The Story of Mankind * (1957, Vincent Price, Ronald Colman, Cedric Hardwicke, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Groucho Marx, Hedy Lamarr, Peter Lorre) – Classic Movie Review 11,363

Irwin Allen’s 1957 The Story of Mankind is a bizarre débâcle that has earned a place in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.

Director/ co–producer Irwin Allen’s 1957 American Technicolor fantasy film The Story of Mankind is a bizarre débâcle that has to be seen to be believed. It has earned a place in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. All-star casts had proved popular with the 1956 Around the World in 80 Days so Allen wanted an all-star cast to play various people in history. It was released by Warner Bros, who no doubt hoped that its all-star cast would save it. If you ever want to see Dennis Hopper as Napoleon Bonaparte, this is your opportunity!

Allen said: ‘There have been 400 or more giants of history in all our fields. Our big problem has been to bring them down to about 50, asking about each: was what he or she did lasting – and how long did it last? Telling history on the screen can be like telling a bad joke twice. You first have to find a handle, a gimmick.’

Mr Scratch, aka The Devil (Vincent Price) and The Spirit of Man (Ronald Colman) show scenes from the history of the world in order to decide if the planet should be destroyed. This leads to some of the strangest casting ever seen – Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton, Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc, Peter Lorre as Nero, Dennis Hopper as Napoleon, Edward Everett Horton as Sir Walter Raleigh, Virginia Mayo as  Cleopatra, Agnes Moorehead as Queen Elizabeth I, Charles Coburn as Hippocrates, Marie Wilson as Marie Antoinette, Helmut Dantine as Mark Antony, Reginald Gardiner as William Shakespeare, Francis X Bushman as Moses, Austin Green as Abraham Lincoln, Bobby Watson as Adolf Hitler and lots, lots more.

The Marx Brothers appear (in their only film in Technicolor), but not together, it was Colman’s final film (he died in 1958), the last film of character actor Franklin Pangborn (as Marquis de Varennes), and very nearly Lamarr’s last too (her last American film).

The whole shebang is ineptly handled by Allen, the king of disaster movies, though it must have been a bit of a struggle what the need to mix cheaply shot close-ups of actors on much smaller sets with vast amounts of stock footage battle and action scenes from previous Warner Bros costume films. Also it must have been a tall order telling The Story of Mankind in 100 minutes!

Jim Ameche plays Alexander Graham Bell and previously his brother Don Ameche starred as the character in the 1939 film The Story of Alexander Graham Bell.

Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett’s screenplay is very loosely based the 1921 non-fiction book by the appropriately named Hendrik Willem van Loon. Bennett recalled that Allen paid the stars a mere US$ 2,000. Later, Allen stayed with the all-star cast idea for The Towering Inferno.

Filming started on 12 November 1956 and it was released on 8 November 1957. It was Allen’s first film directing live actors after his documentaries The Sea Around Us and The Animal World.

The cast include: John Carradine, Marie Windsor, Cesar Romero, Helmut Dantine, Reginald Gardner, George E Stone, Cathy O’Donnell, Franklin Pangborn, Melville Cooper, Henry Daniell, Jim Ameche, David Bond, Nick Cravat, Dani Crayne, Richard H Cutting, Anthony Dexter, Toni Gerry, Austin Green, Sam Harris, Eden Hartford, Alexander Lockwood, Melinda Marx, Bart Mattson, Don Megowan, Marvin Miller, Nancy Miller, Leonard Mudie, Burt Nelson, Tudor Owen, Ziva Rodann, Angelo Rossitto, Harry Ruby, William Schallert, Reginald Sheffield, Abraham Sofar, and Bobby Watson.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,363

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