With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies."
The story begins during a massive traffic jam, casued by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Durante) who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the assembled drivers that he's buried a fortun in stolen loot, "under the Big W." The various motorists setting out on a mad scramble include a dentist (Caesar) and his wife (Adams); a hen-pecked husband (Berle) accompanied by his mother-in-law (Merman) and his beatnik brother-in-law (Shawn); a pair of comedy writers (Hackett and Rooney); and a variety of assorted nuts including a slow-wit (Winters), a wheelchair dealer (Silvers), and a pair of covetous cabdrivers (Falk and Anderson). Monitoring every move that the fortune hunters make is a scrupulously honest police detective (Tracy).
Virtually every lead, supporting and bit part in this film is a well-known comic actor.
- Milton Berle
- Sid Caesar
- Joe E. Brown
- Eddie ""Rochester"" Anderson
- Edie Adams
- Jim Backus
- Ben Blue
- Leo Gorcey
- Paul Ford
- William Demarest
- Edward Everett Horton
- Peter Falk
- Jimmy Durante
- Buddy Hackett
- Buster Keaton
- Sterling Holloway
- ZaSu Pitts
- Mickey Rooney
- Ethel Merman
- Dorothy Provine
- Carl Reiner
- Terry-Thomas
- Spencer Tracy
- Phil Silvers
- Dick Shawn
- Jonathon Winters
- Songs by: Mack David
- Sound Effects : Walter G. Elliott
- Art Director: Gordon Gurnee
- Editor: Gene Fowler Jr.
- Composer: Ernest Gold
- Songs by: Ernest Gold
- Editor: Robert C. Jones
- Director: Stanley Kramer
- Producer: Stanley Kramer
- Editor: Frederic Knudtson
- Cinematographer: Ernest Laszlo
- Screenplay: Tania Rose
- Screenplay: Williams Rose
- Costume Designer: Bill Thomas
- Production Designer: Rudolph Steran
- Sound : Gordon Sawyer
