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Earthquake
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Trivia for
Earthquake (1974)

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  • When the movie played at Graumann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood in 1974 it was shown in "Sensurround" with heavy bass speakers set on the floor around the theater. Very soon after the opening, a giant net had to be rigged above the patrons because of fear the ornate ceiling decorations might break loose and fall on the audience below due to the low bass rumble of earthquake sequences.

  • Some of the scenes of panicking extras in the movie theater is footage from Torn Curtain (1966).

  • The "Hollywood Dam" featured in the film is actually known as the "Mulholland Dam", named after famed engineer William Mulholland. The nearly-identical St. Francis Dam, near present-day Valencia, California, actually collapsed due to a geological fault on 12 March 1928. This disaster killed over 450 people and ranks second highest in terms of loss of life (behind the 1906 San Francisco earthquake) in the history of California.

  • Before stereo television sound was commonplace, NBC aired the movie with the soundtrack simulcast on local FM radio stations so that viewers could recreate "SenSurround" at home.

  • Ava Gardner surprised director Mark Robson by insisting that she do her own stunt work, including dodging blocks of concrete and heavy steel pipes.

  • Shots of the "Black Tower" (a 12-story office building on the movie lot) swaying was accomplished by shooting its reflection in a mirror, and then warping the mirror back and forth. This sequence was actually shot as a test prior to production, and wound up in the final film as an "in" joke at Universal Studios' expense: at the time, the "Black Tower" actually housed Universal's top executives.

  • The movie that Rosa is watching in the theater is High Plains Drifter (1973).

  • Many scenes shot for the movie were left on the cutting room floor (over 30 minutes' worth). Notable scenes include: additional footage of Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and Lloyd Nolan (specifically, a sub plot involving a previous abortion by Gardner's character); George Kennedy (after his character, Lew Slade, is suspended by the police captain); Barry Sullivan and Kip Niven (whose seismologist characters survive the quake, and discuss the magnitude); and Geneviève Bujold (her character, Denise Marshall, shows up to a movie studio for her "bit part" in a movie, only to be turned away due to quake damage on the set). Additional stunt sequences during the earthquake were also deleted.

  • Ava Gardner was only seven years younger than Lorne Greene, who plays her father. (Greene was born in 1915, Gardner in 1922.)

  • For the television version, scenes of the fire engines pulling up to a building on fire after the foreshocks, are stock shots borrowed from the television series "Hawaii Five-O" (1968).

  • A sequel, "Earthquake II", was planned, and a first draft of the script was written by George Fox, who wrote the script for "Earthquake", but it never made it into development. The sequel follows several of the surviving characters of the original: George Kennedy; Victoria Principal; Richard Roundtree and Gabriel Dell, as they settle in San Francisco. The multi-tiered plot centers on a group of scientists trying to predict future earthquakes on the west coast, a corrupt builder constructing high rise apartments on unstable land, and the original characters adjusting to new relationships (Kennedy and Principal) and new business ventures (Roundtree and Dell). An unexpected, massive earthquake hits off the coast of San Francisco, leveling the city, as a tsunami threatens to wash the Bay Area off the map. Completed in late-1975, the script went through channels at Universal (up to Sid Sheinberg) and the project was active up until early-1977 ("EQII" and Rollercoaster (1977) were in pre-production simultaneously) but "EQII" project was killed. This original script was newly discovered in 2005 and details are available on "www.earthquakemovie.com".

  • The crash that motorcycle daredevil Miles Quade has coming out of the loop on the stunt track was not scripted, but an actual spill taken by the stuntman Bud Ekins. Ekins was uninjured and the crash was worked into the final cut.

  • The producer, Jennings Lang, offered a cameo role to his friend Walter Matthau, which Matthau accepted without compensation, on the condition that he be billed under his "real name" (which its not), "Walter Matuschanskyasky". Matthau's role was originally scripted as "a drunk sits at the end of the bar", which was expanded by writer George Fox, giving the character lines of dialogue (involving toasts to celebrities). When the film was completed, as agreed by Lang and Matthau, "The Drunk" was credited as "Walter Matuschanskayasky". This lead to a long-standing, but false, rumor that "Matuschanskayasky" was Matthau's real name.

  • In the scene where Stewart is running lines with Denise, the script he is holding is actually for "Earthquake", and is on the page for the scene being shown.

  • In a bizarre coincidence, the location on the first day of shooting was rocked by an earthquake. In an even more bizarre coincidence, an earthquake also struck the location where the last day of shooting occurred.

>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<

Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.

  • SPOILER: The original shooting script had Charlton Heston's character survive at the end of the film. However, Heston was so sick of having the hero survive all the time, he convinced the director to let his character perish in the end of the film.


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