The Great Race
A charismatic daredevil races from New York to Paris to prove his sponsor’s cars can conquer any road, while his cunning rival engineers a deadly shortcut to beat him at every turn.
“The movie with 20,000-miles or one-million-laughs guarantee!”
Synopsis
The Great Leslie, a professional daredevil and white-suited hero, convinces automobile manufacturers at the turn of the century to sponsor a race from New York to Paris, traveling westward across America, through the Bering Strait, and into Russia, as a means to promote automobile sales. Leslie's arch-rival, the mustached and black-attired Professor Fate, vows to beat him to the finish line by driving a car of his own invention.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 17
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Ralph E WintersShot by Russell HarlanScored by Henry ManciniDesigned by Fernando Carrere
Box Office
1965 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.1× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$25.3M
Also known as
- Das große Rennen rund um die Weltde
- La carrera del sigloes
- La Grande Course autour du mondefr
- La grande corsait
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Cast & Crew
17 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Tony Curtis
as The Great Leslie
Natalie Wood
as Maggie Dubois
Jack Lemmon
as Crown Prince Frederick Hoepnick
Peter Falk
as Maximilian Meen
Keenan Wynn
as Hezekiah Sturdy
Arthur O Connell
as Henry Goodbody
Vivian Vance
as Hester Goodbody
Dorothy Provine
as Lily Olay
Larry Storch
as Texas Jack
Ross Martin
as Baron Rolfe Von Stuppe
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
1Other crew
4Parents Guide
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