The Towering Inferno

The Towering Inferno

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Guillermin
Irwin Allen (action sequences)
Produced by Irwin Allen
Written by Novel
Richard Martin Stern
Thomas N. Scortia
Frank M. Robinson
Screenplay:
Stirling Silliphant
Starring Steve McQueen
Paul Newman
William Holden
Faye Dunaway
Fred Astaire
Susan Blakely
Richard Chamberlain
Susan Flannery
Jennifer Jones
O.J. Simpson
Robert Vaughn
Robert Wagner
Music by John Williams
Cinematography Fred J. Koenekamp, ASC
Editing by Carl Kress
Harold F. Kress
Distributed by USA:
20th Century Fox
International:
Warner Bros.
Release date(s) December 14, 1974
Running time 165 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $14,000,000
Gross revenue $116,000,000
$499,033,857 (inflated gross)

The Towering Inferno is a 1974 American disaster film produced by Irwin Allen featuring an all-star cast led by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. The film, a co-production between Twentieth Century-Fox and Warner Bros. (this was the first film to be a joint venture from two major Hollywood studios), was adapted by Stirling Silliphant from the novels The Tower by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, and was directed by John Guillermin, with Allen himself directing the action sequences. Jennifer Jones made her final film appearance in this film.

Contents

Plot

Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) returns for the dedication of the Glass Tower in San Francisco which he designed for building owner James Duncan (William Holden). At 138 stories (1,800 ft.), it is the world's tallest building. During a routine systems check, an electrical short starts a small fire in a storage room on the 81st floor which goes undetected. Roberts confronts the building's electrical engineer, Duncan's son-in-law Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain). Simmons insists the building is up to standards but Roberts is skeptical and demands to see the specifications.

At the dedication ceremony the public relations chief, Dan Bigelow (Robert Wagner), turns on the Tower's exterior lights to impress the 294 guests arriving for a party in the Promenade Room on the 135th floor. The lighting overloads the system and Roberts angrily orders it shut off. At this point, the storage room fire on the 81st floor has fully engulfed the room, and the building's security guards summon the San Francisco Fire Department. Duncan refuses Roberts' pleas to evacuate and insists that the party continue, believing a fire on 81 cannot affect the Promenade Room on 135.

The fire department arrives and sets about fighting the fast-growing fire. Chief Michael O'Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) forces Duncan to evacuate the 300 party guests. Party guest and building resident Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones), who had been romanced at the party by con man Harlee Claiborne (Fred Astaire), is one of the first to leave the party. She heads to the 87th floor to check on a young family. Simmons admits to Duncan that he changed the specifications to stay under budget, but at Duncan's behest in meaning that Simmons used inferior building materials for the specifications.

Bigelow and his secretary/mistress Lorrie (Susan Flannery) are killed when they are trapped by flames in Bigelow's office on 65. Evacuation of the party guests using the express elevators halts when fire reaches the elevator shafts. The scenic elevator on the outside of the building is used to evacuate guests until the building's power fails, leaving the elevator stalled at the Promenade Room. The building's two emergency stairwells are impassable as one is filled with smoke and the door to the other has been accidentally sealed by spilled cement. Roberts and Security Chief Harry Jernigan (O.J. Simpson) are informed by security of Lisolette and the family on 87 and head up to help. Jernigan takes the mother, a deaf widow, to safety. Roberts, Lisolette and the widow's two children become trapped as a ruptured gas line destroys a fire stairwell and blocks their escape. They head up to the Promenade Room via a service elevator.

Rooftop helicopter rescues become impossible after high winds cause a rescue helicopter to crash and explode on the roof, setting it ablaze. A breeches buoy to an adjacent skyscraper (the fictional Peerless Building) successfully rescues several guests, including Simmons' wife Patty (Susan Blakely). Roberts actives a gravity brake on the scenic elevator, allowing it to coast down to the lobby. 12 people, including Roberts' girlfriend Susan (Faye Dunaway), Lisolette and the children, and a supervising fireman are evacuated. As it descends an explosion rips the elevator off its track at the 110th floor, leaving it hanging by a cable. Lisolette falls to her death, but the remaining passengers are saved after a helicopter rescue by O'Hallorhan.

As the fire reaches the Promenade Room, the remaining guests panic and Simmons forces his way onto the breeches buoy. Senator Gary Parker (Robert Vaughn), who is helping Duncan with subsequent rescue efforts, and several other guests attempt to prevent Simmons from commandeering the breeches buoy. All fall to their deaths. Simmons pushes several men from the breeches buoy, which itself then collapses taking Simmons to his death.

A plan is hatched to explode the million-gallon water tanks at the top of the building. O'Hallorhan and Roberts set plastic explosives, and the water extinguishes the fire floor by floor. O'Hallorhan, Roberts, Duncan, Claiborne and most of the partygoers survive, but the torrent sweeps others out of windows.

The fire extinguished, Roberts says to Susan that he does not know what will become of the building, but that perhaps it should be left as it is to symbolize all that is wrong with society. O'Hallorhan says that they were lucky and that a worse disaster is possible if builders and architects do not take fire safety into account. Roberts agrees to consult O'Halloran on such matters in the future.

Cast

Primary cast
Other

Production

End of the closing credit crawl, illustrating the joint partnership between 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. in producing The Towering Inferno.

After the success of The Poseidon Adventure, Warner Bros. bought the rights to The Tower for $390,000. Eight weeks later, Irwin Allen discovered another novel, The Glass Inferno, and bought the rights for $400,000 for 20th Century Fox. The productions were combined, with a budget of $14 million ($58 million adjusted for inflation 1974-2005). Each studio paid half the production costs. 20th Century Fox had the United States box office receipts and Warner Bros. had the rest of the world.

Stirling Silliphant, who won an Oscar for his adaptation of In the Heat of the Night, combined the novels into a single screenplay. Silliphant took seven characters from each and combined the plots. In The Tower, a bomb in the utility room of a 150-floor tower (the world's tallest) causes a power surge which sets a janitor's closet on fire; the escape from the top floor is by breeches buoy to the adjacent 110-story North Tower of the World Trade Center, and is only partially successful. More than a hundred partygoers die in the restaurant on the top floor. In The Glass Inferno, a cigarette sets the janitor's closet in a 60-story tower on fire; the escape from the top floor is by helicopter, and everyone left in the restaurant escapes.

The 57 sets and four camera crews were records for a single film on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. At the end of filming of principal photography on 11 September 1974 only eight of those 57 sets were left standing. William S. Creber is credited as Production Designer of the film and under his direction, Dan Goozee from the Fox art department designed the final look of the Glass Tower itself.

Filming locations

The atrium of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco (Five Embarcadero Center) was used as the lobby for the Glass Tower. It has three glass-walled elevators identical of the sort in the Glass Tower. The lobby and elevators also featured in Mel Brooks' comedy High Anxiety, the Charles Bronson spy thriller Telefon, and in Time After Time.)

The Bank of America building at 555 California Street in San Francisco doubled for the facade and plaza. The St. Francis Hotel stood in for the security control room. The film makers used the central heating and air conditioning plant for all of Century City (the palatial business district adjacent to Twentieth Century-Fox) for the basic water storage tank set. The Glass Tower itself was a miniature model inserted into the San Francisco skyline in the opening shot by a technique known as rotoscoping. In other words, a hand-drawn matte painting was made of the chopper on each frame in which it was backed up by the miniature buildings. This was achieved through some uncredited blue screen work by the legendary Douglas Trumbull. A 70-foot high model with a combination of propane, acetylene and oxygen jets for exterior fire scenes was filmed by the special effects team headed by Bill Abbott, A.S.C at the Twentieth Century Fox Ranch in Malibu. The site itself was on the concrete floor of the man-made Sersen Lake, named after long time Fox Special Effects man Fred Sersen. Additionally, another model showing only the upper 40 floors was used and seamlessly intercut with the five full scale floors created by film makers for close up shots. Mechanical effects such as explosions and water dumping were the domain of A.D. Flowers.

The promenade room set was filmed on a huge soundstage at Twentieth Century-Fox and was highly unusual in that it reportedly contained set and wall decorations from a previous Fox film, "Hello Dolly". The floor space, on many levels, covered 11,000 square feet. The lowest level was six feet off the stage floor and the ceiling was 12 feet above that. Three sides of the set were backed by a 340-foot cyclorama. This was an excellent piece of uncredited artwork done by Gary Coakley and his crew. (This outstanding cyclorama was also utilized in the Paramount Picture, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986) and used as the backdrop to Captain Kirk’s futuristic San Francisco Apartment).

The Westin St. Francis hotel was used for the ride aboard the scenic elevator in which characters ride the elevator towards the Promenade Room. There are small parts played by actors who appeared in The Poseidon Adventure, which Irwin Allen also produced including Elizabeth Rogers, Ernie Orsatti, and Sheila Matthews, who played the mayor's wife 'Paula Ramsay'. She would later become Irwin Allen's wife and remained so until his death in 1991. Jennifer Jones role of 'Lisolette Mueller', her last before retiring from acting, was originally offered to Olivia de Havilland.

Newman and McQueen

In initial stages of the film's development, the fire chief's role was relatively minor – the architect was the hero. Fire Chief Mario Infantino was to be played by Ernest Borgnine, and Steve McQueen was to play the leading role of architect Doug Roberts. However McQueen requested the fire chief's role, so it was suitably revised and augmented. Paul Newman was cast as the architect.

McQueen, Newman, and William Holden all wanted top billing. Holden was refused, no longer in the league of McQueen and Newman. To provide dual top billing, the credits were arranged diagonally, with McQueen lower left and Newman upper right. Thus, each appeared to have top billing.[1] McQueen is mentioned first in the film's trailers. In the cast list rolling from top to bottom at the end of the film, McQueen and Newman's names were arranged diagonally as at the beginning. As a consequence Newman's name is fully visible first here.

This was the first time "staggered but equal" billing was used. It had been discussed for the same actors when McQueen was to play the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. McQueen was eventually replaced by Robert Redford, who took second billing.

In the 2010 biography by AE Hotchner titled Paul and Me, reference is made to the commotion caused by Steve McQueen due to his apparent displeasure at having a lesser part. McQueen discovered that Paul Newman had twenty more lines than him, something that was soon changed. According to the book, Newman's salary from the movie totalled $12m US dollars.

Influences

The film was released the year the Sears Tower, the world's tallest building until 1996, opened in Chicago, a year after the two World Trade Center skyscrapers — the world's second tallest building at the time of the film's premiere — opened in New York City, and not long after the 1972 Andraus Building and 1974 Joelma Building fires in São Paulo, Brazil. Both novels were inspired by construction of the World Trade Center and what would happen if fire broke out.

The film was often referred to in media reports on the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Coincidentally, principal photography on the film finished on September 11, 1974, and no building with an occupied floor level greater than 110 stories has since been constructed in the United States.

The film's opening credits included a dedication which read:

"To those who give their lives so that others might live, to the firefighters of the world, this picture is gratefully dedicated".

Music

The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, with orchestrations by Herbert W. Spencer and Al Woodbury. It was recorded at the 20th Century Fox scoring stage on 31 October and 4, 7 and 11 November 1974. The original recording engineer was Ted Keep.

Source music in portions of the film includes instrumental versions of "Again" by Lionel Newman and Dorcas Cochran, "You Make Me Feel So Young" by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon, and "The More I See You" by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon.[2]

A snippet of a cue from Williams’ score to “Cinderella Liberty” titled 'Maggie Shoots Pool' is heard in a scene when William Holden's character converses on the phone with Paul Newman's character. It is not the recording on the soundtrack album but a newer arrangement recorded for "The Towering Inferno". An extended version is heard ostensibly as source music in a deleted theatrical scene sometimes shown as part of a longer scene from the TV broadcast version.

One of the most sought-after unreleased music cues from the film is the one where Williams provides low-key lounge music during a party prior to the announcement of a fire. O’Halloran orders Duncan to evacuate the party; the music becomes louder as Lisolette and Harlee are seen dancing and Duncan lectures son-in-law Roger. Titled "The Promenade Room" on the conductor's cue sheet, the track features a ragged ending as Duncan asks the house band to stop playing. Because of this Film Score Monthly could not add this cue to the expanded soundtrack album.

The Academy Award-winning song "We May Never Love Like This Again" was composed by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn and performed by Maureen McGovern who appears in a cameo as a lounge singer and on the soundtrack album of the score which features the film recording plus the commercially released single version. Additionally, the theme tune is interpolated into the film's underscore by John Williams. The song's writers collaborated on 'The Morning After' from "The Poseidon Adventure" which was also sung by McGovern, although hers was not the vocal in the film. Reportedly, Fred Astaire campaigned to Producer Irwin Allen to write a song for "The Towering Inferno" but ultimately his effort was deemed too old fashioned and thus dismissed.

The first release of portions of the score from "The Towering Inferno" was on Warner Brothers Records early in 1975.

  1. Main Title (5:00)
  2. An Architect's Dream (3:28)
  3. Lisolette And Harlee (2:34)
  4. Something For Susan (2:42)
  5. Trapped Lovers (4:28)
  6. We May Never Love Like This Again - Kasha/Hirschhorn, performed by Maureen McGovern (2:11)
  7. Susan And Doug (2:30)
  8. The Helicopter Explosion (2:50)
  9. Planting The Charges - And Finale (10:17)

A near-complete release came on the Film Score Monthly label (FSM) on 1 April 2001 and was produced by Lukas Kendall and Nick Redman. FSM's was an almost completely expanded version remixed from album masters at Warner Bros. archives and the multi-track 35mm magnetic film stems at 20th Century Fox. Placed into chronological order and restoring action cues, it became one of the company's biggest sellers; only 3000 copies were pressed and it is now out of print.

Reports that this soundtrack and that of the movie "Earthquake" (also composed by Williams) borrowed cues from each other are not accurate. The version of 'Main Title' on the FSM disc is the film version. It differs from the original soundtrack album version. There is a different balance of instruments in two spots, and in particular the snare drum is more prominent than the album version which also feaures additional cymbal work. Although the album was not a re-recording, the original LP tracks were recorded during the same sessions and several cues were combined. The film version sound was reportedly better than the quarter-inch WB two-track album master.[3]

  1. Main Title (5:01)
  2. Something For Susan (2:42)
  3. Lisolette and Harlee (2:35)
  4. The Flame Ignites (1:01)
  5. More For Susan (1:55)
  6. Harlee Dressing (1:37)
  7. Let There Be Light (:37)
  8. Alone At Last (:51)
  9. We May Never Love Like This Again (Film Version) - Maureen McGovern (2:04)
  10. The First Victims (3:24)
  11. Not A Cigarette (1:18)
  12. Trapped Lovers (4:44)
  13. Doug's Fall/Piggy Back Ride (2:18)
  14. Lisolette's Descent (3:07)
  15. Down The Pipes/The Door Opens (2:59)
  16. Couples (3:38)
  17. Short Goodbyes (2:26)
  18. Helicopter Rescue (3:07)
  19. Passing The Word (1:12)
  20. Planting The Charges (9:04)
  21. Finale (3:57)
  22. An Architect's Dream (3:28)
  23. We May Never Love Like This Again (Album Version) - Maureen McGovern (2:13)
  24. The Morning After (Instrumental) (2:07)
  25. Susan And Doug (Album Track) (2:33)
  26. Departmental Pride and The Cat (Damaged) (2:34)
  27. Helicopter Explosion (Damaged) (2:34)
  28. Waking Up (Damaged) (2:39)

Awards

Award wins

The film won three Academy Awards, two BAFTAs and two Golden Globes.[4]

Award nominations

See also

References

  1. ↑ The Towering Inferno Masterprint at Art.com
  2. ↑ Eldridge, Jeff (2001). Release notes for The Towering Inferno by John Williams, p. 13 (CD insert notes). Culver City, California, U.S.A.: Film Score Monthly (Vol. 4, No. 3).
  3. ↑ Additional notes by Geoff Brown - Melbourne, Australia.
  4. ↑ "NY Times: The Towering Inferno". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/50621/The-Towering-Inferno/awards. Retrieved 2008-12-29. 

External links

Films directed by John Guillermin
1940s
High Jinks in Society (1949)
1950s
Torment (1950) · The Smart Aleck (1951) · Two on the Tiles (1951) · Four Days (1951) · Song of Paris (1952) · Miss Robin Hood (1952) · Operation Diplomat (1953) · The Crowded Day (1954) · Tormenta (1955) · Thunderstorm (1956) · Town on Trial (1957) · I Was Monty's Double (1958) · Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959)
1960s
The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960) · Never Let Go (1960) · The Waltz of the Toreadors (1962) · Tarzan Goes to India (1962) · Guns at Batasi (1964) · Rapture (1965) · The Blue Max (1966) · P.J. (1968) · House of Cards (1968) · The Bridge at Remagen (1969)
1970s
El Condor (1970) · Skyjacked (1972) · Shaft in Africa (1974) · The Towering Inferno (1974) · King Kong (1976) · Death on the Nile (1978)
1980s
Mr. Patman (1980) · Sheena (1984) · King Kong Lives (1986)
Irwin Allen productions
Films
The Sea Around Us (1953) · Dangerous Mission (1954) · The Animal World (1956) · The Story of Mankind (1957) · The Big Circus (1959) · The Lost World (1960) · Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) · The Poseidon Adventure (1972) · The Towering Inferno (1974) · The Swarm (1978) · The Return of Captain Nemo (1978 TV film) · Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) · When Time Ran Out (1980) · Alice in Wonderland (1985 TV film)
Television
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea · Lost in Space · The Time Tunnel · Land of the Giants · The Swiss Family Robinson · Code Red