FILM · 1956 · USA
Around the World in Eighty Days
82 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (82)
- #001
Around the World in Eighty Days created the idea of "cameo roles" as a way to invite established stars to take part in a production.
- #002
David Niven always said that Phileas Fogg was his favorite role.
- #003
The role of Passepartout was greatly expanded from the novel to suit the Mexican star Cantinflas. In the mid-1950s he was the richest film star in the world and commanded the highest fees in Latin countries.
- #004
Around the World in Eighty Days contained what was then the longest end-title sequence, at six minutes and twenty-one seconds. All the credits are shown at the end; the title is the final credit.
- #005
Producer Mike Todd obtained permission for the rocket-launch shot that appears at the beginning of the film. Todd directed the sequence.
- #006
In a magazine article published shortly after the film's release, Cantinflas said that one of the hardest things he had to do in the film was learn to ride the high-wheeled "velocipede" bicycle at the beginning.
- #007
The film used 146 sets built in six Hollywood studios, as well as sets in England, Hong Kong and Japan. It set many records. Cast and crew flew more than four million miles. The cast included 68,894 extras in 13 countries, and 74,685 costumes were designed, made or rented for the film. The 1,243 extras listed on its IMDb page (and in the original program book) were only the extras who worked on the film in Hollywood. Ninety animal handlers managed 8,552 animals (3,800 sheep, 2,448 buffalo, 950 donkeys, 800 horses, 512 monkeys, 17 bulls, 15 elephants, six skunks and four ostriches).
- #008
There was no gas balloon in the original novel, but the balloon remained an iconic image of the film.
- #009
Around the World in Eighty Days is generally considered the largest film project ever undertaken in Hollywood. Shooting was completed in 75 shooting days.
- #010
Ronald Colman came out of retirement to make his cameo.
- #011
Orson Welles was reportedly upset that Mike Todd did not cast him for a cameo appearance. Ten years earlier Welles had produced an ambitious stage version of the Jules Verne novel on Broadway, which also included music by Cole Porter. Todd was the original producer of that production but left the project, and Welles had to use his own money to continue. The musical, which opened at the Adelphi Theatre on 31 May 1946, closed after only 75 performances. When Todd turned the source material Welles had left on the stage into a critical and commercial film success, Welles admitted he was using quite a lot of sour grapes.
- #012
After winning the Oscar, producer Mike Todd rented Madison Square Garden and threw a huge party. More than 18,000 guests attended, and the celebration was often in danger of turning into total chaos. Todd said the party was a disaster for him.
- #013
About a week later, producer Mike Todd fired original director John Farrow. Todd quickly realized that a Michael Todd production could be directed by only one person, and that person would not be Farrow. Farrow nevertheless received a screenplay credit and won an Oscar for his trouble.
- #014
The role of the servant whom Phileas Fogg dismisses at the beginning of the film, played by Sir John Gielgud, was offered to Sir Laurence Olivier, who turned it down.
- #015
Producer Mike Todd was famous for being tight-fisted. S. J. Perelman reportedly demanded cash payment before delivering the pages of the screenplay.
- #016
When the film was shown in Calcutta cinemas in 1960, the entire rather long sequence in which Shirley MacLaine's character is rescued was cut from the film on the grounds that it was culturally or religiously offensive. When MacLaine appears in scenes after the cut portion, there is no explanation for her presence.
- #017
Gregory Peck was originally cast as the U.S. Cavalry officer. Producer Mike Todd felt Peck was not taking the role seriously enough and fired him.
- #018
Around the World in Eighty Days ran for three years, from 1956 to 1959, at the Rivoli Theatre at Todd-AO in New York City. In San Francisco it played for 94 weeks at the Coronet Theatre from December 26, 1956, to October 19, 1958, consistently setting the city record as the longest-running first-run film. In 1959 it was released in a general release version in the standard widescreen format.
- #019
When the film was first released, only S. J. Perelman received a screenplay credit. That changed after James Poe and John Farrow filed suit.
- #020
According to David Niven's agent, producer Mike Todd initially wanted Cary Grant to play Phileas Fogg, but gave up after six months of trying.
- #021
The outspoken film critic Roger Ebert would later cite Frank Sinatra's brief, silent appearance in the film as the archetypal celebrity cameo that contributes nothing.
- #022
Donna Reed was offered the role of Princess Aouda but turned it down. She had played an Indian maiden in The Far Horizons (1955).
- #023
Producer Mike Todd was worried about differences in skin tone among the various Native Americans hired for the film. He ordered a liquid dye to make them all look alike.
- #024
For the Spanish-dubbed version, Cantinflas voiced the character Passepartout.
- #025
At the time of shooting there were only nine Todd-AO cameras in existence, and all of them were used in the making of this film.
- #026
Contrary to popular belief, Marlene Dietrich's dress cost $3,900, not $300,000. A dress costing $3,900 in 1956 would cost $45,000 in 2024.
- #027
Producer Mike Todd had great difficulty financing this film. Production nearly came to a halt after he completed the big western sequence. Arthur Krim and Max E. Youngstein of United Artists looked at the existing footage, declared it a winner and agreed to finance the rest of the film.
- #028
Most of the costumes were supplied by the Western Costume Company in Hollywood. Wardrobe warehouses in London, Japan, Hong Kong and Spain also provided costumes for 1,243 extras.
- #029
This was the second Best Picture Oscar winner shot in a widescreen format, after On the Waterfront (1954). The first Best Picture winner, Wings (1927), contained some widescreen sequences, but in that case they were conventional images enlarged using special projection lenses, known as "Magnascope," only in selected theaters equipped for it.
- #030
At six minutes and twenty-one seconds, this was the longest title sequence of its time, designed by Saul Bass, the master of that particular art form. Although it has since become standard practice, delaying the credits until the end of the film was unheard of at the time. There were two reasons for this: first, producer Mike Todd wanted to start the film as small and confined as possible in order to create the awe-inspiring moment when the screen tripled in size. Second, with fifty stars in his glittering cast, Todd decided to use the end title sequence as a kind of map to help audiences reconstruct which cameo appearances occurred in which scenes. By ordering the credits chronologically according to their geographical locations, Todd successfully avoided any billing battles that might have arisen from his star-studded cast.
- #031
Producer Mike Todd, who had final control, banned the sale of popcorn in the theaters where this film was shown.
- #032
Producer Mike Todd invited Maurice Chevalier to make a cameo appearance. Chevalier wanted to be billed at the bottom of the cast list. Todd refused, so Chevalier turned down the offer.
- #033
Sir Peter Ustinov auditioned for the role of Inspector Wilbur Fix and later stated that Mike Todd had asked him to take it. However, 20th Century Fox, with whom he had a contract, wanted him to play Bob Matthews in 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). In the end he played neither, which he attributed to Fox's unwillingness to help the producer's Todd-AO widescreen process when they had invested in CinemaScope. Thirty years later he finally played Fix in Around the World in 80 Days (1989).
- #034
Shirley MacLaine became pregnant with her daughter Sachi Parker while shooting in Japan. She suffered terrible morning sickness during the filming of this movie, and even the sight of the color green strangely made her nauseous.
- #035
The locomotive used in the American train sequence did not work. The train was operated by a diesel-electric locomotive disguised as a baggage car. The tunnel was a cut made in rocks that were covered over for the shoot.
- #036
The film was presented in 35 mm for its London premiere. At the time there were no 70 mm-equipped cinemas in Britain, and exhibitors disliked the roadshow format. Eventually Rank agreed to use the nearby Astoria Charing Cross Road for a roadshow run. The film was projected in an anamorphic 35 mm format (not the same compression as CinemaScope) that produced a 2.2:1 aspect ratio on screen. At the time the British government imposed a film quota requiring that thirty percent of the year's films shown in UK cinemas be British. However, the law applied only to 35 mm, so special prints with 1 mm shaved off were produced, creating unique 34 mm prints that circumvented the quota rules and allowed the Astoria to run the film for nearly two years. The success of this roadshow presentation persuaded Rank and other cinema operators to install 70 mm (which also eliminated the quota) and join the roadshow caravan.
- #037
Only two or three visual effects shots appear in the film. These are the first shots of David Niven and Cantinflas in the balloon looking out over the Pyrenees.
- #038
According to Farley Granger in his autobiography "Include Me Out," producer Mike Todd filmed him as a gondolier on the Grand Canal while shooting in Venice, but the footage was cut from the final edit. Besides Italy, there are many countries notably missing from Phileas Fogg's journey, including much of the continents of Europe and Africa.
- #039
Buster Keaton's role here as a train conductor in the Wild West is a kind of homage to his best-known silent film classic The General (1926), in which his character's fate is tied to that of a Civil War-era locomotive.
- #040
Producer Mike Todd's original budget estimate was 3 million dollars. The final cost was about 6 million dollars, largely because of Todd's demands for realism, authenticity and location shooting.
- #041
Although widescreen photography had been the norm for more than three years, the film cleverly began in the outdated 1.37:1 Academy ratio and eventually expanded to the three-times-wider Todd-AO format to showcase the splendor of the new process. Mike Todd had used the same device at the beginning of This Is Cinerama (1952).
- #042
In French, Passepartout (or Passe-partout) can idiomatically mean "passkey" or "all-purpose." Passepartout helps Fogg in many situations. Literally the word means "pass everywhere" (passe partout), which may be a better explanation on the part of the French author Jules Verne.
- #043
David Niven lobbied producer Mike Todd unsuccessfully to cast Merle Oberon as Princess Aouda.
- #044
This was the last film for Robert Newton (Inspector Fix) and Harcourt Williams (Hinshaw).
- #045
Cantinflas's oddly shaped mustache may puzzle people. It is shaped like a bull's horn because Cantinflas was in fact a bullfighter. He performed all the bullfighting scenes without a stunt double, risking injury or even death, and had he been injured the production would have had to be postponed, but he insisted on doing the bullfighting.
- #046
Shirley MacLaine wrote that shooting a scene involving thousands of extras came to a halt because the prop man forgot to put the champagne bottle in the balloon along with David Niven and Cantinflas. This is unlikely, because it does not become apparent that the champagne is in the balloon until Fogg and Passepartout are airborne, at which point they have left the crowd far behind.
- #047
Victor Young's memorable Oscar-winning score for this film was so popular that it became the best-selling soundtrack album and later also a hit single when Bing Crosby wrote lyrics for it and recorded it. Unfortunately this was Young's last work, and he died before he could enjoy its success.
- #048
John Wayne was considered for the role of the US Cavalry Officer, but he turned the offer down.
- #049
Noël Coward was the first star to sign on to the project in Britain.
- #050
Because the roadshow run was so successful, the film did not go into general release until 1958. As a result, much of the promotional material, such as lobby cards, posters and photos, is dated 1958.
- #051
Korean American actor Philip Ahn plays the plain Hong Kong citizen with a flamboyant English accent. He had a long and successful career on both the big and small screens.
- #052
Some sources state that Ava Gardner had a cameo, but it is unclear whether she had this cameo and was cut from the film, or whether the report is mistaken. Other sources list her as a "Spectator" supposedly in the bullfighting scene, but this may be only a rumor.
- #053
In the original novel, Princess Aouda's Eastern attire is removed when Phileas Fogg and Passepartout rescue her from the sacrificial pyre. She is dressed in a gown, an otter-skin cloak and a large mantle, and she wears this outfit for the rest of her journey around the world. In this film, the story's love for her did not extend to rescuing her from her original dress and stripping her of her exoticism, so she keeps it for the journey.
- #054
Around the World in 80 Days (1956), in a year full of critical and commercial successes, swept all other contenders under the rug during awards season, taking Best Picture honors from the New York Film Critics, the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
- #055
In 1971 the film was re-released as a double feature with West Side Story (1961). Both films came to television the following year. Aired in September on CBS and in March on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), this film and West Side Story (1961) were both shown in the 1.33:1 pan-and-scan format, which ruined their original widescreen cinematography.
- #056
Fernandel was initially stunned to be offered such a small role.
- #057
Although it achieved enormous international success, it was not the highest-grossing film of 1956. That title belongs to Cecil B. De Mille's big-budget remake of his own 1923 classic The Ten Commandments (1956), starring Charlton Heston.
- #058
More than a dozen airlines, including Pan Am, TWA, Middle Eastern and Pakistan Air, served the actors, actresses and technicians on this film. Private pilot Paul Mantz arranged airline accommodations for producer Mike Todd.
- #059
It features eight Oscar winners: David Niven, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Coburn, Ronald Colman, Sir John Gielgud, Victor McLaglen, Sir John Mills and Frank Sinatra; and seven Oscar nominees: Charles Boyer, Marlene Dietrich, Trevor Howard, Glynis Johns, Robert Morley, Jack Oakie and Noël Coward.
- #060
For the longest title ever to win the Best Picture Oscar, it remained tied with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) until 2004, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) won. The winners with the shortest titles are Gigi (1958) and Argo (2012).
- #061
This film is the second Todd-AO production, shot at 24 frames per second (to produce the general-release 35 mm version) and 30 frames per second (to produce the 70 mm roadshow version). Both versions were shot on 65 mm negative with Todd-AO lenses. Sometimes two cameras were run side by side to capture the same shot, and sometimes the same camera was used for a second take at a changed speed. Some scenes without dialogue used the same take. The 35 mm version is presented in the traditional 2:1 squeezed anamorphic process; the 70 mm version is presented in Todd-AO.
- #062
Kevin McClory, who was an assistant director on The African Queen (1951) and helped create Thunderball (1965), also worked as an assistant director on this film.
- #063
Mike Todd, who developed the Todd-AO widescreen format, was looking for a project to showcase it. He turned to Around the World in Eighty Days, which had been attempted as a stage musical in 1946, directed by Orson Welles with music by Cole Porter. Todd was initially the producer on that production, but he was pushed out by Welles's insistence on using his own money. Unfortunately, it closed on Broadway after only 75 performances.
- #064
It was included on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of four hundred films nominated for the 100 Best American Films.
- #065
In the scene where the buffalo herd crosses the train tracks, the rails were laid haphazardly, with the wooden railroad ties placed at uneven intervals. Compare this with the regular spacing and normal rails in the shots of the train moving along the tracks. This shows that the buffalo crossing was staged on a set, not over real train tracks.
- #066
In 1980 United Artists sold the rights to this film to Warner Bros.
- #067
Jules Verne's novel describes Passepartout as a small Frenchman, which made Todd's decision to cast the Mexican comedian Cantinflas quite surprising. Todd regarded Cantinflas as the greatest living artist of the time and praised his talents as an actor, comedian, acrobat, musician and even bullfighter. At the time Cantinflas was the richest actor in the world, owned his own production company and had never appeared in an English-language film. Todd flew to Mexico and, in typical fashion, secured Cantinflas for the role within a week, sealing the deal with a handshake.
- #068
John Farrow directed roughly a week's worth of the Spanish scenes.
- #069
When shooting began, John Farrow was the director and Emmett Emerson was the first assistant director in London.
- #070
The production was regarded as chaotic, risky and borderline insane from start to finish. Despite every setback, the film was a major success and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, beating strong rivals such as The Ten Commandments, Giant, The King and I and Friendly Persuasion.
- #071
George Raft and Marlene Dietrich had previously worked together on Manpower (1941).
- #072
George Raft, who has a cameo in this film, would take another brief role in a further David Niven vehicle: Casino Royale (1967).
- #073
The European Spanish dub was made in 1957 with Cantinflas voicing himself, while the Mexican Spanish dub was made in 1993, the same year he died.
- #074
At the centre of the project was Michael Todd, one of the 20th century's most flamboyant and most abrasive showmen. Todd made only one film in his life, and that single film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, giving him a success rate unmatched in Hollywood history. Before producing the film, Todd had an eclectic career that included building sound stages in Hollywood's early days, staging burlesque shows, working as a Broadway showman and operating primarily as an entrepreneur. Todd was also part of the team that helped develop the Cinerama widescreen film system. He was widely known for his charm, fast talk, flamboyant personality and almost reckless self-confidence, which kept him likeable and always one step ahead of his creditors. The idea for the film came when Todd was at the lowest point of his career and came across a draft screenplay of Around the World in Eighty Days in the London office of the producer Sir Alexander Korda. Korda told him he had been trying to get the project going for years and considered it a total loss, and strongly advised Todd to stay away from it. Rather than being discouraged, Todd eventually acquired the rights to the property and, astonishingly, managed to put the film into production. Because Todd was a novice in the film industry and lacked sufficient funds for such a large undertaking, almost everyone expected the film to fail. The production was financed through constant improvisation, with Todd begging, borrowing and raising money from multiple sources. Todd hired the celebrated humorist S. J. Perelman to co-write the screenplay, a collaboration that proved extremely effective. Todd's biographer described Perelman as a perfect match, because he never objected when Todd threw out and rewrote dialogue that had taken all day to write. The combination of Perelman's wit and intelligence with Todd's showman's instincts resulted in a screenplay that fitted the tone of the production perfectly. John Farrow, who was originally to direct the film, left the project after realising that only one person could be in charge on a Michael Todd production. The directing job then passed to the British filmmaker Michael Anderson, who had directed only a few films at the time and had no experience of large-scale Hollywood productions. Todd believed that a young, intelligent director with good taste and no Hollywood background was the ideal choice. The only actor Todd envisioned for the role of Phileas Fogg was David Niven. David Niven later stated that Around the World in Eighty Days was his favourite role of his entire career.
- #075
Newton died of a heart attack only one month after completing his work on the film.
- #076
It was the first film for Valerie Smith, Joy Stewart and Joan Lora.
- #077
Sir John Gielgud played a manservant dismissed by Phileas Fogg (David Niven) at the start of the film. Gielgud also played a butler in Arthur (1981), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
- #078
Glynis Johns and Hermione Gingold, who play two "sporting" women (at roughly 01:57:00 in the film), later played Desirée Armfeldt and Madame Armfeldt at the 1973 Broadway premiere of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
- #079
Around the World in Eighty Days is based on the classic 1873 novel by the French author and futurist Jules Verne.
- #080
The film was presented in its original roadshow version with widescreen images and stereophonic sound, reinforcing its status as a major cinematic event.
- #081
Johnny Sekka (the man operating the electric fan in the Military Police Office) is not listed among the film's opening credits.
- #082
On 20 February 1962, during the Mercury programme, John Glenn aboard Friendship 7 became the first American to orbit the Earth, completing three orbits in four hours and 55 minutes.
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