We love the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and have written much about it over the years. I even have a small section of this website devoted to it.
Over the years, scholars of the film — I consider myself one — have wrestled with all sorts of questions and research about this movie…but none more maddening than its running times. That's running times, plural. The movie was trimmed on one or more occasions after its original release and key scenes were discarded. There have been several different versions, none of them quite like the one that debuted on November 7, 1963 at the Pacific Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.
I once spent way too much time matching up known facts about running times and compiling a chart of the various versions and their lengths. It's posted elsewhere on this site but I'm not going to link to it. Why? Because it's probably wrong. Most, if not all of us historians who have discussed the length of this movie are probably wrong.
I have just received (and will soon be posting) a document which may help clear up The Great Running Time Mystery…and create at least as many questions as it answers. There's a bit more research to be done but I wanted to give Mad World fans a "heads up." In a week or three, I'll be sharing this document…and folks, this is gonna confuse the hell out of you. Much of what we thought we knew is wrong.