Earthquake is a 1974 American ensemble disaster drama film directed and produced by Mark Robson[2] and starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner.

Directed by Robson with a screenplay by George Fox and Mario Puzo, the film starred a large cast of well-known actors, including Heston, Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, Geneviève Bujold, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Victoria Principal, and (under an alias) Walter Matthau.

Former college football star Stewart Graff argues with his wife, Remy, after she fakes another suicide attempt following a mild earthquake in Los Angeles.

Motorcycle daredevil Miles Quade sets up a dangerous stunt track with his manager, Sal Amici, hoping to impress a Las Vegas promoter.

Meanwhile, grocery store manager Jody Joad, attracted to Rosa, prepares for National Guard duty but endures harassment from his housemates for displaying posters of male bodybuilders.

However, Puzo's detailed and expansive script would have necessitated a larger production budget, as the action and multiple story arcs were spread over a vast geographical area in Los Angeles.

The Earthquake script sat at Universal Studios for a short period, but was brought back to life by the huge success of the 20th Century Fox hit The Poseidon Adventure, released in December 1972.

Fueled by that film's enormous box-office receipts, Universal Studios put pre-production on Earthquake back into high gear, hiring writer George Fox to continue work with Puzo's first draft.

Fox was principally a magazine writer and never had written a screenplay, so director Mark Robson worked with him to narrow the scope of the script to fit into the budgetary constraints.

[5] Budgeted at US$6,675,125, Earthquake immediately found itself in a race against the clock with the bigger-budgeted disaster film, The Towering Inferno, which was being produced by Irwin Allen and financed, for the first time, by two studios (20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.).

While The Towering Inferno featured a larger "all star" cast,[a] Universal was able to land Charlton Heston in the lead role for the sum of $600,000, plus a percentage of the profits.

Rounding out the top billing were Ava Gardner (who co-starred with Heston in 1963's 55 Days at Peking), George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, and Geneviève Bujold.

Executive Producer Jennings Lang, who had worked with Matthau on the previous year's Charley Varrick, was able to convince him to appear in the role (originally to be filled by veteran actor Harry Morgan).

[b] Production necessitated the complete re-dressing of the entire Universal Studios "New York Street" backlot in order to simulate the catastrophic earthquake of the title.

Timing was critical, since some rigged effects involved dropping six ton chunks of reinforced concrete in order to flatten cars, with stunt performers only a few feet away.

Universal Studios and Jennings Lang wanted Earthquake to be an "event film", something that would draw audiences into the theatre multiple times.

After several ideas were tossed about (which included bouncing styrofoam faux "debris" over audience members' heads), Universal's sound department came up with a process called "Sensurround" – a series of large speakers made by Cerwin-Vega powered by BGW amplifiers, that would pump in sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves at 120 decibels (equivalent to a jet airplane at takeoff), giving the viewer the sensation of an earthquake.

When the film premiered in Chicago, Illinois, the head of the building and safety department demanded the system be turned down, as he was afraid it would cause structural damage.

In addition, the film's original soundtrack was remixed in Surround Sound 5.1 which was simply a tag as once again only the control tones feature on the track.

After an October 2, 1974 test screening in Joplin, Missouri, Universal opted to cut 30 minutes from the film, notably from the pre-quake sequences, at the cost of some of the dramatic flow.

Other scenes were shot to wrap up many characters' stories after the earthquake, but were deleted from the final print: Walt Russell and Dr. Stockle – whose fates are undetermined after the quake in the theatrical release – were shown alive in the seismology laboratory post-quake.

A scene involving an elevator loaded with passengers plummeting 25 floors to the ground during the earthquake is one of the film's more notorious sequences, mainly for how its conclusion was depicted.

[citation needed] Released in the United States on November 15, 1974, Earthquake ranked third among the high-grossing film of the year; The Towering Inferno was the highest.

Without either panning or praising the film, Nora Sayre of the New York Times wrote that it was an improvement on Airport 1975 and observed, "The impulse to shout advice to the screen—get out!

[22] Gene Siskel gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote the special effects were "terrific" but identified a basic problem with the story: "With a Poseidon Adventure or an Airport the ending is clear – people are saved ultimately thru their own or somebody else's enterprise.

The website's critical consensus reads: "The destruction of Los Angeles is always a welcome sight, but Earthquake offers little besides big actors slumming through crumbling sets.

An entirely new storyline shot specifically for the television version was that of a young married couple (Debralee Scott and Sam Chew) flying to Los Angeles on an airplane.

The husband seeks a job with the Royce Construction company of the film (in fact, hoping to work with Charlton Heston's character, Stewart Graff), while his wife has the eerily accurate ability to see the future with tarot cards.

Throughout the remainder of the television version, the film cuts back to the couple as they discuss their future together, and the husband's wish to return to Los Angeles and help rebuild the city.

[38][dead link‍] In the fall of 2002, the pre-show was changed to a more generic "magic of making movies" theme, with slight modifications which included mentioning special effects used in other films besides Earthquake.