The film, starring Spencer Tracy with an all-star cast composed largely of comedians, is about the madcap pursuit of a suitcase full of stolen cash by a colorful group of strangers.

[3] The principal cast features Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, and Jonathan Winters.

He is best known for producing and directing, in his own words, "heavy drama" about social problems, such as The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Santa Rosita Police Captain T. G. Culpeper, hoping to tie up the Grogan case before his impending retirement, secretly has the motorists shadowed throughout their various adventures.

The entire group, now consisting of fourteen people, arrives at Santa Rosita at nearly the same time, and searches frantically for the "big W", which turns out to be a gathering of four palm trees.

When Culpeper and the men all pile onto a fire department ladder sent to rescue them, their combined weight causes it to spin uncontrollably and fling them all off, leaving them heavily injured.

In the prison hospital, the men bemoan the loss of the money and blame their injuries on Culpeper, who responds that due to his lost pension (which his boss had successfully negotiated back, thus making his illegal actions unnecessary), the ruined relationship with his family, and the likelihood that the judge will probably give him the harshest sentence, he may never laugh again.

Mrs. Marcus, flanked by Emmeline and Monica, enters and begins berating the men, only for her to slip on a banana peel and fall.

Actress Eve Bruce filmed a scene as a showgirl who asks Benjy Benjamin and Ding Bell to help her apply suntan lotion.

With the death of Carl Reiner on June 29, 2020,[12] and Nicholas Georgiade on December 19, 2021,[13] Barrie Chase is the film's last surviving cast member, credited or otherwise.

[14] In the early 1960s, screenwriter William Rose, then living in the United Kingdom, conceived the idea for a film (provisionally titled So Many Thieves, and later Something a Little Less Serious) about a comedic chase through Scotland.

In the Orange County scene, stuntman Frank Tallman flew a Beech model C-18S through a highway billboard advertising Coca-Cola.

[25] Veteran stuntman Carey Loftin was featured in the documentary, explaining some of the complexity as well as simplicity of stunts, such as the day he "kicked the bucket" as a stand-in for Durante.

Other films shot in Ultra Panavision 70 and released in Cinerama include The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Hallelujah Trail, Battle of the Bulge, and Khartoum.

Super Panavision 70 films released in Cinerama include Grand Prix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Ice Station Zebra.

[citation needed] Kramer's comedy was accentuated by many things, including the opening animated credits designed by Saul Bass.

Animation continues with paper dolls and a wind-up toy world spinning with several men hanging on to it and finishing with a man opening a door to the globe and getting trampled by a mad crowd.

It's a wonderfully crazy and colorful collection of 'chase' comedy, so crowded with plot and people that it almost splits the seams of its huge cinerama packing and its 3-hour-and-12-minute length.

However, the review continued, "Certain pratfalls and sequences are unnecessarily overdone to the point where they begin to grow tedious ... but the plusses outweigh by far the minuses.

Thereafter the chase—and the homicidal mania—simply go on and on – countless cars are wrecked, a plane or two, an entire service station, the basement of a hardware store, fire escapes, a fire-engine tower.

The only new idea, occurring well into the third hour, hinges on a surprise development in the character of a proud, plodding chief of detectives, played by Spencer Tracy—and even this proves disillusionment.

"[29] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post was mixed, writing "Yes, it is furious, fast and funny and it is also vast, vulgar and vexatious because Kramer has not given us one sympathetic character and because it is shown in Cinerama.

A 1991 VHS and LaserDisc from MGM/UA was an extended 183-minute version of the film, with most of the reinserted footage derived from elements stored in a Los Angeles warehouse about to be demolished.

[49][50][51] According to Paul Scrabo, Kramer began thinking about his success with Mad World during the 1970s, and considered bringing back many former cast members for a proposed film titled The Sheiks of Araby.

[52] In June 2024 during an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Eddie Murphy announced that Jez Butterworth completed a script for a remake which, like the original, would feature comedians from the past 30 years including him and Martin Lawrence.