The Great Race won the film an Oscar. In his Top 10 Favorite Comedies video, Doug Walker cited Jack Lemmon's performance as Professor Fate as a major influence for his "Nostalgia Critic" internet persona. The Great Race The Great Race is a 1965 American Technicolor slapstick comedy film starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood, directed by Blake Edwards, written by Blake Edwards and Arthur A. Ross, and with music by Henry Mancini and cinematography by Russell Harlan. The supporting cast includes Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Arthur O'Connell and Vivian Vance. The movie cost US$12 million (equivalent to $ million in ),
Jack Lemmon Should Happen to You". Lemmon worked with actresses such as Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Betty Grable, Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Lee Remick, Romy Schneider, Doris Day, Kim Novak, Judy Holliday, Rita Hayworth, June Allyson, Virna Lisi, Ann-Margret and Sophia Loren. He was close friends with actors Tony Curtis, Ernie Kovacs, Walter Matthau and Kevin Spacey. He made two films with Curtis, and fifteen with Matthau. Early in Lemmon's career he met comedian Ernie Kovacs while co-starring with him in "Operation Mad Ball". Lemmon and Kovacs became close friends and appeared together in two subsequent films, "Bell, Book and Candle" and