Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Todd). An epidemic of giantism is currently sweeping the movie world. George Stevens' Giant, the latest of the cinemonsters, runs well over three hours.
War and Peace lasts 3½. The Ten Commandments, which Cecil B. DeMille expects to release in the next couple of weeks, tops that by a long quarter-hour. In such company, Producer Michael Todd's mighty slice of Jules Verne's 19th century globaloney, since it is only two hours and 55 minutes long (not counting intermission), seems a relative runt; but what the thing lacks in length it more than makes up in what showmen call "holler."
For his first independent film production, the man one show-business wag has referred to, with friendly incredulity, as "Todd Almighty," assembled no fewer than 46 stars of stage, screen, radio and TV. Among the hit-players: Charles Boyer, Joe E. Brown, Martine Carol, John Carradine. Charles Coburn, Ronald Colman, Melville Cooper, Noel Coward, Reginald Denny. Marlene Dietrich, Fernandel, Sir John Gielgud, Hermione Gingold, Jose Greco. Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Trevor Howard, Glynis Johns, Buster Keaton, Evelyn Keyes, Beatrice Lillie, Edmund Lowe, Peter Lorre, A. E. Matthews, Robert Morley, Edward R. Murrow, Jack Oakie, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton.
And then, of course, there is the supporting cast: 68,894 people and 7,959 animals-including four ostriches, six skunks, 15 elephants, 17 fighting bulls, 512 rhesus monkeys, 800 horses, 950 burros, 2,448 American buffalo, 3,800 Rocky Mountain sheep and a sacred cow that eats flowers on cue. The film took 34 directors 160 days to make on 112 locations and 140 sets in 13 countries. And the wardrobe department alone spent $410.000 to provide 74,685 costumes and 36,092 trinkets, while Todd's makeup men claim to have glued 15,612 beards-including a number of magnificent Dundrearies-presumably to the same number of chins.
To top it all off. Producer Todd took his picture on the world's largest film-exactly twice as wide (70 mm.) as the normal Hollywood stock-and has projected it on one of the world's largest indoor screens-a vast concave gullet that opens almost as wide as Cinerama, and possesses much of the same power to suck the spectator out of his seat. Not content with that, Todd flooded this huge surface with a light almost twice as intense as any ever seen onscreen before, and so hot that the film has to be refrigerated as it passes through the Todd-AO projector.
The wonder is that this Polyphemus of productions does not simply collapse of its own overweight; but, thanks principally to Showman Todd, the picture skips along with an amazing lightness-like a fat lady winning a cha-cha contest. As a travelogue, Around the World is at least as spectacular as anything Cinerama has slapped together. The customer is offered an album of house-high snapshots of summer in Paris, corridas in Spain, religious festivals in India, a Wild West show in the hoariest Hollywood tradition; and at one point he is even permitted to witness a sight that the 19th century would cheerfully have given its right sideburn to see: Queen Victoria in bed.