Vitals

Dick Shawn as Sylvester Marcus, impulsive lifeguard

Southern California, Summer 1962

Film: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Release Date: November 7, 1963
Director: Stanley Kramer
Costume Designer: Bill Thomas

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I like to spend a week every summer exploring the intersection of costumes and cars as they define characters on screen. For this year’s first Car Week post, I’m revisiting a sentimental favorite: the 1963 slapstick comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with its sprawling cast of the era’s most recognizable comic actors from Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Buddy Hackett to Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, and Dick Shawn.

The latter is introduced later in the daylong pursuit of $350,000 stashed under a “big W” by the late Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), portraying beach lifeguard Sylvester Marcus, described by his brother-in-law J. Russell Finch (Berle) as “an irresponsible, unreliable, big loudmouth, no-good bum who, if he isn’t a crook, it’s only because he hasn’t got the brains or ambition to even become a crook.”

Finch and his wife Emeline (Dorothy Provine) are traveling with her overbearing mother, Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman), whose relentless nagging during their search for the buried loot finally pushes Finch over the edge. The resulting blow-up leaves Emeline and her mother to fend for themselves, but—knowing she can count on her hopelessly devoted son—Mrs. Marcus calls Sylvester to send him ahead of them to Santa Rosita to find the loot.

Unfortunately for her quick payday, Sylvester’s sole brain cell is distracted somewhere between a beer and a bikini-clad brunette. Distracted by his mother’s description of Finch’s “assault”, Sylvester leaps into action and into the brunette’s shining red Dodge Dart convertible, tearfully determined to rescue his mother and sister without actually having listened to why they called him in the first place. Continue reading →