The Great Race is a 1965 American Technicolor slapstick comedy film starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood, directed by Blake Edwards. Leslie is the classic hero – always dressed in white, handsome, ever-courteous, enormously talented and successful. Leslie’s nemesis, Fate, is the traditional melodramatic villain – usually dressed in black, sporting a black moustache and top hat, glowering at most everyone, maniacal evil laugh, grandiose plans to thwart the hero, and dogged by failure.