Best pie fight in screen history IMHO. The clever idea of having Tony Curtis walk right through it spotless while everyone else was getting splattered is genius.
In that PERFECT white suit! LOL!
The Boston Pops often played the Pie In The Face Polka written by Henry Mancini.
My beloved Dad, a movie projectionist and photographer, used to show this movie on a sheet on our living room wall, flawlessly coordinated with 2 16mm projectors.
Before the days of VHS, of course!
Best pie fight in screen history IMHO. The clever idea of having Tony Curtis walk right through it spotless while everyone else was getting splattered is genius.Star Trek: The Original Series did a homage to that scene.
It was during the bar fight in the "Trouble With Tribbles" episode - con man/tribbles peddler Cyrano Jones walks right through the bedlam after helping himself to multiple shots from the bar.
Classic!
http://thegreatrace.webs.com/behindthescenes.htm
The Pie Fight Scene
In the first few hours of filming the pie fight scene, Natalie Wood was lead gasping from the set when she choked on a creamy hit in the mouth. Jack Lemmon said: “I actually got knocked out a couple of times. Unless it’s thrown just right, a pie hitting you in the face feels like 10 tons of cement.”
Shots of the cast and extras throwing pies took 5 days to film. After the first day, the on-set photographer took head shot photos of the cast covered in pie so that when they arrived for filming the next day, the make-up artists knew which type of pies were to be re-applied to the casts’ faces so as to resume shooting from the night before.
The pies used were real. They contained fruit, custard and whipped cream. Following this scene, the crew endeavored 300 leftover pies from a total of 2,357.
Jack Lemmon had to film the pie fight scene twice as he brings both Professor Fate and Prince Hapnick into one scene!
During the pie-throwing scene, there is a running gag that The Great Leslie remains clean while everyone else is covered in pie. Tony Curtis was required to change clothes several times when he was accidentally splattered with debris from a pie that had hit someone else.