The Towering Inferno is a 1974 disaster film produced by Irwin Allen featuring an all-star cast led by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. The film 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.
Plot summary
Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) arrives from a vacation for the dedication of the newly completed Glass Tower (which he designed) in San Francisco. At 138 stories, the skyscraper is the tallest building in the world (fictionally overtaking the World Trade Center in New York City and the recently completed Sears Tower in Chicago) and a dedication party is planned. Upon his arrival, facts concerning the deviation from his design specifications come to light after a power surge from a routine check blows out a circuit breaker. The power surge also sparks a fire in a storage room on the 81st floor, which because of problems with the building's security system, goes undetected for many hours. In Roberts' absence, chief electrical engineer Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain), the son-in-law of building financier Jim Duncan (William Holden), has cut corners to complete construction under-budget. Simmons insists the building is up to minimum code standards, but it is nowhere near what Roberts called for in his design.
Prior to the dedication party, numerous sub-plots about the dedication attendees are revealed and explored. Duncan orders all the building's exterior lights turned on dedication night to impress visiting dignitaries, and the fire continues to grow. The fire is finally discovered just after the alarm is raised and the fire department alerted. When Roberts and his assistant Will Giddings (Norman Burton) arrive on the 81st floor, Giddings pushes a security guard out of the way when he opens the door, revealing the fire. Giddings suffers severe burns over most of his body and dies later in the film. Roberts then tells Duncan about the fire, but he dismisses the warnings and permits the party to continue. Subsequent fires break out throughout the building, spreading rapidly climbing floor by floor.
The firefighters arrive, but Battalion Chief Michael O'Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) warns that the building is too high for his men to fight it effectively from the outside. As the department struggles to fight the spreading fire from inside, the 300 party guests in the 135th floor Promenade Room are trapped. The remainder of the film follows the rescuing of the guests, and depicts many escape attempts and deaths. Rooftop escape by helicopter is abandoned when winds cause the first attempt to crash into the roof and explodes. The tower has only two stairwells. One is filled with smoke and the other is rendered impassable by subsequent explosions and collapses. Escape by Breeches buoy to the roof of a neighboring skyscraper, the fictional 102-story Peerless Building, has limited success and is thwarted by panicked guests fighting their way onto the single chair and falling to their deaths when the rope breaks under the weight. Despite near-disaster which resulted in one guest falling to her death, 10 guests and a fireman get down in the exterior scenic elevator after an emergency rescue by O'Hallorhan.
With the spreading fire 15 minutes from the Promenade Room, a final plan is hatched to put out the approaching flames by blowing the million-gallon water tanks at the top of the building, which offers the best chance of survival. In the climax, O'Hallorhan agrees to be dropped by helicopter onto the roof to meet Roberts at the water tanks to set the plastic explosives. The fire chief, trained for explosives, instructs the architect how to set the charges. The two men quickly finish and retreat to the restaurant. Everyone ties themselves down to avoid being washed away by the water rushing from the destroyed tanks. The plan succeeds and the water puts out the fire. O'Hallorhan, Roberts, Duncan and most of the other partygoers survive, but the torrent of water claims several casualties when several people are swept out the windows.
At the end, O'Hallorhan comments that though fewer than 200 people died, the casualties could have been much worse, but a worse disaster is possible if builders and architects are not willing to take fire safety and fire fighting into account more seriously with skyscrapers. Roberts promises to consult with O'Hallorhan on such matters in the future.
Cast
Primary cast
Other
History
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 film The Tower for $390,000. Eight weeks later, Irwin Allen discovered another skyscraper-on-fire novel, The Glass Inferno, and bought the rights for $400,000 for 20th Century Fox. In order to avoid having two similar films produced at the same time, the productions were combined, with a budget of $14 million (over $58 million adjusted for inflation 1974-2005). Each studio paid half of the production costs. In return, Fox was given the United States box office receipts and Warner Bros. the profits from the rest of the world.
Stirling Silliphant, who won an Oscar for his adaptation of In the Heat of the Night, was asked to combine the two similar novels into a single screenplay. Silliphant took seven main characters from each book and combined the plots for the storyline. In The Tower, a bomb in the main utility room of a fictitious 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 when fire overtakes the restaurant on the top floor). In The Glass Inferno, a discarded 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 movie's 57 sets and four complete camera crews established records for a single film on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. In addition, Maureen McGovern was hired to sing the Oscar-winning love ballad, "We May Never Love Like This Again".
The movie 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 films 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 upon which this movie was based were inspired by construction of the World Trade Center towers and concerns over what would happen if fire broke out in a highrise tower. Although the two disasters were somewhat different — in particular, the fictional Glass Tower did not collapse — following the events of September 11, 2001 attacks, the film was often referred to by the media.
The atrium of San Francisco's Hyatt Regency Hotel (at 5 Embarcadero Center) was used as the lobby for the fictional Glass Tower. This hotel features three glass-walled elevators identical to the glass-walled scenic elevator of the fictional Glass Tower. (This lobby and the elevators also featured in films such as Mel Brooks' comedy High Anxiety, in the Charles Bronson spy thriller Telefon, and in Time After Time.)
The Bank of America building at 555 California Street in San Francisco was used to double for the outside facade and plaza of the Glass Tower. The St. Francis Hotel stood in for the Glass Tower's security control room and water tank area. The Glass Tower itself was a matte painting in the opening shot and an 80-foot miniature fitted with propane gas jets for exterior fire scenes.
The Westin St. Francis hotel was the third and final location used for the ride aboard the scenic elevator, for a scene in which characters ride the elevator towards the Promenade Room. Once the elevator clears the wall in front of the windows of the elevator, the San Francisco skyline is visible and the Bay Bridge can be seen in its entirety.
There are many small parts in the movie played by actors who appeared in The Poseidon Adventure, which Irwin Allen also produced. In a touch of nepotism, Sheila Matthews, the actress who played the role of the mayor's wife 'Paula Ramsey', is Irwin Allen's wife. Jennifer Jones role of 'Lisolette Mueller', her last before retiring from acting, was originally offered to Olivia de Havilland.
Initially, the fire chief's role was relatively minor — the architect was the lead and hero — and Ernest Borgnine was planned to be Fire Chief Mario Infantino to Steve McQueen's architect Doug Roberts. However, when McQueen signed on, he requested the fire chief's role, and Paul Newman was signed to take the architect's role.
McQueen, Newman and Holden all tried to obtain top billing. Holden was refused as his star power was no longer considered in the league of McQueen and Newman. To provide dual top billing and mollify McQueen, the credits were arranged diagonally, with McQueen at the lower left and Newman at the upper right. Thus, each actor appeared to have top billing depending on whether the poster was read from left to right or top to bottom.[1] Technically, McQueen has top billing and is mentioned first in the film's trailers; however, at the end of the movie, as the cast's names roll from the bottom of the screen, Newman's name is fully visible first, something McQueen apparently didn't catch. This was the first time that this type of "staggered but equal" billing had been used for a movie, although the same thing had been discussed for the same two actors several years earlier when McQueen was going to play the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (McQueen ultimately passed on the part and was replaced by Robert Redford, who didn't enjoy McQueen's status and took second billing to Newman.) Today, it's become understood that whoever's name appears to the left has top billing but this was by no means the case when The Towering Inferno was produced and the procedure was new.
In the DVD commentary, it is pointed out that because both McQueen and Newman were promised the same pay and identical number of lines of dialog, one actor had to go back to the studio to shoot additional scenes to equalize the final number of lines of dialog.
The movie's opening credits included a dedication to "the firefighters of the world".
Music
The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, with orchestrations by Herbert Spencer and Albert Woodbury. Source music, heard in various portions of the film, include instrumental versions of the songs "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]
The song "We May Never Love Like This Again" was composed by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn and performed by Maureen McGovern in the film and on the album of the score.
The first release of portions of the score was on Warner Brothers Records. A complete release of the score came on the Film Score Monthly label in 2001.
Awards
Award wins
The film won three Academy Awards, two BAFTAs and two Golden Globes.[3]
Award nominations
See also
References
External links
