It’s a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World

With the passing this week of Mickey Rooney at age 93, the last of the principal actors in Stanley Kramer’s epic comedy film, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, is gone.

A key feature of the film is that it starred everybody, from those I am identifying as principals to supporting roles to brief cameo speaking parts to even more brief non-speaking appearances.  It is certainly the only movie in which you will find Spencer Tracy and the Three Stooges.

The principals, of course, start with Tracy, who provided the film’s center as Police Captain Culpepper, and include everyone in the photo above.  They are (of course in alphabetical order):

Edie Adams
Milton Berle
Sid Caesar
Buddy Hackett
Ethel Merman
Dorothy Provine
Mickey Rooney
Dick Shawn
Phil Silvers
Terry-Thomas
Jonathan Winters

Now they’re all gone.

Naturally there are some performers from the movie who are still with us at this point, among them Barrie Chase and Marvin Kaplan who just last year joined Mickey Rooney at a 50th anniversary celebration of the film.  Both Chase, who portrayed Dick Shawn’s bikini-clad dancing girlfriend, and Kaplan, who was the Irwin of Ray & Irwin’s gas station, had memorable, if brief, roles.

Carl Reiner, who portrayed one of the air traffic controllers, is alive and well today, having recently reached the age of 92.  Stan Freberg, who appears in a non-speaking role as a Sheriff’s officer seated behind Andy Devine’s Sheriff, and whose voice is heard on a police radio, is still with us at age 87.

There may be others, but it was a large cast and it was more than 50 years ago now.  Little by little, we are losing any direct connection to this sprawling film.  And with the passing of Mickey Rooney, we have lost the last of the principal players.

John Travolta is Younger Than Me

John Travolta – a fellow New Jersey native – made it official Sunday night: I am a clueless old person.

Seemingly everyone, including those who were not watching the Academy Awards ceremonies, now knows that Travolta botched the name of Broadway singer Idina Menzel during the broadcast by introducing her as “Adele Dazeem.”

I, on the other hand, was right there in front of my TV and had no idea that he had screwed up.  This because I had never heard of anyone named either Idina Menzel or Adele Dazeem.  For all I knew, the woman who belted out the song from the film Frozen was in fact named Adele Dazeem.

(I am using the phrase “belted out” here to be polite.  Dazeem – I mean, Menzel – struck me as yet another of the modern hollerers, substituting volume for songcraft.)

If I had seen the Broadway shows Rent or Wicked perhaps I would have known who she was.  But I hadn’t and therefore I just sat there in my chair, rocking softly, just like any other out-of-it old person.