (Spencer Tracy) keeps an eye on them all from a safe distance so that he can grab the money for himself once it is found. J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle) has to put up with nagging mother-in-law Mrs Marcus (Ethel Merman), his wife Emmeline Finch (Dorothy Provine), and the interference of the very British J. Algernon Hawthorne (Terry-Thomas), while dentist Melville Crump (Sid Caesar) and wife Monica Crump (Edie Adams) get trapped in a hardware store looking for tools to dig up the treasure. Truck driver Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters - in his first screen role) meets up with con man Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) who naturally wants to get in on the chase and claim a share of the proceeds. Benjy Benjamin and Ding Bell (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney) charter a light aircraft hoping that will give them the advantage but are panic stricken when their pilot Tyler Fitzgerald (Jim Backus) is accidentally knocked unconscious during the flight leaving Benjy to pilot the plane!! There were many cameo appearances throughout the film including Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Buster Keaton, Peter Falk, the Three Stooges, Paul Ford, Stan Freburg, Leo Gorcey, Don Knotts, Carl Reiner, Zasu Pitts (her final film), Mike Mazurki, Edward Everett Horton, Charles McGraw, Norman Fell, Howard da Silva, Allen Jenkins, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and several others. Judy Garland, Bob Hope, George Burns and Red Skelton were all offered roles in the film but declined. Stan Laurel also turned down an invitation to be in the film as he had pledged that when Oliver Hardy died in 1957 he would never perform again. He never did.
Favourite lines:
Milton Berle (to group at scene of car crash): "Hey, did you see it? The way he went sailing right out there! He just went sailing right out there".
Buddy Hackett (to group): "Now look! We've figured it 17 different ways, and each time we figured it, it was no good, because no matter how we figured it, somebody don't like the way we figured it! So now, there's only one way to figure it. And that is, every man, including the old bag, for himself!".
Ethel Merman (to Terry-Thomas): "Where did you get that funny accent? Are you from Harvard or something?".
Phil Silvers (to Jonathan Winters): "Try me - I'm pretty gullible".
Jim Backus (to Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett): "Who says this boy can't fly this old plane? There you go!".
Buddy Hackett (to Rooney): "What, am I supposed to do everything? You want me to fly the airplane, you want me to work the radio, what are you gonna .... What are you, the hostess?".
Incidentally, I can recommend a new biography I have just read on Ethel Merman called "Brass Diva" by Caryl Flinn. Also "Mickey Rooney" by Alvin H. Marill is worth looking at.
