Monthly Archives: May 2021

From Robert Rose…

The subject of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World came up in a Marx Brothers discussion group I participate in. Opinions on the movie varied (the most interesting to me was the fellow who says he loves the film but that it isn't funny; I'm not sure how that works) but of course in that group the burning question was "Why wasn't Groucho in it?" There were various explanations and theories advanced, but rather than list them I thought I'd toss the question your way, as an acknowledged expert on the film who also seems to have come across the occasional stray fact about the Marx Brothers, too.

(I did first try to search through your blog to see if you'd addressed the question before, but eventually gave up, defeated by the sheer number of posts that mention Groucho, some of which even do so without mentioning Frank Ferrante.)

I hope people understand that even an "acknowledged expert on the film" can't know everything for certain and that if you'd asked Stanley Kramer at the time about the movie, there are some things even he wouldn't know. A movie involves a thousand decisions and you can't track and dissect every one of them.

I can tell you that a lot of the casting decisions were last minute "get anyone you can" decisions. On a film like that with so many set-ups and so many players and so many stunts and tech problems, you can never be sure when you'll get to certain scenes. A lot of folks who were not in the film weren't in it because they were shooting another movie or a TV series at the time.

I asked Dick Van Dyke and he said he was never approached. (Carl Reiner was in it but since Carl wasn't in every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he did a lot of other things while that series was in production. Morey Amsterdam recorded a voiceover for Mad World that was cut from the film but that was a voiceover that might have taken an hour.) Anyway, that's probably why people like Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas and Jackie Gleason weren't in it. Joe Besser was cast as one of the gas station attendants but couldn't get time off from The Joey Bishop Show.

Stan Freberg walked onto the set one day to discuss the commercials he was producing for the film. When Kramer had a break in filming, he instead said to Stan, "What size shirt do you wear?" They needed someone to fill a role they were prepping to shoot an hour or so later.

Howard Morris is nowhere in the film, nor did he ever appear before the cameras. But on two separate occasions, they booked him for a day's work (and paid him) because they thought they might need him to replace someone else, depending on scheduling. He never knew what the role was and the following is just my theory…

I suspect he was engaged in case the schedules on Mad World and The Andy Griffith Show didn't come into proper alignment so Don Knotts was available. If when they needed to shoot the scenes with Don, he couldn't get away from Mayberry, Howie would have been in that part and people would be asking, "Why wasn't Don Knotts in the film?" Or maybe Knotts would have wound up in a different role.

Either of those would have been a shame because he was so perfect in the part he played. Don made such a strong impression in the movie that people think he was in a lot more of it than he was. His total on-screen time totaled exactly 120 seconds.

Mr. Kramer told me that Sterling Holloway's casting as the fireman was one of those "we couldn't find anyone else when we needed someone" moments and that he hoped there'd be an opportunity to reshoot it later with a bigger star — and there wasn't. I theorize the part was written for Ed Wynn…and hey, that might have been a good spot for Groucho. I've heard there do exist script pages for a never-filmed scene where Groucho would have cameoed as a doctor treating all the major male cast members at the end.

It would have given Groucho the last line of the movie and they might have decided that at that point, the focus of the last scene should have been on the stars of the film instead of on an interloper. Or Groucho might not have been available. Or Groucho might have wanted too much money. Or there might have been some reason no one could have imagined.

At some point during the filming, a small role was apparently offered to Jack Carter. Mr. Carter was fiercely competitive with other comedians and he wasn't about to come in and do two lines in a movie starring guys like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar with whom he had what we might call "rivalry issues." He turned the job down saying something like, "Call me when you have a real part." They never did, either because one did not come along or because they just decided not to deal with someone who took that attitude. The one time I got to talk to Stanley Kramer, I asked him about it and he said, "I don't remember. I probably had too many things to think about." That's the way it is with some things.

Today's Doonesbury comic strip is very funny. Go here to see it.

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is a piano tutorial from the Sheet Music Boss…

What was it like in the jury room for the trial of Derek Chauvin? According to one juror, eleven of the twelve jurors were ready to convict immediately and the twelfth one was unsure. No one ever thought Chauvin was not guilty. Read how it went.

From Greg Butera…

I love when you write up a story which prompts questions and you then give a deeper answer about the inner workings of showbiz. Here's my contribution. Reading your answers today about the Bay City Rollers Show got me wondering about this part: "I worked on several TV shows on Stage 6 there and it was amazing how it could be a dense jungle in there on Tuesday and on Wednesday, they were taping Solid Gold or a game show in there. A lot of the 'magic' of television is made by set designers, the tech crew and super-heroes who are referred to as 'grips.'"

Do you know anything about where all that stuff goes between set tear down and put up? Are set materials tossed into a huge dumpster or reused? Are there huge warehouses on those studio lots where stuff from the Dean Martin variety show still sits? Is there some wunderkind who remembers it all so when he hears "Hey Jim, we need a stuffed llama for a John Oliver segment for HBO next week, we had one of those on the Smothers Brothers episode 6 in back in 1969 is it still in warehouse B"? That kind of detail just fascinates me.

Where sets go has a lot to do with someone — usually someone who deals in budgets — making a decision about how likely a given set is to be needed again. A decision is made before a set is built as to whether this will be or could be a permanent set that will be reused. Your favorite series probably has several rooms or locations that could turn up in every episode or many of them. When they build those sets, they make them extra-sturdy and they figure out where to store them…preferably close by in a warehouse on the studio grounds.

On the other hand, when a set is ordered and it's likely to only be used once for an hour or two and never again, that set might be built to last an hour or two and not much more. Parts of it might then be discarded. Parts of it might be cannibalized for other sets. You can always use living room walls, doorways, windows, etc. In fact, I worked on shows where we'd finish all the scenes on the living room set and then the crew would dismantle it, repaint parts of it and set those pieces up as part of a bedroom in another scene.

And if a set is simple enough and there's no immediate plans for it, that budget guy might decide it would be cheaper to not store the set. He'll consider the cost of warehousing it, the value of its components if it's recycled, the cost of refurbishing it if it's stored and then brought out of storage to be used, the availability of storage space and other factors. He might decide it would be cost-effective to let it be stripped down for its parts and then if it is needed again, rebuilt. The plans are always saved but not always the actual walls, especially if they're not built to last.

One of the responsibilities of a show runner on a series is to repeatedly answer questions like, "Do you think we'll ever have a scene again in Harry's garage?" And when a show is nearing its completion, someone has to decide when and if to preserve its key sets, just in case. I believe there's a story about Fawlty Towers where they'd done the first series and it didn't seem likely there'd be a second. Someone decided to throw away or recycle parts of the sets…and right after half of them were burned and the rest recycled into sets for other shows, contracts were signed to do Season #2.

The sets for The Dean Martin Show are long gone unless someone, as with some of Johnny Carson's sets, put them in a museum for historical purposes. If there was a stuffed llama on a Smothers Brothers show, it was probably rented from a prop house and it went back there after it was no longer needed. If John Oliver's show needs a stuffed llama, they'll go searching prop houses and other facilities for one. It's highly unlikely the same stuffed llama would be rented since the Smothers Brothers did all their shows in Los Angeles and John Oliver shoots in New York. (Well, actually, he shoots in a blank void these days but I know what you mean.)

Back when we did The Bay City Rollers Show, the Kroffts had a building out in the valley that made sets and costumes for all their shows and also for non-Krofft shows. Sets were stored there until (a) they were needed again or (b) someone was reasonably certain they wouldn't be. On some shows I wrote for Sid & Marty, the backs of the sets showed the names of earlier shows I'd written. Set designers are real clever about turning the inside of the mad scientist's lab into a wedding chapel…or whatever.