| The Towering Inferno | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| 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 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 13, 1974 |
| Running time | 165 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $14,000,000 |
| Box office | $139,700,000[1] |
The Towering Inferno is a 1974 American action disaster film produced by Irwin Allen featuring an all-star cast led by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.
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), it was adapted by Stirling Silliphant from a pair of 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.
The film was a critical success, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and was the highest grossing film released in 1974. The film also features Jennifer Jones's final screen appearance.
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Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) returns to San Francisco for the dedication of the Glass Tower, which he designed for owner Jim Duncan (William Holden). At 138 stories (1,800 ft), it is the world's tallest building. During a routine systems check before the ceremonies, an electrical short in the upper floors 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), accusing him of cutting corners. Simmons insists the building is up to standards, but Roberts knows the standards are not enough and demands to see the specifications.
During the dedication ceremony, 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 orders it shut off. The building's security guards, led by Harry Jernigan (O.J. Simpson), see the smoke from the fire on the 81st floor and summon the San Francisco Fire Department. Roberts and engineer Will Giddings (Norman Burton) head to the 81st floor, and Giddings pushes a security guard away from the door to the burning room shortly before it explodes, severely burning him. Roberts tells Duncan of the fire, who insists that the party continue, believing a fire on the 81st floor will not affect the party. Firemen begin fighting the fast-growing blaze unbeknownst to the party guests, using Roberts' office on the 79th floor as a command post and the lobby as a mass casualty and staging area. SFFD 5th Battalion Chief Michael O'Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) takes charge and forces Duncan to evacuate the party guests. Everyone is directed to the express elevators. Party guest and building resident Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones), who was romanced at the party by con man Harlee Claiborne (Fred Astaire), is one of the first to leave. She heads to the 87th floor to check on a family with two children she babysits and their deaf mother. Simmons admits to Duncan that he changed Roberts' specifications, but at Duncan's request to stay under budget.
The express elevators are rendered unsafe as the fire spreads to the elevators' main bank. The last occupied elevator opens directly on the 81st floor, in O'Hallorhan's view, killing the occupants. The elevator then returns to the Promenade Room where the doors open and one man runs out engulfed in flames in view of the horrified guests. With his tuxedo jacket, Harlee tries to smother the flames on the man, but he still dies. The stairwells are rendered impassable as one is filled with smoke and the door to the other is jammed shut. Bigelow and his secretary/mistress Lorrie (Susan Flannery) are trapped in his office on the 65th floor and killed by the fire. Jernigan and Roberts are then informed from the building's security station that Lisolette has been seen on a security monitor trying to get into the apartment on 87; the two men head up to assist. Jernigan takes the mother down to safety. Roberts and Lisolette save the two children, but are halted after part of the stairwell explodes due to a ruptured gas line. They get down, then, head up to the Promenade Room via a service elevator, but upon their arrival the stairwell door is sealed by spilled cement. Roberts escapes through a pipe shaft to alert security. Two firemen rescue Lisolette and the children by blowing open the door with C-4. Suppression by the fire department becomes nearly impossible as the building loses all electrical power, halting an elevator that O'Hallorhan and his men are on, forcing them to rappel down the shaft.
A rooftop helicopter rescue attempt results in further disaster when two women rush the aircraft, causing it to crash and explode due to the heavy winds, setting the roof ablaze. Naval Rescue teams attach a breeches buoy to the adjacent 102-story Peerless Building and rescue a number of guests, including Duncan's daughter and Simmons' wife Patty (Susan Blakely). Roberts activates a gravity brake on the scenic elevator, enabling it to coast down to the lobby. Twelve people board it, including Roberts' girlfriend Susan (Faye Dunaway), Lisolette and the children, along with a supervising fireman. 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, protecting the kids, before the others are saved by a helicopter rescue by O'Halloran. As the fire reaches the Promenade Room, the remaining guests panic. Simmons forces his way onto the breeches buoy. Senator Gary Parker (Robert Vaughn), who has been helping Duncan with rescue efforts, is among several guests who attempt to prevent Simmons from commandeering the breeches buoy. During the ensuing struggle, Parker and another guest fall off to their deaths, while an explosion destroys the breeches buoy, sending Simmons and one other guest on the buoy plummeting to their deaths.
A desperate plan is hatched by the top SFFD Fire Chiefs to explode the million-gallon water tanks at the top of the building to extinguish the fire. A reluctant O'Hallorhan is sent, due to his training in explosives, and meets with Roberts. They set plastic C-4 to the six water tanks and the floors on the 138th floor, then return to the Promenade Room. The remaining guests are ordered to tie themselves to heavy objects. O'Hallorhan, Roberts, Duncan, Harlee and most of the party-goers survive as the tanks are blown, sending thousands of gallons of water through the ceiling and throughout the building, extinguishing the flames. The torrent sweeps away those not securely tied down, including Mayor Ramsay (Jack Collins), while bartender Carlos (Gregory Sierra) is crushed by a tipping statue.
On the ground, Harlee finds out through Jernigan that Lisolette did not survive and is heartbroken, but is given her pet cat with which to remember her by. Duncan consoles Patty over Simmons' death. Roberts says to Susan that he does not know what will become of the building, but perhaps it should be left alone as a symbol of all that is wrong with society. O'Hallorhan says to Roberts that while the fatality count was under 200 it could be much worse someday unless architects and engineers take fire safety into account. Roberts agrees to consult with O'Hallorhan in the near future. The fire chief drives away, exhausted.
Small parts played by actors who appeared in The Poseidon Adventure, which Irwin Allen also produced, include John Crawford, Erik Nelson, Elizabeth Rogers, Ernie Orsatti, and Sheila Matthews. 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. The acrophobic fireman who was afraid to rappel down the elevator shaft was played by Paul Newman's son, Scott. Maureen McGovern was the woman singing at the party.
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 "first" billing.[2] 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 twelve more lines than he did, something that was soon changed. According to the book, Newman's salary from the movie totalled $12 million.
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 ($60 million adjusted for inflation). Each studio paid half the production costs. 20th Century Fox had the United States domestic box office receipts while Warner Bros. would distribute the film in all foreign territories around 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, an electrical spark 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 September 11, 1974 only eight of those 57 sets were left standing. William 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.
The atrium of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco was used as the lobby of the Glass Tower. Its iconic pill-shaped glass elevators, found in many of architect John Portman's buildings, were reproduced on set in Los Angeles for extensive use in the film. They feature in a key sequence when McQueen has to detach a derailed elevator from the side of the building and lower it to the ground by helicopter. 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. 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 (21 m) 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. 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. The Promenade Room set was filmed on a huge soundstage at Twentieth Century-Fox and was highly unusual in that it reportedly contained statues and set and wall decorations from a previous Fox film, Hello Dolly. The floor space, on many levels, covered 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2). The lowest level was six feet off the stage floor and the ceiling was 12 feet (3.7 m) above that. Three sides of the set were backed by a 340-foot (100 m) cyclorama, an outstanding piece of work which was created by Gary Coakley. This cyclorama was also utilized as the backdrop to Captain Kirk’s futuristic San Francisco apartment in the films Star Trek II (1982) and Star Trek III (1984).
The Westin St. Francis hotel was used for the ride aboard the scenic elevator in which characters ride the elevator towards the Promenade Room, following the ribbon cutting portion of the building's dedication ceremony.
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.
In the movie, it is unclear where the building was located in regards to the rest of San Francisco's Financial District. However, it is mentioned by two firemen responding to the fire that it's on the corner of Montgomery Street, a main thoroughfare in the Financial District and SOMA, thus placing the building with the aerial footage, somewhere between the Financial District and SOMA.
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 started on May 8, 1974 and 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. It premiered on December 13, 1974 in a first run that lasted almost a year.
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".
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.[3]
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 that 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 (Catalog No. BS-2840)
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. Although some minor incidental cues were lost, some sonically 'damaged' cues – so called due to a deterioration of the surviving audio elements – are placed at the end of the disc's program time following the track "An Architect's Dream" which is used over the end credits sequence.[4]
The Towering Inferno met with positive reviews from critics, garnering a 79% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.[5] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film as "the best of the mid-1970s wave of disaster films." [6]
The film won three Academy Awards,[7] two BAFTAs and two Golden Globes.[8]
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