The Buried Money in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
The MacGuffin doesn’t always have to be a portent of drama and doom for the characters motivated by it. The first foray into comedy for director Stanley Kramer sees the all-star cast of 1963’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World come to the aid of “Smiler” Grogan (Jimmy Durante) when he is involved in a car crash in a remote location. Grogan is under suspicion for a historical robbery, and manages to tell his assembled would-be rescuers about the $350,000 that is buried by a ‘big W’ in Santa Rosita State Park.
Those would-be rescuers include Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett and Milton Berle, who soon involve a number of other characters – Ethel Merman, Terry-Thomas, Peter Falk and Phil Silvers among them – in what becomes a desperate race to reach the loot first. Hot on the trail of all of them is Captain Culpepper, played by Spencer Tracy, who has been hunting Grogan for years, and now follows the would-be rescuers – suspecting that Grogan disclosed the location of the money to them.
In the same way that The Maltese Falcon uses the MacGuffin to reveal the more sinister intentions and moral flexibility of a range of characters, so the prospect of buried treasure does the same for the cast of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but to comedic effect. The real reward for the audience is the ‘plot twist’ – during which the characteristics of the would-be criminals and the law enforcement officer are switched, much to the chagrin of all involved.