Oops, Ethal Merman.
Most of the comedians (and the director) went on Jerry Lewis’ talk show (yes, he briefly had one) to talk about the movie and making it the day before it opened. I was very young at the time, and did not get many of the references. But even then, I was fascinated by the show. I would love to see a rebroadcast of that show accompanying the film.
I’ll third this. I don’t think I laughed once during the film.
It had cute touches (I love Jimmy Durante literally kicking the bucket when he dies), and one heckuva cast (they reportedly wanted to have Ernie Kovacs in it in a big role, but that didn’t happen), but it’s just not funny.
by contrast, I did laugh at A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Who’s Minding the Mint and a lot of other comedies with big comic casts, but IaMMMMW* just never did it for me.
This movie does have a special place in my memory, though. It was playing on the screen at my local cinema the first time I got to go up and see the workings of a projection booth.
*the only way I can remember how many "Mad"s there are is to play the theme song in my head.
Comedy of destruction does not play well to everyone equally, and there are actually few examples of good feature films in this school, IMHO. There’s a reason that Laurel & Hardy and the 3 Stooges usually stuck to short form: because this kind of humor can be exhausting.
There’s no doubt that plenty of great comedies have slapstick, but it’s usually tempered with great writing and characterization. IaMMMMW has neither–it’s all just one predicament and gag set-up after another, usually very very loud (screaming, explosions, etc.).
That doesn’t mean some of it isn’t funny. Dick Shawn and Ethel Merman are both genius in this film–but all their funny scenes are because of their performances and not the indignities heaped upon them. The cameos can be fun but don’t hold a lot of comedic weight, just cute little meta-humor. And Kramer’s style was always leaden with dramatic material, so there’s little mystery why everything is so heavy-handed here.
But some people like that kind of humor regardless. Especially guys (I have yet to meet a female Stooges fan, though I’m sure she’s out there). It’s broad and noisy and that’s perfectly fine. But it or similar films (1941, The Money Pit, Jackass, etc.) just simply are not my cup of tea. I find them mostly dull.
You are posting in the thread of a female Stooges fan, so your search has ended.
I also loved 1941. Did not see the other movies, but I am pretty certain I would detest Jackass. There’s slapstick funny, and slapstick mean-spirited.
(raises hand)
I used to like them when I was a kid, watching them on Sunday mornings. They can still raise a grin out of me (though not the hysterical laughter they used to get out of me as a kid). And aside from one or two lapses, last year’s movie was great fun.
Let’s face it, I’d take the harmless slapstick and boneheaded-but-likable characters of the Stooges any day over some of today’s comedy. Despite all the eye-boinking and head-knocking, the Stooges’ characters were innocent, and most of the time, goodhearted (many shorts had them out to help others and, despite themselves, succeeding). That appeals to me more than, say, the utterly unlikable characters of Two and a Half Men!
(And they deserve credit for doing Nazi satire even before Chaplin did!)
Hey Too Many Cats and Hermione–I knew they were out there somewhere! 
Humor is always subjective–humor that’s too dry, too mean, too destructive, too inside-jokey will always be criticisms of people who simply didn’t laugh at those forms.
I was working in the nitrate vaults of the Library of Congress when they were restoring 3 Stooges shorts from the original negatives. I’d never seen them more beautiful (visually stunning, really), but while some of the guys working on them in the lab really busted up, all the women were rolling their eyes (Lol).
Broad physical comedies don’t have to stick to the short form but it is true that excessive length can be more deadly to a comedy than a drama. To invoke Brooks’ Law: the optimum length of a feature film comedy is 100 minutes because that’s when the audience runs out of their Raisinetes.
Also, my father told me he thought IAM4W would’ve been funnier if it had been in black-and-white. Since most everything now is in color, I think most people would fail to see how that would’ve made a difference but I do get what he meant. My father (and the people in his age group) had grown up during the 30s, 40s, and 50s watching the classic comedies of Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, the 3 Stooges, Abbott & Costello, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Hope & Crosby, Martin & Lewis, and others and nearly all of them were in black-and-white. Using color for comedies didn’t really come in until the mid 1950s and even then it wasn’t always employed (e.g., Billy Wilder shot 1959’s Some Like It Hot in black-and-white). If most of your memories of funny movie scenes are in black-and-white, I can see how the choice of color for a comedy can somewhat take away from how funny you find the movie.
Thinking about it some more, I think there are three big problems:
(1) It’s all slapstick. Slapstick alone works great for shorts (silent comedians, Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy) but doesn’t work well for a feature length film. The best feature length comedies ALSO have verbal humor, and MAD, MAD doesn’t have much of that. (Arguable, none.) Jimmy Durante kicking the bucket: great. But there’s nothing similar later. Slapstick alone isn’t enough to sustain a movie.
(2) Timing. Physical humor relies entirely on timing, and the timing is often off. Someone mentioned the final chase, which just isn’t funny; and, OK, winding up on the fire escape and falling off has some humor to it, but not when the same thing (with minor variations) happens 20 times.
(3) Cameos. As I mentioned before, just having someone show up for a two second laugh of recognition … well, that’s just not funny the second time around.
I think it’s funny, but I think its spiritual descendant, Rat Race, is funnier. A ton of things about IAMMMMW just made no sense from a character perspective, in a way that took me out of the movie.
Kovacs was killed in a car crash in January 1962, a few months before shooting started. Edie Adams, his real-life wife, had been cast as his character’s wife. She went ahead with the movie, and Kovacs’ role was taken over by Sid Caesar.
I don’t remember the movie well, but I sure thought it was funny when I was six years old. Saw it in a drive-in double feature in '70 or so, with The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! A hilarious evening.
Of course, my Aunt Pat was in the car. Anything funny is funnier with her, because she really loses it when she laughs.
That is my favorite part of the movie. His manic enjoyment contrasted by her deadpan…
“I’m comin’ to save you mama. That’s why had me, so I can save 'ya!”
Hilarious!
Kovacs’ death was an odd one too. A car crash yes, but they think it was caused by losing control of the steering as he was trying to light a cigar by striking a match against his shoe sole. He believed lighters ruined the taste of a cigar. So don’t try that while driving! Especially not after having had a few drinks, as he’d just left a party at Milton Berle’s house. (Well, a baby shower, but drinks were probably served.)
Saw it as a kid… and yes parts were meh. But if you went through it all… saw it all… and then saw the fire engine ladder flying malfunctions, how could you not laugh?
enter banana peel
enter Ethel Merman
exit Ethel Merman
enter laughter
THAT is your funniest line in the movie? Good grief, we have different senses of humor! I didnt even. Think it was supposed to be a funny line!
My take - I remember seeing it as a kid and loving it. As I’ve aged, the movie has not kept my attention through an entire sitting. I have it on DVD, so I tend to start and stop the thing a number of times before getting through it.
I think the one thing that I hae always felt, even after watching it for the very first time was it was too long, and it almost couldn’t figure out a way to end. It was very similar in my mind to the end of “Blazing Saddles”, where it kept dragging out, and it never found a great place to wrap it up.
I’ve softened a bit on “Blazing Saddles”, but IAM4W still seems too long.
My very favorite gag is Jerry Lewis swerving over 4 lanes of traffic to squash the hat. And I hate Jerry Lewis, so to me this proves the genius of that short cameo. Cracks me up every time I see it.
Other things I remember from the movie is that I thought Milton Berle’s wife was beautiful, and Sid Ceasar’s wife was sexy.
The child-like innocence of Jonathan Winter’s character was the best of a very good bunch. When he jumps up and down on the bicycle, then straightens out the wheel and starts pedaling … Well, that’s just gold, Jerry! Gold!
But, like this post, the end drags. Too over-the-top, even for an over-the-top movie. But that’s ok. There are many movies that are much worse floating around out there.
Not to get too off topic but didn’t that occur on the same dangerous stretch of road that was later immortalized in Jan & Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve”?
No, you’re thinking of Mel Blanc who crashed there (Sunset Blvd. near UCLA) in 1961. By time of Kovak’s crash (on Santa Monica Blvd.) work was already underway to straighten out Dead Man’s Curve, which was no more by the time Jan & Dean cut their record.
It might have been funny at ninety minutes; most of the tortuous running time is due to repeating initially amusing gags over and over and over again, and long and pointless setup sequences like Dick Shawn dancing that seem like they were designed to bring a B-movie up to feature length. Phil Silvers driving into the river is funny, but in a competently made comedy he gets there in about thirty seconds. It feels like fifteen minutes of him meandering around with the kid. The director doesn’t trust the audience to follow a setup without holding up a big sign saying “I’M MAKING YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THIS FOR SOME REASON,” and then tends to kill the jokes and add to the overall exhaustion of the film.