Saul Bass; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963, Technicolor American comedy film directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers. The enseble comedy premiered on November 7, 1963.

In the early 1960s, screenwriter William Rose, then living in the UK, conceived the idea for a film (provisionally titled Something a Little Less Serious) about a comedic chase through Scotland. He sent an outline to Stanley Kramer, who agreed to produce and direct the film. (The working title was subsequently changed to One Damn Thing After Another and It's a Mad World, with Rose and Kramer adding additional Mads to the title as time progressed.)

Although well known for serious films such as Inerit the Wind and Judgement at Nuremburg (both starring Spencer Tracy), Kramer set out to make the ultimate comedy film with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 and presented in Cinerama (becoming one of the first Cinerama films originated with one camera), it also had an all-star cast, with dozens of major comedy stars from all eras of cinema making appearances in the film.

The film followed a Hollywood trend in the 1960s of producing "epic" films as a way of wooing audiences away from television and back to movie theaters. Box-office revenues were dropping, so the major studios experimented with a number of gimmicks to attract audiences, including widescreen films.

The title was taken from Thomas Middleton's 1605 comedy, A Mad World My Masters. Kramer considered adding a fifth "mad" to the title before deciding that it would be redundant, but noted in interviews that he later regretted it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Mad,_Mad,_Mad,_Mad_World