The Towering Inferno

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The Towering Inferno


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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
Music by John Williams
Cinematography Fred J. Koenekamp
Editing by Carl Kress
Harold F. Cress
Distributed by USA:
20th Century Fox
International:
Warner Bros.
Release date(s) December 10, 1974
Running time 165 min.
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget $14,000,000
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Towering Inferno is a 1974 disaster film directed by John Guillermin, 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 starring Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.

Contents

After the success of The Poseidon Adventure, Warner Brothers bought the rights to film The Tower for $390,000. Eight weeks later, Irwin Allen discovered 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 Brothers got the profits from the rest of the world. The movie's 57 sets and four complete camera crews established records for a single film on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. In addition, songstress 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 was the world's tallest building, opened in Chicago, and a year after the two World Trade Center skyscrapers — at that time, among the newest, tallest buildings in the world — were opened in New York City. The screenplay may have been inspired by the catastrophic fires in the Andraus Building in 1972 and the Joelma Building 1974, both in São Paulo, Brazil. Both novels upon which this movie was based were inspired by the construction of the World Trade Center towers and concerns over what would happen if a fire broke out in a large highrise tower. Although the two disasters were not alike — 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. (Coincidentally, principal photography on The Towering Inferno was completed on September 11, 1974.)

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 actually features three glass-walled elevators, identical to the glass-walled "Scenic Elevator" of the fictional Glass Tower. This lobby area and the elevators were also prominently featured in other films such as Mel Brooks' comedy High Anxiety, in the Charles Bronson spy thriller Telefon, and in Time After Time. Matching the Hyatt Regency, The Glass Tower does have three elevator tracks. In a deleted scene, it is explained that cables for only one elevator had been installed at the time of the building's dedication.

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. Utility areas of the immense Century City complex in Los Angeles (adjacent to the Twentieth Century Fox studios) 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 tall "miniature" fitted with propane gas jets for exterior fire scenes.

There are many small parts in the movie played by actors who appeared in The Poseidon Adventure, which Irwin Allen also produced.

McQueen, Newman, and Holden all tried to obtain top billing. Holden was refused out of hand, as his "star power" was not considered to be in the same league as McQueen and Newman by that time. 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 from 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 up 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 consequently took second billing to Newman.) Today, this kind of billing is used frequently and 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 film, the Glass Tower, a new but poorly-constructed San Francisco skyscraper - at 1,800 feet and 138 stories, also the world's tallest - catches fire on the night of its dedication. Firefighters battle the flames and make many daring attempts to rescue people trapped in the building. This includes a party of 300 dignitaries who were celebrating the building's dedication and became trapped in a restaurant on the 135th floor (called the Promenade Room).

Stirling Silliphant, who had won an Oscar for his adaptation of In the Heat of the Night, was asked to adapt The Tower and The Glass Inferno into a screenplay. Silliphant ultimately took seven main characters from each book and combined the plots of the two novels for the storyline. In The Tower, a bomb in the main utility room 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 100-story Peerless Building, and is only partially successful (more than a hundred partygoers die when fire overtakes the restaurant). In The Glass Inferno, a carelessly-discarded cigarette sets the janitor's closet on fire; the escape from the top floor is by helicopter and is more successful (everyone left in the restaurant escapes by helicopter). In The Towering Inferno, faulty wiring throughout the building is overloaded by the building's lights, causing a small fire to start in a utility room. It spreads rapidly, trapping a 300 person party in the Promenade Room on the 135th floor. The remainder of the film is about rescuing the guests and follows many escape attempts and deaths. Rooftop escape by helicopter is abandoned when high winds cause the first attempt to crash into the roof. Escape by breeches buoy to the roof of a neighbouring skyscraper, the fictional 102-story Peerless Building, has limited success and is thwarted by a group of panicky guests who fight their way onto the single chair but fall to their death when the rope breaks under the weight. Despite near-disaster, eleven guests and a fireman manage to get down in the exterior "Scenic Elevator" after an emergency rescue by the fire chief. With the fire only fifteen minutes from the Promenade Room, a final plan is hatched: put the fire out by blowing the million-gallon water tanks at the top of the building. Some people will die in the flood but it gives the best chance of all the options. In the film's final climax, McQueen's fire chief agrees to be dropped by helicopter on the roof of the tower to meet Newman's architect at the water tanks and set plastic explosives. O'Hallorhan (McQueen), being trained for explosives, instructs Roberts (Newman) in how to set the charges. The two men quickly finish and retreat to the restaurant. Everyone ties themselves to something strong to avoid being washed away. The plan succeeds and the water puts out the fire. Both Roberts and O'Hallorhan survive, but the torrent of water released from the water tanks manages to claim a few final casualties, being washed out of the building and falling to the ground.

  • Initially, the fire chief's role was relatively minor — the architect was the lead and hero — and Ernest Borgnine (Detective Rogo in Allen's The Poseidon Adventure) 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, providing that the roles were made equal - including an equal number of lines and equal pay - and "an actor of high caliber" (McQueen's words) was signed to take the architect's role. Enter Paul Newman, who became Doug Roberts as McQueen became Fire Chief Michael O'Hallorhan.
  • Actor Steve McQueen was reportedly stubborn about his wardrobe. For example, McQueen did not like the style of the helmets that the San Francisco Fire Department wore at that time. He ordered that his white fire chief helmet be altered so it would look more "attractive".[citation needed]
  • Robert Vaughn was extremely upset over his rather low billing. In the shooting script, the part was much larger, but it was cut. Vaughn became upset, and stated that he wanted the character "killed off." Irwin Allen obliged, and Vaughn vowed never to do another movie with Allen.[citation needed]
  • Jennifer Jones' role was originally offered to Olivia de Havilland, who turned it down.[citation needed]

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Films starring Fred Astaire

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