As a devout lover/expert of the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, I get a lot of questions about it, one of the most common being, "Can I go see the Big W in person?" Answer: No. That filming location was on private, inaccessible property and it's all been bulldozed and cleared in recent years. There are other locations around where scenes were filmed…and most of them don't look anything like they did in 1962 when the movie was shot, either.
I could direct people to one location: The California Incline, a sloped street out in Santa Monica which connects down to the Pacific Coast Highway. Several scenes in the film were shot there and when I first saw the movie in 1963 — at the Pacific Cinerama Dome in Hollywood — everyone in the audience whooped in recognition. They recognized a number of spots where scenes were shot but they all recognized the California Incline. And until May of last year, it still looked pretty much like it did in the film.
In May, they closed it down, tore it down and started rebuilding it. It was supposed to be finished by Memorial Day of 2016 but you know how these things go. It reopened earlier this week and it's very lovely and probably much safer and more efficient. It just doesn't look quite like it did in the movie now. Here's a time-lapse video…