1634: “Somnium” by Johannes Kepler, considered one of the earliest sci-fi stories, is published in Latin.
1818: The novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley is published.
11/25/1864: Jules Verne publishes his first sci-fi novel, “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” in French.
1870s: The Industrial Revolution finds humans working with machinery more than ever before.
9/1/1902: “A Trip to the Moon” by French filmmaker George Méliès is released.
4/1908: Modern
Electrics, a magazine for radio enthusiasts, debuts. Editor Hugo Gernsback will later be influential in the realm of science fiction.
1913: More collaboration with machinery occurs with Henry Ford’s implementation of the “assembly line.”
1918: “The Master Mystery,” a 15-chapter serial starring Harry Houdini, presents an early movie robot.
1920: The word “robot” (a derivative of “robota,” a Slavic term for “forced labor”) is introduced in the play “R.U.R.” by Karel Capek.
What does the Industrial Revolution have to do with “The Jetsons?” More than we think. Real-life events related to technology often coincided with the sunny, or scary, predictions in science fiction during the Space Age .. .
1/10/1927: Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece “Metropolis” premieres.
1/7/1929: The comic strip “Buck Rogers” debuts, paving the way for “Flash Gordon” and other such strips.
1934: A Buck Rogers reprint in Famous Funnies #3 is the first sci-fi in a comic book.
1926: Amazing Stories, the first magazine to focus on science fiction, is published by Gernsback.
2/20/1936: William Cameron Menzies’ sci-fi film “Things to Come” premieres.
10/30/1938: Listeners mistake Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” for an actual invasion; panic ensues.
1/1940: Planet Comics, the first comic book entirely devoted to science fiction, debuts.
12/7/1941: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 and bringing America
8/6/1945: The Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Three days later, the Bockscar drops one on Nagasaki.
6/24/1947: Pilot Kenneth Arnold claims to witness disc-like objects flying in Washington state, triggering the UFO craze.
6/8/1949: George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” is published.
2/9/1950: Sen. Joseph McCarthy delivers his opening salvo in an address: “The State Department is infested with communists!”
10/2/1950: “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” premieres on CBS.
4/27/1951: “The Thing From Another World” with James Arness as an alien premieres.
9/18/1951: “The Day the Earth Stood Still” starring Michael Rennie as the alien Klaatu and Patricia Neal as an Earth woman premieres.
6/5/1953: The 3D film “It Came From Outer Space” starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush as an Earth couple who witness a spaceship crash premieres.
6/10/1955: “This Island Earth” starring Faith Domergue and Rex Reason as scientists abducted by aliens premieres.
2/5/1956: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter as a couple outrunning alien invaders premieres.
3/3/1956: “Forbidden Planet” starring Robby the Robot, plus various humans, premieres.
10/4/1957: Russia launches the Sputnik satellite into space, igniting the so-called “Space Race.”
10/2/1959: “The Twilight Zone” hosted by show-runner/writer Rod Serling premieres. “Zone” features many sci-fi episodes.
9/23/1962: “The Jetsons,” HannaBarbera’s animated series about a family living in a utopian future, premieres.
10/16/1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis, a 13-day standoff between Russia and the U.S. over Russian missiles in Cuba, commences. President Kennedy averts war by ordering a naval blockade instead of an air strike.
9/16/1963: “The Outer Limits,” a sci-fi anthology series with a penchant for monsters, premieres.
9/29/1963: The sitcom
“My Favorite Martian” starring Ray Walston as a visiting Martian “hosted” by Bill Bixby premieres.
1/29/1964: Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” a Doomsday black comedy with Peter Sellers in three roles, premieres.
4/22/1964: The 196465 New York World’s Fair opens. The Fair is marked by futuristic architecture and tech demonstrations.
9/14/1964: “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison premieres.
9/15/1965: TV’s “Lost in Space” premieres, and follows the adventures of the Space Family Robinson (not to mention a snake-inthe-grass “doctor”).
10/29/1965: The smart alecky alien called the Great Gazoo debuts on “The Flintstones.”
9/9/1966: “The Time Tunnel” starring Robert Colbert and James Darren as government time travelers premieres.
9/8/1966: “Star Trek” starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock premieres.
1/10/1067: “The Invaders,” starring Roy Thinnes as an architect who uncovers an alien takeover plot, premieres.
9/22/1968: “Land of the Giants,” about explorers who land on a planet of gargantuan people, premieres. Shown: Cast member Don Marshall.
2/8/1968: “Planet of the Apes,” starring Charlton Heston as an astronaut in a topsyturvy world, premieres.
4/3/1968: Stanley Kubrick’s dazzling scifi epic “2001: A Space Odyssey” premieres.
7/16/1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
THEREAFTER: Technological advancements make life easier ... or do they? When everything is done for you, what’s left for you to do?
Does it surprise that space travel was depicted as early as the 17th century? And robots in 1872? And time travel in 1895?
There’s nothing new under Alpha Centauri. So when was science fiction born? It started with the earliest mass medium (not counting cave paintings, smoke signals, or drums). The printing press, invented in 15th-century Germany, was initially used for religious documents like bibles and psalms. At first, you see, the printed word wasn’t meant for commoners.
Newspapers steadily changed all that during the 19th century, in the days of the Old West. Published accounts of the exploits of outlaws such as Jesse James and William H. Bonney (a.k.a. Billy the Kid) attracted readership, hence circulation. Finally, the wants and needs of the common man were beginning to matter.
By the 1860s, a peripherally related print product nicknamed the “dime western” continued to feed into the public’s fascination with Old West figures. The material found in The Buffalo Bill Stories, New Buffalo Bill Weekly and The Dime Library, though based on real people, was increasingly fictionalized. Thus, genre fiction itself was popularized. The first proper pulp fiction magazine is believed to be The Argosy (1896) edited by Frank A. Munsey, a descendant of his newspaper The Golden Argosy. Later came the first acknowledged sciencefiction magazine. Amazing Stories debuted in 1926. Artists like Alex Schomburg, Earle K. Bergey, Walter Popp, R.G. Jones, Milton Luros, Frank R. Paul, Norman Saunders and Frank Kelly Freas created excitement on the covers of Astonishing Stories, Astounding Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Tales, Super Science Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Planet Stories, Future Science Fiction and many others.
Robotics came into existence via real-life phenoms such as the Industrial Revolution in America (beginning in the 1870s) and Henry Ford’s implementation of the “assembly line” (beginning in 1913). These movements found humans using machinery to do the heavy lifting, both actual and metaphorical. Perhaps a few less bodies would be required, but it was all for the greater good, right?
Buck Rogers by Dick Calkins. Opposite: Pulps shaped the genre.
Another print format, the novel, helped establish the tenets of the fledgling genre. There are at least four writers of early science fiction whose names still ring a bell with contemporary readers.
“Frankenstein” (1818), by teenaged British writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), presents one of the earliest sci-fi concepts, that of a man creating life, though Shelley was vague about the actual science behind the act.
French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905), sometimes called the “father of science fiction,” cranked out “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864), “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865), “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870), “Around the Moon” (1872), “Off on a Comet” (1877) and “Master of the World” (1904).
British writer H.G. Wells (1866-1946) peered into the future with “The Time Machine” (1895), “The Invisible Man” (1897), “The War of the Worlds” (1898), “The First Men in the Moon” (1901) and “The Shape of Things to Come” (1933).
British writer Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), the creator of Sherlock Holmes, published “The Lost World” (1912), in which an expedition in South America encounters prehistoric creatures.
The authors of early science fiction were influenced by what went on around them. The more that technology advanced in their respective eras, the more they theorized about what was next.
WHAT ULTIMATELY MADE SCIENCE FICTION
accessible to consumers of all ages was that most democratic of forms, the “funnies.” Back in the olden days, these were serialized syndicated newspaper comic strips published in blackand-white on weekdays and in color on Sundays. As it happened, the funnies were the precursors of comic books.
Michigan-born Dick Calkins (18941962) was the founding illustrator of “Buck Rogers,” which debuted in 1929. New Rochelle native Alex Raymond (1909-1956) kicked off “Flash Gordon” in 1934. Suddenly, little tykes who had yet to master reading skills could follow science fiction stories, deepening the fan pool. In a sense, the medium of film brought sci-fi out of the mind’s eye and into the physical world. French filmmaker Georges Méliès is best known for writing and directing the 1902 short “A Trip to the Moon” (which was inspired by Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”). Significantly, visual effects that would later influence sci-fi films can be found in other shorts by Méliès, a magician who made dozens, if not hundreds, of so-called “trick” films. Two early feature-length films — one silent, one a “talkie” — pointed to what science fiction could be: Germany’s “Metropolis” (1927) directed by Fritz Lang, and England’s “Things to Come” (1936) directed by William Cameron Menzies. Both films visualized dark projections of the future which remain unsurpassed, despite advances in graphic technology in the ensuing decades. (Take that, Transformers.)
ON OCT. 30, 1938, THOUSANDS OF LISTENERS
mistook Orson Welles’ radio dramatization loosely based on H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” for a bona fide broadcast of an actual invasion by Mars. “Fake Radio ‘War’ Stirs Terror Through U.S.” cried a Daily News headline. This instance of mass hypnosis seemed like a dry run for something that would occur nine years later, when the first of many flying saucer sightings was reported. By the 1940s, a tonal chasm in science fiction had developed between two mediums, print and film. Readers’ imaginations were challenged by the pulps and by books, particularly George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel “1984.” But sci-fi films of the period were still largely limited to kids’ stuff, to Saturday afternoon serials with chintzy rayguns, boxy robots, and rear-screen constellations. Outside forces didn’t help. Mass media in the Forties was often preoccupied with World War II. It took a while — perhaps a period of collective healing and soul-searching following the war — for science fiction cinema to return to that early promise.
‘Metropolis’ (1927)
THE CITY OF METROPOLIS IS A SHINING UTOPIA of dizzying skyscapers, dazzling lights, and the utmost in ultra modern design and infrastructure. There are theaters and stadiums and libraries and lecture halls. Industrialists luxuriate in monolith ic offices with breathtaking views and attentive staffs. Their sons play track-and-field games in a vast, pristine arena. To let off steam, the boys visit the Eternal Gardens, a lush, meticulously maintained playground at which beautiful young women in opu lent costumes frolic for their amusement and perhaps a kiss. (They’re not prostitutes, exactly, but they come close.)
All of this happens above ground. Below the surface lies the Workers City, where exhausted men fill 10-hour shifts, marching wearily to a workplace that seems more like a prison. Throughout their grueling, dehumanizing shift, they become veritable parts, cogs, in the machines. Even their marching follows a strange shuffling rhythm; the purposeful to-and-fro as they trudge is devised for maximum efficiency. Tellingly, the departing shift moves slower than the arriving one. After 10 hours of pulling the same levers over and over, or manning the dreaded Clock, they are
FILMED IN GERMANY OVER A 17-month period with 36,000 extras and 200,000 costumes, director Fritz Lang’s mas terpiece “Metropolis,” shot by Karl Freund, was one of the most expensive films of the silent period. But its dismal performance at the box office led to “Metropolis” being shortened — butchered, really — by indifferent editors, in order to bring its 150-minute running time down to 90. Lang’s original edit was lost for decades, but the film has since been almost completely reconstructed, albeit with some scratchy (though imperative) footage.
THE
FILM’S PIVOT COMES
early, in the Eternal Gardens sequence. Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) is a carefree, privileged young man, and the son of Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), the powerful “master” of Metropolis. Freder is about to lay a smacker on one of the young ladies in the garden. Just before their lips meet, there is an intrusion. In walks saintly Maria (Brigitte Helm) surrounded by dirty-faced children in rags who are confused and skittish. “Look! These are your brothers!” Maria tells them. Freder is immediately smitten with Maria. But moreso, his subconscious is imprinted with her use of the word “brothers” — the idea that he and his fellow sons of industry could be brothers to these ragamuffins.
be this mediator. The kiss he shares with Maria is observed by Joh and Rotwang. That does it. Joh then orders Rotwang to make the robot look exactly like Maria. The sequence in which Rotwang projects Maria’s face and body onto the Maschinenmensch is stunning for its futuristic hardware and special effects.
SPEAKING OF THINGS THAT are ahead of their time: The sequence in which the fake Maria — that is, the robot made to look perfectly human — dances in a nightclub in front of an audience of tuxedo-clad swells is jaw-dropping, thanks to Helm’s daring costume (pasties in 1927?) and her precient, sexually charged dancing. Helm pulls off quite an acting feat as the fake Maria, exhorting the workers to rebel against their bosses; cripple the energy source of Metropolis; and flood the Workers City. Lang claimed that “Metropolis” was conceived the first time he beheld the New York City skyline, in 1924. Co-written by Lang and his then-wife and collaborator Thea Von Harbou, “Metropolis” is many things at once: a science fiction epic; a romance; a treatise on class; a reflection of the Industrial Revolution; and a window into post-World War I Germany prior to the Great Depression and the ascent of Adolf Hitler.
The film’s guiding principle appears twice, and refers to both the downtrodden workers and the ruthless industrialists: “The mediator between head and hand must be the heart.”
Serial thrills with “Radar Men From the Moon,” above, and “Flash Gordon,” right.
SERIOUS SCIENCE FICTION FILMS LIKE “METROPOLIS” and “Things to Come” were anomalies, generally speaking. The sci-fi genre mostly flourished in the weekly movie “serials.” The best-remembered are “Flash Gordon” (1936), “Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars” (1938), “Buck Rogers” (1939) and “Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe” (1940), all starring Buster Crabbe, an Olympic gold medalist swimmer.
Many serials were predicated on sci-fi concepts, with superweapons a recurring threat, and robots a lumbering presence. See “The Vanishing Shadow” (1934); “The Phantom Empire” (1935) with Gene Autry; “The Phantom Creeps” (1939) with Bela Lugosi; “Mysterious Dr. Satan” (1940); “The Monster and the Ape” (1945); “The Purple Monster Strikes” (1945); “King of the Rocket Men” (1949); “Zombies of the Stratosphere” (1952); “Radar Men From the Moon” (1952); and “The Lost Planet” (1953).
HOUSE PETERS JR. MADE HIS FILM DEBUT IN THE FIRST
Flash Gordon serial. One of Peters’ anecdotes from the shoot underscores the dangers of working in low-budget fare at a breakneck pace.
“I played a shark man,” Peters (1916-2008) told me in 2001.
“Buster and I became very friendly. In fact, we did a fight scene in a (water) tank together. On the Universal backlot, there was a 50,000gallon water tank. It was about, oh, 30 feet wide and 15 or 18 feet high. The lights would be propped on the top part, and then they had big windows on the sides for the cameras to set up and film underwater scenes.
“So Buster and I did this underwater fight. We had to dive down and literally fight underwater. I was dressed in nothing but a leather bathing suit. It had snowed that particular week — we didn’t normally have that — so it was colder than hell. And God almighty, it’s the only time I ever drank straight whiskey on a set. After we fought, the prop man just gave it to me and said, ‘You’re blue with cold. Both you and Buster are.’ ”
The following day, Crabbe made a point of seeking out Peters.
Recalled Peters: “Buster said, ‘House, come on. I want to show you something where we worked yesterday.’ As we went down through the backlot, it got muddier and muddier and muddier. Lo and behold, we worked in that tank the day before it went out! When it went out, it flooded the whole lot. And God almighty, the window was out and the boards had parted and slipped away and the rug and the jagged glass there — well, we would have been sucked through it and cut to ribbons. It was a real thriller. We were very silent as we walked back to the set. I’ll tell you, we were lucky to be alive.”
By 2036, a gleaming techno Shangra-La is realized in “Things to Come,” scripted
‘
Things to Come’ (1936)
IT CAN GET A BIT TALKY, A BIT PONDEROUS.
But William Cameron Menzies’ “Things to Come” is nothing if not prescient. It made accurate predictions about futures both near (World War II and the Blitzkrieg) and far (a global pandemic, live streaming), in a script by the great sci-fi novelist H.G. Wells.
An English burg is used as a microcosm for the world. Naming it Everytown clearly marks “Things to Come” as an allegory.
Raymond Massey, a Hollywood star in a British production, played the dual roles of John Cabal, a businessman who becomes a flyer in the war, and Oswald Cabal, his grandson who oversees a utopian society. The film covers a 96-year period in four chunks.
1940: In real life, World War II began in 1939. “Things to Come,” a 1936 film, was only off by one year. Its prelude juxtaposes the joy of the Christmas season against the looming certainty of war. The drone of enemy bombers drowns out the carolers. Everytown is decimated. John is a conscientious warrior, attempting to rescue an enemy he shoots down. 1966: The war peters out, but has left much of the world in ruins. A highly contagious malady called the “Wandering Sickness” takes out half the population. Vigilantes, led by a man we come to know as Rudolf (Ralph Richardson), shoot sufferers in the street.
Raymond Massey as Oswald Cabal
1970: The Wandering Sickness has finally receded. Pompous Rudolf has declared himself “the Chief” of Everytown, strutting around in a ridiculous militaristic getup heavy on the fleece and feathers, topped with a Liberace cape. When Cabal lands a plane in Everytown to spread the gospel of peace and progress, Rudolf sees him as a threat, while his lady Roxana (Margaretta Scott) envies his worldliness. Cabal’s anti-war group then sweeps in. 2036: Everytown is transformed into an underground utopia. In one of the movie’s many magnificent montages, we see the step-by-step creation of a new society over the course of 66 years, boiled down to six minutes — compulsory viewing for sci-fi buffs. But along comes Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke), who deplores the dehumanization he believes comes with progress. Says Theo to a wary listener: “Suppose someone cried halt! Stop this progress!” Theo makes his case in a live address broadcast on a screen the height of a high-rise. Once again, the stability of Everytown is threatened. So what is the message of this film that brims with social commentary? Among many contenders is this: Just when things are bad enough but at least tolerable, some loudmouth wanna-be dictator will come along to screw it up.
“The firestorm in Tokyo killed 100, 000 people. Mostly civilians. I worry about America when we do these things and no one protests.”
The above is a scripted quote from Christopher Nolan’s Oscarwinning film “Oppenheimer” (2023). It was spoken by actor James Remar, who played Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War.
Will Roberts as General George C. Marshall answered him: “Pearl Harbor and three years of brutal conflict in the Pacific buys a lot of latitude with the American public.”
“COLLATERAL DAMAGE” IS A CHILLING TERM FOR civilians killed in the course of an approved military operation. When the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Bockscar dropped one with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT on Nagasaki three days later, it was rationalized as having saved lives. An objective third party might raise the question: Whose lives?
An estimated 224,000 people were killed in the bombings, many of them civilians. It may not be forthright to say “They started it,” knowing as we do that civilians can often be pawns in the hands of their leaders. Americans were happy that the war was over. But who could be happy about all of that death and destruction?
History recorded telling rhetoric in the run-up to the bombing. From a report distributed by Army Air Force intelligence officer Harry Cunningham one month earlier: “The entire population of Japan is a proper military target. THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN. We are making war and making it in the all-out fashion which saves American lives, shortens the agony which war is, and seeks to bring about an enduring peace.”
When President Truman announced the first bombing in an address to the American people, he waxed poetic about the “one bomb”: “Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. … The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold, and the end is not yet. With this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. ... It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.”
Initially, certain American politicians and pundits echoed Truman’s tough talk. Some espoused the use of atomic bombs to keep errant nations in line, back when we hadn’t dreamed that this fearsome technology might be developed by other nations.
But in 1950, not long after the Soviet Union successfully tested such a weapon, Truman was still shooting from the hip. During a press conference that November, the president hinted that the United States may resort to the use of atomic weapons to end fighting in Korea and stem the spread of communism in Asia. After stating that the U.S. would take “whatever steps were necessary,” Truman was asked if that included the use of an atomic bomb. “That includes every weapon that we have,” he responded.
Were there naysayers? Physicist Joseph Rotblat walked away from the Manhattan Project once he learned that Germany had abandoned hope of developing an atomic bomb. In 1995, Rotblat became a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (along with the organization devoted to arms reduction which he co-founded).
But in that early period — during America’s honeymoon with the bomb — to have expressed ambivalence meant risking being painted as unpatriotic. One by one, more countries developed nuclear weapons: the Soviets in 1949, the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960, China in 1964, and so on. The scene was set for the protracted period of mass neurosis which followed. An atmosphere of mistrust and “othering” was the perfect storm for the Cold War and the Red Scare of the Forties and Fifties.
FOR A TIME AFTER THE BOMBINGS, THERE WAS a weird-in-retrospect trend in which the word “atom” took on a life of its own. (Mind you, America was still being sold on the splendors of atomic power, even while the threat of nuclear war grew as other nations began developing the technology.)
The word atom became commonplace in the titles of products, toys, movies, even comic books. This somewhat cynical commercialism is one more thing that makes the Atomic Age seem so strange and almost dreamlike. To think, the word atom itself became so powerful, and had infiltrated our collective subconscious to such a degree, that it commanded our attention. It gave us pause. And it sometimes made our wallets lighter.
Household products included Atomic Dish Detergent (“Have a blast in your kitchen!”); Caria Radium’s Medicinal Mud skin balms (“Proved by analysis to contain a greater degree of radioactivity”); Gold Eye’s Atomic Needles and Threader kit; and “atomic eyes”-patterned tableware (a must for the savvy hostess).
Movie theaters screened the nuclear-war-themed “On the Beach” (1959), “The Atomic Submarine” (1959), “Hiroshima Mon Amour” (1959), “Fail Safe” (1964), and Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of black comedy, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb” (1964). Meanwhile, Japanese audiences saw dramatizations of the bombings in “Children of Hiroshima” (1952) and “Hiroshima” (1953).
The horror and sci-fi genres produced the serial “Atom Man vs. Superman” (1950); “Bride of the Monster” (1955), originally titled “Bride of the Atom” (Bela Lugosi utters that phrase in the film); “Frankenstein 1970” (1958), in which Boris Karloff as the last surviving Frankenstein attains an atomic reactor; Italy’s “Atom Age Vampire” (1960); “The Day the Earth Caught Fire” (1961); and Japan’s “Frankenstein Conquers the World” (1966), which is set in Hiroshima and depicts the 1945 bombing. (Huh?)
Jazz great Count Basie’s 1958 album “The Atomic Mr. Basie” has a mushroom cloud on its cover. It won two Grammys.
ONCE THE TECHNOLOGY FELL INTO THE HANDS of the Soviet Union (thanks in large part to their spying at Los Alamos), fretting over the bomb generated many survivalist books and pamphlets with titles like “If an A-Bomb Falls,” “How to Survive an Atomic Bomb” and “Atomic Bombing: How to Protect Yourself.” (One tip: Don’t run; there’s no time. Just drop facedown and hope for the best.) Bert the Turtle made surviving nuclear war fun in the kid-targeted “Duck and Cover” campaign.
The so-called “father of the atomic bomb,” physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), struggled with guilt about overseeing the Manhattan Project. During an Oct. 25, 1945 summit between Oppenheimer and Truman at the Oval Office, the president apparently expected the scientist to run a victory lap. Instead, Oppenheimer told Truman, “I feel I have blood on my
During a 1965 interview with CBS News, Oppenheimer was asked if he felt lingering guilt. “The ending of the war by these means, certainly cruel, was not undertaken lightly,” he said. “I think when you play a meaningful part in bringing about the death of over 100,000 people, and the injury of a comparable number, you naturally don’t think of that with ease.” Oppenheimer, a chain smoker, died of throat cancer two years later at age 62.
WHEN INCUMBENT DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT
Lyndon B. Johnson ran against Republican challenger Barry Goldwater in 1964, Johnson’s campaign aired an infamous TV commercial now known as “the Daisy ad” or just “Daisy.” The spot, which aired on Sept. 7 of that year, shows an adorable little girl (Monique Corzilius, then 3) whose plucking of daisy petals is interrupted by a countdown followed by a mushroom cloud.
“These are the stakes, to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark,” says LBJ in voiceover.
The implication was that Goldwater was more likely to push America into an unwinable nuclear war than Johnson. But the ad was so shocking, and so effective, that the strong and immediate response it garnered drove Johnson’s team to pull it off the air. The campaign ran Daisy only once, but it has never been forgotten.
By then another chilling term, “mutually assured destruction,” had crept into the national conversation. It described the terrible possibility that the United States and Russia could launch their respective nuclear weapons at one another simultaneously. If this ever happened, there would be no turning back … and nothing
The LBJ campaign ran its 1964 “Daisy” ad only once.
“The State Department is infested with communists!”
That’s what Sen. Joseph McCarthy told the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. It was Feb. 9, 1950, back when the Republican senator from Wisconsin wasn’t exactly a household name. That would change virtually overnight.
He told the ladies: “I have here in my hand a list of 205 — a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
The exact number of State Dept. communists on McCarthy’s list would fluctuate, and the senator never made it public. But the desired effect was achieved: McCarthy’s star was on the rise.
Over the next nearly five years, McCarthy made a big noise by painting fellow Americans as “pink” (communist sympathizers), “red” (communists proper), or “card-carrying communists” (the worst kind, because they’re so brazen, they actually walk around carrying cards that say “I am a communist”).
From a distance of many decades, the so-named Cold War and Red Scare which dominated the American zeitgeist following World War II seem like different names for the same phenomenon.
The Cold War refers to the chronic state of mutual mistrust between the governments of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (You know, with memorable moments like Russian premier Nikita Krushchev banging his shoe at the United Nations in 1960, or the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.)
The Red Scare was a predictable outgrowth of the Cold War. Stoked paranoia over “the growing threat of Communism” — in quotes because that exact phrase was ubiquitous in politics and media — instilled fear and divided our nation.
There was a strong “in your mind” aspect to both movements. The Cold War was “cold” because it didn’t involve literal warfare between the two superpowers ... yet. The Red Scare had next-door neighbors casting suspicious eyes upon one another, and ordinary folks feeling uneasy in their own homes. Ah, those Nifty Fifties.
“INVESTIGATING
SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS
SINCE 1938” could have been the slogan of the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1946, a year after the end of World War II, the HUAC attained permanent status ... and the Cold War was on. Hollywood became a favored target of the committee. One can’t help but suspect that this was because, cynically put, Hollywood was populated with famous (thereby headline-friendly) people. This phenomenon spilled into Hollywood’s actual product. After all, the ticket-buying public — pummeled with a daily dose of salacious headlines filled with accusations — could scarcely resist movies with titles like “Conspirator” (1949), “I Married a Communist” (1949), “The Red Menace” (1949), “Guilty of Treason” (1949), and “I Was a Communist for the FBI” (1951).
Director Elia Kazan (“On the Waterfront”) cooperated with the HUAC in 1952, naming eight fellow Group Theatre members who were once communists (as Kazan was). It was a stain on his career. When Kazan received a special Oscar in 1999, not everyone in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that evening stood for his ovation.
Actor Sterling Hayden, who served with distinction as a Marine during the war, cooperated with the HUAC in 1951 and regretted it for the rest of his days. Actor Eddie Albert, who was awarded a Bronze Star for rescuing 27 Marines, was blacklisted.
BROOKLYN BUS DRIVER RALPH KRAMDEN (JACKIE GLEASON) asks his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) if she’s ready to see the homemade getup he’ll wear to the Raccoon Lodge costume contest. Ralph strolls out sporting dark goggles, a soup pot hat, black boots and loud print pajamas festooned with fauxelectronic gizmos. Incredulous Alice asks her husband what he’s supposed to be.
Ralph: “The man from space!”
Alice: “Oh, so that’s what the man from space looks like?”
Ralph: “Aren’t you up on current events? Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you read comic books? That’s the trouble with you — you don’t know the latest developments.”
Alice: “I don’t know the latest developments? Who is it that lets your pants out every other day?”
This Season 1 show from the so-called “Classic 39” episodes of the seminal TV comedy “The Honeymooners” (1955-56) aired on New Year’s Eve 1955. The show provides a time-capsule glimpse into the extent to which outer space had invaded, so to speak, the American zeitgeist by the middle 1950s. And this was not the first sci-fi reference in “The Honeymooners.” In the series premiere, which also aired in ’55, Ralph’s neighbor and best friend, simpleminded sewer worker Ed Norton (Art Carney), whips off his usual pork pie hat to don a space helmet with a wobbly antenna, in order to watch his favorite TV show, “Captain Video and His Video Rangers.” Now that’s a devoted fan.
The decade’s other pioneering sitcom, “I Love Lucy” (1951-57), had Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Ethel (Vivian Vance) wearing Martian costumes atop the Empire State Building for a publicity stunt, in Season 3, Episode 23 (which aired in 1954). The cinematographer for that episode, Karl Freund, also shot the silent German sci-fi masterpiece “Metropolis” (1927). Just saying.
A third sitcom classic, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” got in on the outer space fun with a 1963 episode. Plot: Comedy writer Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) watches a late-night broadcast of a sci-fi movie while his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) hides under the covers to muffle the creepy theremin score. Rob’s synopsis sounds like a Klaatu thing: “Y’see, the Planet Twilo sent this emissary Kolak down to Earth to get us to stop foolin’ around up in space. He tried to get in the U.N. Building, but they threw him out.”
The next day, Rob becomes convinced Laura has transformed into a Twiloite — especially when she reveals an extra pair of eyes on the back of her head. All Twiloites have, gasp, four eyes!
MORE THAN 15 SCI-FI SERIES AIRED DURING THE 1950s. Serial retreads were popular across the TV landscape with “Flash Gordon,” “Buck Rogers” (featuring future Oscar winner Eva Marie Saint as Wilma Deering), and a 1955 TV edit of the 1953 serial “Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe.”
The earliest original sci-fi series emulated the serial spirit: “Captain Video and His Video Rangers,” “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” and “Space Patrol.” All three won cereal sponsorships and inspired tie-in products such as games, figures and toy vehicles.
These were followed by “Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers,” “Rocky Jones, Space Ranger” (whose real draw was Sally Mansfield as navigator Vena Ray), “Captain Z-Ro” and a liveaction/ puppet hybrid titled “Johnny Jupiter.”
Adult-friendlier material was presented in “Science Fiction Theater” (an anthology) and “Men Into Space.” Philadelphia’s “Atom Squad” is said to have explored Cold War topics such as the threat of nuclear weapons. Alas, no episodes are known to survive.
What set the science fiction TV series of the 1950s apart?
“In our show, the characters were always on the right track,” said Ed Kemmer, the star of “Space Patrol.” “There was a code. They would solve the problem — without killing anyone, incidentally. It’s something that should be done a bit more today.”
“Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers” (1954)
“Men Into Space” (1959-60)
“Commando Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe” (1955)
FRANKIE THOMAS
“THIS IS THE AGE OF THE CONQUEST of space! 2350 A.D., the world beyond tomorrow!” So exhorted an announcer in Fifties-perfect tones, as one of TV’s earliest sci-fi series debuted.
Before “Lost in Space” and “Star Trek,” there was “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” (1950-55), 15-minute episodes that aired absolutely live in glorious shades of gray.
The show starred Frankie Thomas as heroic Tom Corbett, Jan Merlin as hotheaded Roger Manning and Al Markim as friendly alien Astro, all wearing Brylcreemed Fifties haircuts.
“Corbett” was inspired by Robert A. Heinlein’s 1948 novel “Space Cadet.” Of course, the TV production made some tweaks.
As Thomas (1921-2006) told me in 2000: “They pictured (Heinlein’s protagonist Matt) as the youngest of three cadets. Astro and Roger were ahead of him and watching out for him. Then they changed the whole idea around. Tom became, not the little guy, but the older. That’s the concept we took before the cameras.”
THE ENSEMBLE CLICKED RIGHT away, although they were thrown together.
“I didn’t know Jan Merlin; I didn’t even know he existed,” Thomas said. “The same goes for Al Markim and Ed Brice (who played Captain Strong). And they probably didn’t know me; maybe they saw me in pictures or something.
“We worked well together. Some combinations, they just click. Our vibes were right. Al just fell into the character of the Venusian. And Jan was the wise guy. He wasn’t happy unless he was playing that kind of a part.”
From there, “Tom Corbett”-mania seemed to catch on overnight among viewers.
“By the second week, we had a very good idea that we had made it big,” Thomas recalled.
“Because all of the disc jockeys on the radio started using our expressions: ‘Don’t blow your jets,’ ‘Smoke and rockets,’ ‘Spacemen’s luck.’ Suddenly, we were everywhere.
“On the weekends, I was making appearances all over the country: Philadelphia, Boston, Akron, Ohio, Detroit. We were big in Detroit. The first appearance I made was in Philadelphia, and there were 10,000 kids with their parents there. It was a line that ran out all through the store. They didn’t expect this.”
“Corbett’s” hearty cast performed their own stunts live under hot lights and daunting conditions, with no edits or retakes.
“At the very beginning, the lights would burn you up,” Thomas said. “But actually, the lights got a little bit better later on.
“We never had any stuntmen. We staged all of our own fights.
That’s not so hard if you’ve had motion picture experience. That’s one thing you learn out in Hollywood: how to stage a fight.”
Not helping matters were the unreliable space helmets.
“Those helmets gave us a lot of trouble,” Thomas said.
“Half the time, they tried to come apart. And we’re holding them up, pretending we’re dialing our radio connections. But we were actually holding our helmets together!”
Speaking of the helmets, Thomas received a pleasant surprise on July 20, 1969, as he watched the historic moon landing on TV.
Recalled the actor: “When the first man landed on the moon and he came out of that hatch and said, ‘A giant leap for mankind’ — just like the rest of this country, I was watching it live. And I said, ‘Oh my God! They look like our outfits!’ And they did. They looked exactly like what we wore on our little TV show.”
“That’s the way it is with the foreigners that come over here — pushy, grabby semi-Americans!”
No, that’s not a politician’s anti-immigrant stump speech.
It’s what one suburbanite (Sandy Kenyon) says to another (Joseph Bernard) in “The Shelter,” a 1961 TV episode.
Creator/ host Rod Serling’s 1959-64 anthology series “The Twilight Zone” often presented deep-dive reflections on the human condition disguised as science fiction and fantasy.
In “The Shelter,” one of 92 shows written by Serling (19241975), close-knit neighbors panic after the government warns that missiles might be heading their way. Only one household has a fallout shelter, with limited air and supplies, sparking a heated debate about which families “deserve” to survive.
It’s thinky stuff. And the episode’s enduring relevance makes an interesting point. “The Twilight Zone” first aired during a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was cranking, and fear of nuclear war was pervasive. But decades later, many episodes still feel like contemporary commentary.
It’s the writing. Watching an episode feels like reading a short story. Serling, a World War II veteran, didn’t merely saunter in front of the camera to deliver a kinda suave, kinda creepy intro while gesturing with a half-smoked cigarette. He charted the show’s literary course, weaving in themes of social consciousness, the futility of war, and death.
“The Twilight Zone” also dramatized scripts by Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Earl Hamner Jr. and Ray Bradbury. Directors included Richard Donner, Ida Lupino, Don Siegel, Robert Florey, Christian Nyby and Don Weis.
The anthology presented up-and-comers (Robert Duvall, Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Bronson, Warren Oates, Robert Redford, Telly Savalas, Jack Klugman); seasoned vets (William Demarest, Joan Blondell, Cedric Hardwicke, Jackie Cooper, Burgess Meredith); and, curiously, comedians giving poignant performances (Buster Keaton, Ed Wynn, Art Carney, Jonathan Winters).
Enduring episodes: A former S.S. captain (Oscar Beregi) returns to Dachau in “Deaths-Head Revisited”; surviving soldiers in opposing armies (Montgomery and Bronson) meet in a war-torn city in “Two”; the sun never rises on the morning a man (Terry Becker) is to be hung for killing a bigot, possibly in self-defense, in “I Am the Night — Color Me Black”; paranoia upends a bucolic hamlet in the Cold War allegory “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.”
And “TZ” loved its twist endings, such as those found in “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?,” “To Serve Man,” “The Fugitive,” “The Invaders” and “The After Hours.”
HORROR NERDS LOVE “THE OUTER LIMITS” for its many “bears”— the code word for “monsters” used behind the scenes by the show’s creators. “TOL” was generous with its bears, though the series was sci-fi at heart.
Its monsters were legion: the negative man from “The Galaxy Being”; the scaly, long-limbed alien from “The Architects of Fear”; the big-brained evolved human from “The Sixth Finger”; the blobby-faced guy from “The Man Who Was Never Born”; the one-eyed alien from “O.B.I.T.”; the crawling space bugs with horrible faces from “The Zanti Misfits”; the goggle-eyed man from “The Mutant.”
Any one of these monsters could have carried an entire movie, let alone an hour of TV counting commercials.
So why is it that two monster-free “Outer Limits” episodes haunted my dreams ever since I witnessed their premiere broadcasts at age 5 in 1963? What was so scary about them?
“The Man With the Power,” written by Jerome Ross and directed by Laslo Benedek, packs a lot in its preamble:
“In the course of centuries, man has devoured the Earth itself. The Machine Age has dried up the seas of oil. Industry has consumed the heartlands of coal. The Atomic Age has plundered the rare elements — uranium, cobalt, plutonium — leaving behind worthless deposits of lead and ashes. Starvation is at hand. Only here, in the void of space, is there a new source of atomic power. Above us, in the debris of the solar system, in the meteorites and asteroids, are the materials needed to drive the reactors. Yet in their distant, silent orbits, these chunks of matter are beyond the reach of man, beyond the reach of human hands ... but not beyond the reach of the human mind.”
It sounds like an end-of-the-world movie, right? But really, “The Man With the Power” is about a man with no power. Harold J. Finley (Donald Pleasence) is a mild-mannered university professor who yearns to do something great. But everywhere he turns, Harold is disrespected. His wife Vera (Priscilla Morrill) tells him: “Harold, you’re a little man. A nobody.” His boss at the university, Dean Radcliffe (Edward Platt), won’t allow him break his contract and resign, in order to devote himself full-time to a certain scientific pursuit.
But without even realizing he is doing it, Harold visits retribution upon his wife and the dean, in the form of a sort of “pop-up” storm cloud that emits crawling electrical currents, and reduces its targets to fire and ash.
How? Why? The Asteroid Mining Project seeks a way to transport uranium-rich shards from the asteroid belt to Earth for much needed, well, power. Harold underwent surgery to implant a “link gate” in his frontal lobe. Since the operation, he’s trained himself to lift heavy meteorites by mere thought.
The group’s leader (Frank Maxwell) is Harold’s biggest cheerleader who proclaims: “I think he’s discovered a means of gravity control far beyond any power we know.”
But the group’s psychiatrist (John Marley) warns Harold of dangers that may lurk in his subconscious. Still, Harold’s surgery is deemed such a success that an astronaut named Steve (Fred Beir) will undergo the same operation.
Harold invites Steve home for lunch. Alas, he should have run the idea past his wife first. Vera, who is on a ladder washing windows, is cold to Steve and humiliates Harold in front of his new young friend. Steve makes an excuse and departs. Harold follows him and apologizes on behalf of his wife, while in the background, that weird electrical cloud yanks Vera off her ladder ... without Harold’s knowledge.
We know that Harold sent the murder cloud from the dark recesses of his subconscious. But he doesn’t know it. Yet.
THEN THERE WAS “IT CRAWLED OUT OF THE Woodwork,” written by “Outer Limits” producer Joseph Stefano and directed by Gerd Oswald, with cinematography by three-time Oscar winner Conrad Hall.
Two brothers travel to Los Angeles. The elder, Stuart (Michael Forest), is a scientist who is about to start a new job at a mysterious facility called the Norco Energy Research Commission. His younger brother, Jory (Scott Marlowe), has left college to tag along, and maybe make a fresh start himself.
On the evening before Stuart is to begin work, the boys pull up to the front gate at Norco. A security guard shoos them away, but not before slipping Jory a matchbook on which he has inscribed: DON’T COME BACK NORCO DOOMED. The guard will regret his candor within a very short period.
The next day, Stuart reports to work. He is interviewed by Dr. Block (Kent Smith), who exudes icy charm and speaks with a German accent. On the wall behind Block is a framed blowup of a mushroom cloud. (Make of that what you will.)
Stuart next meets his new co-worker, Dr. Stephanie Linden (Joan Camden). Then Stephanie kills Stuart by sending him down a double-locked hallway where a scary, powerful energy force destroys every living thing in its path.
“It Crawled Out of the Woodwork”
“I,
Robot”
IN THE MEANTIME, JORY HAS SCORED A NEW girlfriend (BarBara Luna), but wonders where his brother is.
Stuart later turns up at the motel he and Jory checked into. (Wait, isn’t he dead?) He is wearing a small electrical unit strapped around his ribcage. Hmmm ... we saw this exact same unit on the Norco guard and on Stephanie, and we’re starting to put it together: These people were killed and somehow resuscitated in furtherance of the Norco agenda!
Stuart and Jory get into a tussle; Stuart falls in the bathtub; the unit short-circuits; and Stuart is killed. Again.
Investigating is no-nonsense Sgt. Siroleo (Edward Asner), who follows clues back to Norco. The detective is seriously rattled when he witnesses the fearsome energy force in action.
(For the middle 1960s, it’s quite the FX marvel.)
Siroleo realizes that Block is a power-mad sociopath bent on discovering how to create power. But, the detective asks him, are such questions justified at the cost of human life?
Block’s reply explains his mushroom cloud office art: “The wonderful questions are always answered at the cost of human life. Remember the atom bomb?”
“The Man With the Power”
“Soldier”
OTHER MEMORABLE “BEAR-FREE” EPISODES include “I, Robot” (automaton Adam Link is tried for murder, based on a 1939 pulp fiction story); “Soldier” (a warrior from the future materializes in the present day, in a script by Harlan Ellison); and the two-parter “The Inheritors” (an alien creates a haven for handicapped and persecuted children).
Thoughtful science fiction was always the mission of “The Outer Limits”; the monsters were merely a welcome bonus.
In truth, “TOL” was about how suggestion permeates the viewer’s subconscious. Consider the noir lighting and cinematography, and the foreboding score by Dominic Frontiere. Vic Perrin’s narration wasn’t delivered in a voice of alarm, like an anchorman in some 1950s UFO movie. But often, the content of Perrin’s preambles sounded an alarm.
It all conspired to make “The Outer Limits,” at its best, the kind of show that you could believe, that filled you with dread, that made you feel not altogether safe.
I remember those emotions so well. When, at the end of a given episode, Perrin invariably said, “We now return control of your television set to you” … man, it was a relief.
(1962-63)
IT WAS ONLY A CARTOON, RIGHT? BUT HANNABarbera’s “The Jetsons” permeated society in myriad ways. Many of the show’s predictions of the future came true, making this silly animated series seem like the friggin’ Oracle of Delphi.
At its root, “The Jetsons” was the opposite number of “The Flintstones” (1960-66), also from William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The Flintstones were a “modern Stone Age family,” thus modern conveniences were recast in prehistoric terms. (“Cameras” housed long-beaked birds who chiseled images on slate.)
The “Jetsons” flipped that equation. Set 100 years in the future, the show put a futuristic spin on said conveniences, and enshrined the prevailing ideal of the “nuclear family”: 9-to-5 dad, stay-athome “housewife,” daughter, son, dog, and suburban bliss in the form of luxuries that common folks rarely had access to during the Depression or World War II: refrigerators (as opposed to “ice boxes”), washers, dryers, automatic dishwashers.
So when Jane Jetson whips up breakfast, she doesn’t so much as crack an egg. She merely programs the Foodarackacycle, though the act results in a condition called “push-button fingers.”
THE JETSONS RESIDE IN “GOOGIE”-INFLUENCED Orbit City, where people are transported through pneumatic tubes, and flying cars cause traffic jams in the sky. George works as a “digital index operator” at Spacely Sprockets; Judy attends Orbit High School; Elroy attends the Little Dipper School.
George was voiced by George O’Hanlon (1912-1989), the star of 63 “Joe McDoakes” comedies between 1942 and 1956. Jane was voiced by Penny Singleton (1908-2003), who played the title heroine Blondie in 28 movies (based on the comic strip by Chic Young) between 1938 and 1950. Judy was voiced by Janet Waldo (1919-2016), who also voiced Penelope Pitstop and Josie of the Pussycats. Elroy was played by Daws Butler (1916-1988), who voiced Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear. George’s boss Mr. Spacely was played by Mel Blanc (1908-1989), who voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam and hundreds more.
STUFF THAT CAME TRUE
Jane Jetson’s mask — the one she hastily donned before taking a video phone call — came true in the real world, in the form of Zoom filters purported to make people more “attractive.” Other Jetson-isms that actually happened: robot assistants; autonomous vacuum cleaners; “people-moving” sidewalks; chatbots; food in pill form; robotic food prep; “smart” appliances; jetpacks; huge flatscreen televisions; doggie treadmills; “vertical cities”; and video phone wristwatches (which were first predicted by Dick Tracy).
In the pilot, as George and Jane shop for a robot maid, they are shown an “old demonstration model with a lot of mileage.” Jean Vander Pyl supplied the voice of that old model: Rosey.
“The first show I was called to do was when the Jetsons hired a maid,” Vander Pyl (1919-1999) told me in a 1994 interview.
“That script was very interesting, because I had more voices to do on that first ‘Jetsons’ script than I’d ever done before on any one show. I did seven different characters.
Like other imported “Supermarionation” shows created by British puppeteers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (“Supercar,” “Stingray,” “Thunderbirds”), “Fireball XL5” was interactive in a sense. It invited kiddies to participate in a conspiracy.
We could see the strings on the puppets; they weren’t airbrushed out via CGI. So we knew we were watching a puppet show — at first, anyway. But before long, we got so lost in the story and characters, those strings vanished.
The one-season series first aired in England from 1962 until ’63; NBC aired it here on Saturday mornings from 1963 until ’65.
“Fireball XL5” follows the adventures of Steve Zodiac (voiced by Paul Maxwell), a fair-haired space jockey who embarks on lifesaving and peacekeeping missions for the do-gooding World Space Patrol in his enormous silver rocket ship, the XL5.
Steve’s kind-of girlfriend is a co-worker, Dr. Venus (voiced by Sylvia Anderson), who speaks with a French accent and wears a Jackie Kennedy “flip” hair-do, which was all the rage back then. Venus’ repartee with Steve is by-the-book professional, but there are allusions to dates, and Steve is always at her waterfront digs. (His bosses even telephone him there, as if — wink, wink — everyone is aware of what’s going on between those two.)
The third wheel aboard the XL5 is Professor Matic (voiced by David Graham channeling Walter Brennan), an excitable old codger with “Coke-bottle” specs who is always ready with folksy wit.
There are two non-human riders on the XL5. Robert, a robot made of see-through plastic who speaks in a British monotone, is Steve’s trusty co-pilot. Zoonie, Venus’ pet, is a goofy alien who annoys everyone ... except for, of course, Venus.
Home base is Space City, a military station on Planet Earth with a rotating skyscraper and one busy launching track. Ships are launched horizontally, not vertically, on a long track that ends with an upward trajectory. A series of “BOOMs!” increases the rockets’ speed along the track — a procedure that will enthrall 8-year-old boys of all ages. Space City denizens include cranky, no-nonsense Commander Zero (John Bluthal) and flustered Montgomery Clift lookalike Lieutenant Ninety (Graham).
THE
SHOWS
ARE IN BLACK-AND-WHITE,
LENDING them a palpable moodiness in episodes set on dark, misty planets. Barry Gray’s score would be at home in any live-action thriller.
The closing credits leave you bopping, with a radio-ready tune sung by Don Spencer that rocketed (I couldn’t resist) to #32 in England. Sample lyrics: “I wish I was a spaceman / the fastest guy alive / I’d take you ’round the universe / in Fireball XL5.”
Hot on the heels of “Fireball XL5” was “Planet Patrol” (1963), another British sci-fi puppet show imported to American television. Created by Roberta Leigh (who earlier worked for the Andersons), “Planet Patrol” was set in New York of 2100, where “men from Earth, Mars and Venus live and work as guardians of peace.”
Three sci-fi sitcoms about “others” living among regular humans were aired by CBS.
“My Favorite Martian” (1963-66) starred Ray Walston as a Martian who crash-lands on Earth. Bill Bixby played Tim O’Hara, the reporter who finds him (in the midst of covering a U.S. space mission, yet). Tim brings the alien visitor back to his bachelor pad — and the scrutiny of his landlady, Mrs. Brown (Pamela Britton). While the Martian repairs his space ship, Tim tells everyone that he’s his Uncle Martin. (Get it? “Martin” sounds like “Martian?”) Uncle Martin has weird powers. He can become invisible, move objects around with the mere point of a finger, and read minds.
Tanner on electro-theremin, with its other worldly sound. Tanner played electro-ther on the Beach Boys’ hit “Good Vibrations.”
Cummings as a psychiatrist and Julie Newmar as his drop-dead-sexy charge, a robot named Rhoda. The results were hot and cold. (Alas, Cummings’ 1950s style didn’t quite jibe with this emerging sitcom subgenre.)
for which she was improbably nominat ed for a Golden Globe. I once commented to her that “My Living Doll” seemed something like a prototype for “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie.” The actress’s response made me feel like I was being toyed with, as the Catwoman — Newmar’s most famous role — had done so memorably with Batman:
“That’s stupendous of you to know that! How did you figure that out? Do you get savvy information? Tell me!”
All three shows, I continued, depicted a recurring male fantasy from the days of rampant chauvinism: having a beautiful woman at your command.
“That’s it,” Newmar came back, still pulling my leg, I believe. “At your command. You’ve got it. No one knew that. But with that type of show — woman’s taking a different position, isn’t she? She doesn’t shine the light on the man so much as try to hold her own when she can.”
Amen. Said Newmar of her chemistry with Cummings: “It was an interesting difference. He played a psychiatrist. Robert Cummings had just come off his very successful ‘Bob’ (1955-59), the photographer show. I don’t know how to answer that in a nutshell. Let’s put it this way: We almost made a good pair. I know I tried hard enough. It was the most challenging role I’ve probably ever had. I loved it. I did my best.”
“It’s About Time” (1966-67) was predicated on time travel, and therefore qualifies as sci-fi. Astronauts Mac (Frank Aletter) and Hector (Jack Mullaney) crashland in prehistoric times, where they encounter cave couple Gronk (Joe E. Ross) and Shag (Imogene Coca). The show had its moments, and hired a raft of veterans. (Mike Mazurki! Blossom Rock!) But the ratings were so dismal that halfway through the sole sea son, the cave folks followed the astronauts back to ... the present day. And so, Gronk and Shag gawked at skyscrapers.
Irwin Allen introduced Space Age kids to science fiction.
He accomplished this with four family-friendly prime-time TV series. “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” (1964-68) served up undersea thrills based on Allen’s 1961 movie. In “Lost in Space” (1965-68), a family in outer space adopts their would-be murderer and an alien chimp. “The Time Tunnel” (196667) depicted top secret, governmentfunded time travel. In “Land of the Giants” (1968-70), space explorers are exiled on a planet where everyone, and everything, is comparatively giant. (Cue the humongous telephone prop.)
THE NEW YORK CITY NATIVE (1916-1991) arrived in Los Angeles when he was 22, and leapfrogged from one entertain ment-related field to another: radio personality, syndicated columnist, TV panel show producer. Allen broke into films as an associate producer on “Where Danger Lives” (1950), a respected noir starring Robert Mitchum.
Recalled Jonathan Harris (“Lost in Space”): “Get a load of this. Irwin’s spies would call him up and say, ‘They only shot a quarter of a page!’ You know, time is money. So Irwin would come down to the set and walk over to whoever the director was, and do this.”
(Harris then pointed to his watch and made a threatening face.)
“Irwin,” Harris added with a wry chuckle, “was a director killer.’’
As a writer-director, Allen evinced a flair for all-star extravaganzas (“The Big Circus,” “The Story of Mankind”) then prized by studios as they sought to compete with the then-new medium of television.
A string of three such films with sci-fi themes pointed to Allen’s future: “The Lost World” (1960), “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” (1961) and “Five Weeks in a Balloon” (1962). Allen returned to television with “Voyage,” which kicked off his six years of TV sci-fi dominance.
ALLEN WAS A HANDS-ON show-runner, frequently dropping in on his sets (though he was not always a welcome presence). He often hired actors without having them “read” for him; he preferred watching them on film. By the time you actually met with Allen, he was probably ready with an offer.
Recalled Deanna Lund (“Land of the Giants”): “When Irwin hired me, he hired me sort of sight-unseen. I’d just finished doing ‘Tony Rome’ (1967) with Frank Sinatra, and they sent the dailies. Irwin hired me after seeing me on the screen with red hair, which I dyed for ‘Tony Rome’; I was playing a lesbian hooker, a stripper. So he insisted that my hair stay red for the series, because the other girl (on the show) was blond. But I wasn’t a redhead; I was blond.
Allen was also an imperious character. Everyone in his shows had an “Irwin story.”
Recalled David Hedison (“Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”): “When Irwin would come on the set, there was always something wrong. He didn’t like this, he didn’t like that. He was always making waves about nothing.
“He used to wear an aftershave cologne called Aramis, which I can’t stand. I’d be on the set and I’d be going through a scene, and I’d suddenly get this whiff of Aramis and I’d go, ‘Oh my God, he’s on the set!’ And then everybody got uptight and nervous.”
“So every time we had a break or went on hiatus, I would streak my hair — put blond streaks in it. I thought I was being subtle, but Irwin would nail me every time.
He’d send me back to the hairdresser. He’d say, ‘I bought a redhead, and goddammit, you’re gonna be a redhead!’ ”
MOST OF THESE STORIES (MORE will follow in the pages ahead) were told with endearment. The consensus was that Irwin was a tyrant, but never a monster.
“I tell you, he was really a generous man,” Hedison said. “He was very sweet. He wanted me badly for the part. I don’t know why, but he did. We got on well. We’d get together socially. If he had some sort of party going on, he would always invite me.”
Harris did a taunting impression of Allen, but grew to respect the man’s work ethic.
“These days, we have writerproducers who not only can’t write, they can’t produce either, as you know if you watch television,” the actor said. “But Irwin produced. Make no mistake about that. Every ounce of it. He was able to do that.
‘Time Tunnel, ‘Land of the Giants,’ ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’ — he was into that. I have great admiration for that, because I’m a professional too. And I admire and respond to that kind of intense professionalism.”
‘VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA’
DAVID HE DISON
HE RELISHED ACTING WITH RICHARD BASEHART, and took his lumps during many action and FX sequences.
“I got so many bruises doing that show,” David Hedison (19272019) told me of starring in the sci-fi adventure series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” when we spoke in 1998.
“You know, explosions and falling over. Some spark would hit you in the eye or the cheek or whatever. There was danger there.
“The technicians were fairly careful to make sure the actors were all right. But all kinds of stuff went on. Even though they did have stunt people, many times the stunt people couldn’t just get in there and do the shot. It had to be the main character.”
As for his co-star Basehart (1914-1984): “Working with Richard Baseheart for four years was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. He was such a fine actor. We were totally different people. He was very much of an introvert. I think I was more of an extrovert. But he and I got on famously. We had very good chemistry in our work situation. I think it showed on the screen.”
Richard Basehart
The interior of the Seaview — the high-tech submarine Hedison navigated for four seasons — was recycled from Irwin Allen’s 1961 movie of the same title.
“The set was huge,” Hedison recalled. “It was impressive. You could pull the set apart in various places. Because usually, we didn’t have the whole thing assembled at once, so we would be working in one corner of it or another. Of course, you got the effects on film from everything that was done on second-unit — the water stuff or the Seaview bouncing about in the water and all those effects — plus the music and sound effects. Put together, it was pretty exciting.”
During the run of the series, “Voyage” settled into a sort of monster-of-the-week format. Did that ever get tedious?
“Well, it was four years; it was a lot of the same old thing,” Hedison admitted. “I was very upset with the sameness and the monsters and whatever, especially in the fourth year.
“But we had so many good scripts. That made up for it. When you knew a good script was coming along, you sort of went through the garbage always looking forward to that next one, which was going to be quite good. So it was fine. Especially working with Richard and a good cast and crew.”
Another downside was the dearth of female characters.
“I must say, I did miss not having had more women on the show,” Hedison said. “I think one of the reasons was that Irwin just liked men who would come in, wipe some makeup on their faces for 10 minutes, and get on with the show.”
It must have felt like Hedison was on an oil rig.
“Yes, exactly,” the actor said, nodding. “That is a perfect analogy.”
“Voyage” leading man Hedison in 1998.
Photo by Kathy Voglesong
JUNE LOCKHART
AS MATRIARCH OF THE SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON, June Lockhart sealed her place as one of television’s all-time moms — as if she hadn’t already done that with “Lassie.”
Lockhart (born 1925) began her career as a child. When her actor parents (Gene and Kathleen Lockhart) played the Cratchits in “A Christmas Carol” (1938), June was cast as one of their kids. Irwin Allen offered the “Lost in Space” role to Lockhart while she was shooting a guest shot in another of his sci-fi TV series.
As the actress told me in 1998: “I had done a ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’ (episode). Irwin came down after having seen the first days’ rushes and said, ‘We’re going to do another series. Do you want to do one?’ I had just come off of ‘Lassie.’ It had been five or six months, during which time I had been working constantly, doing guest episodes on different shows.
“He said, ‘Would you like to do it? It’s called “Space Family Robinson.” ’ I said, ‘Yes, let me read the script.’ I read it and I could see that this was a lovely part. I was the first one cast.”
But her “Lost in Space” role didn’t work out as planned.
“Maureen Robinson was supposed to be a biophysicist on ‘Lost in Space.’ That certainly got lost,” Lockhart said dryly.
“It was not fully developed, obviously, except that every once in a while, you would see me with a clipboard. Maureen was sort of in charge of running the ranch when everybody was out in the Chariot (vehicle), because of the age of the young people.”
THE ADVENTURE ASPECT OF THE SHOW HELD appeal for Lockhart: “It really fulfilled a dream for me. As a child, my fantasy had been to be Dale to Flash Gordon. Oh, yes. That was my favorite comic. I pictured myself as Dale, and here I was, living it — within my profession, in effect.”
As for what Lockhart brought to Maureen: “We all have innate characteristics which are part of our makeup that one brings to a role. I think I brought that image of the stable, loving, affectionate mother who is intelligent and able to perhaps be an advisor to the kids.”
Lockhart admitted that she felt maternal toward Bill Mumy. Said the actress: “Billy would call me Cara Mia, which he got from Guy Williams, who used to call me that.
“We were very affectionate with each other, all of us. It was really lovely to be in that kind of an atmosphere.”
Were there any special perks to being a space mom on TV?
“One time, I went to Mission Control, to NASA, and it wound up being the most remarkable experience,” Lockhart recalled.
“I spent the whole day at NASA, and I also had the protocol chief and various astronauts and flight directors with me during the entire course of the day. And I cannot tell you how many people I met in the space program who said, ‘Do you know that it was “Lost In Space” that started me on this, which became my career?’ I received a letter from the protocol officer since. She said she still meets people who’ve said, ‘Watching that show — that’s why I’m in the space administration now.’
“So that is really profound, when you consider that we started ‘Lost in Space’ just after the first few flights, manned flights. It was really quite an experience.”
“Space” mom June Lockhart in 1993.
Photo by Kathy Voglesong
BILL MUMY
ONE OF THE FOUR MALE PASSENGERS OF the Jupiter 2 fired the raygun that vanquished Blinky, the giant, one-eyed monster who terrorized the Earthling vis itors to his rocky planet in Season 1 of “Lost in Space.”
Was that raygun fired by John Robinson? Don West? Zachary Smith? Or Will Robinson?
If you guessed Will, the resourceful little tyke among the aforementioned grown-up men, you understand a crucial dynamic of the beloved science fiction series.
Played by Bill Mumy, Will Robinson was an avatar for young viewers. Though he was a small fry, he was also brave, smart, quick-thinking, and curious. He paid attention. So when John and Don were threatened by Blinky, it was Will who grabbed the raygun and made the shot that allowed he and his fellow humans to fight aliens another day.
AS A CHILD ACTOR IN MOVIES, Mumy played Jimmy Stewart’s son in “Dear Brigitte” (1965), which co-starred French actress Brigitte Bardot. Mumy assured me that he wasn’t so young that Bardot’s charms were lost on him.
“Not at all,” Mumy (born 1954), told me in 1993. “I was the first American actor to receive an onscreen kiss from Brigitte Bardot. I always thought that was a very cool little reality.”
Mumy did much TV, appearing in “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and as boyhood Darren Stevens on “Bewitched.”
“I loved doing ‘Bewitched.’ I loved playing Darren,” he said. “I had a huge crush on Elizabeth Montgomery. And I loved that I was in on the secret: I was one of the very few people who knew that Samantha was a witch. And then I got to play her husband! Which is a great Trivial Pursuit question: ‘Name the three actors who played Darren.’ Because I’m one of them.”
Then billed as “Billy” Mumy, the actor said he was excited to be cast in “Lost in Space” because he is a fan of superhero comic books.
“Getting to portray Will Robinson was like being one of the Legion of Superheroes, you know?” said Mumy, referring to DC Comics’ superteam saga set in the 30th century.
“I’ve always been a huge comic book fan and collector, and ‘Lost in Space’ was like being a superhero. You had your colorful costume. You had a raygun. You had a robot.
“And the character of Will Robinson — he was the protagonist who got to save everybody’s butt week after week. I mean, there was nothing about Will that wasn’t cool to me. I loved Will.”
MANY, INCLUDING MUMY, POINT TO the “Lost in Space” pilot (which was cut into the first five episodes) as the high point of the series.
“It was big and it was intense,” Mumy recalled. “When you’re making a pilot, everybody’s really on their best, trying to get the best out of the crew. Everybody’s really pushing it to the limit. Obviously, it was the most expensive pilot ever made up to that point in time. Irwin Allen directed it himself.
“Think about it: One minute, you read the script. The next minute, you’re there, and here’s this Chariot, and it really works! And here are these unbelievable-looking aliens. I mean, (football star) Lamar Lundy in that cyclops suit looked great. We were out on the backlot of Fox, which unfortunately is no longer there; it’s Century City now. We were out there in that moat, this big, aquatic backlot with this Chariot floating through it and coming right out onto the land.
“I loved that pilot. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. The jet pack? Angela (Cartwright) and I just had a wonderful time. In those scenes where we were supposed to be getting drenched in the Chariot, we were really man. We had a huge water fight that everybody got cranky about.”
The pilot, though sometimes arduous, united the “Lost in Space” cast.
“The cast bonded very quickly,” Mumy said. “Everyone got along well. Irwin knew what he wanted and he got it.”
When it was break time, did Mumy get to play around the giant rocks or the sets?
“Well, I didn’t really have a lot of time to play,” the actor said. “I had Angela as a peer, so it wasn’t like I was stranded without someone my own age that I could relate to. I loved the time that we spent together.”
LEONARD NIMOY
A SUGGESTION AT THE RIGHT MOMENT HELPED solidify Leonard Nimoy’s approach to the role of Mr. Spock.
He recalled: “In the first episode we shot, there was some object in space that was blocking the Enterprise. Bill (Shatner) was saying, ‘Warp 3! Warp 3! This is the captain speaking!’ and that sort of thing. And I had one word to say: ‘Fascinating.’
“So (director) Joe Sargent said to me, ‘You be different. Let everyone else’s adrenaline pump. You’re a scientist. Keep cool.’
“And so I just said: ‘Fascinating.’ It may seem like a little thing, but it helped me get a handle on my character real fast.”
Nimoy (1931-2015) originated the role of Spock, the Vulcan first officer of the USS Enterprise. (I attended a Q&A with the actor in 1991, and spoke with him during a 1994 conference-call interview.)
Before long, Nimoy knew Spock better than “Star Trek’s” writers. In Episode 4 (“The Enemy Within,” 1966), the script called for Spock to slug Capt. Kirk with the butt-end of a phaser.
“That was all right for ‘Gunsmoke,’ but Spock wouldn’t do that,” Nimoy said. “Thus the ‘Vulcan nerve pinch’ was born.” (Thereafter, said Nimoy, writers referred to it in scripts simply as the “VNP.”)
Said Nimoy of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry: “Gene and I had a very complex relationship. It was probably more like father and son than employer and employee. We were critical of each other at various times, and had our moments of frustration with each other.
“I am certainly capable of being a complex and complicated human being, and so was Gene.”
NBC canceled “Star Trek” after two seasons, but a massive writein campaign rescued the series for a third, and final, season. The last of 78 episodes was broadcast on June 3, 1969.
“I had mixed feelings about it being over,” Nimoy said. “There was a lot of good work, but we also made our share of turkeys, particularly in the third season. It was time to let it go and move on.”
IF YOU THOUGHT “STAR TREK” WAS NIMOY’S genre debut, think again. “My first contact with science fiction was in 1950 or ’51,” he pointed out. “I acted in what was then called a serial; it was a 12-chapter story produced by Republic Pictures to be shown in movie theaters in episodes of 15 minutes each week. They were the classic cliffhangers, where at the end of each episode, the hero or heroine was in terrible trouble, and you had to come back to the theater next Saturday to find out what happened to her or him.
“The one that I was involved in was called ‘Zombies of the Stratosphere’ (1952). Three of us came in a cigar-shaped ship that left a trail of smoke behind, and landed on Earth with a couple of .38 Colt revolvers and a stolen pickup truck. We were going to take over the planet. And that was called science fiction.
“So, I think sci-fi has come a long way. I think it’s made a mark as a much more acceptable kind of literary form than it used to be.”
Top left: Nimoy as Mr. Spock. Left: The actor in 1991.
Nichelle Nichols’ anecdote never loses its power or significance.
When Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. learned that the actress was planning to leave “Star Trek” (on which she played communications officer Lt. Uhura) at the end of Season 1, King told her: “You cannot.” Thankfully, Nichols heeded King’s plea.
Even as late as 1966, with the then-recent passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, it was unheard of for a Black actress to play an officer on TV. Along came Gene Roddenberry, who envisioned a diverse crew on the bridge of the Enterprise.
In a 2010 interview for the Television Academy Foundation, Nichols (1932-2022) recalled giving Roddenberry her resignation one Friday: “Gene says, ‘You can’t do that.’ … Take the weekend, Nichelle, and think about it. It’s more than you think it is.’ ”
The next day, Nichols appeared at a celebrity fundraiser. “The organizer came over and said, ‘Miss Nichols, there’s someone here who said he is your biggest fan, and he’s desperate to meet you.’ I turn, and instead of a ‘fan,’ there’s this face that the world knows, with this beautiful smile on it. And I remember thinking, ‘Whoever that fan is, is going to have to wait. Because Dr. Martin Luther King, my leader, is walking toward me not 10 feet away.’ ”
According to Nichols, King then said: “Yes, Miss Nichols, I am that fan. I am your greatest fan, and my family are your greatest fans. As a matter of fact, this is the only show on television that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch, because it’s on past their bedtime. We admire you greatly, you know.’ ”
Nichols got up the courage to tell King she was quitting the show.
“He said, ‘You cannot.’ … He said, ‘For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, but who can go into space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers.’
“I could say nothing. I just stood there, realizing every word that he was saying was the truth. He said, ‘Gene Roddenberry has opened a door for the world to see us. If you leave, that door can be closed. Because your role is not a Black role. And it’s not a female role. He can fill it with anything, including an alien.’ And at that moment, the world tilted for me.”
Nichols played Uhura in all three seasons of “Star Trek” and in six movies between 1979 and 1991. “My life’s never been the same since,” she said, “and I never regretted it.”
DeForest Kelley
What springs to mind when you think of Dr. McCoy? The phrase “I’m just a country doctor,” of course. Prior to “Star Trek,” DeForest Kelley (1920-1999) acted in such film classics as “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” (1956), “Gunfight at the OK Corral” (1957) and “Raintree County” (1957). Kelley told TV interviewer Bobbie Wygant in 1991: “(Gene) Roddenberry wanted me for both pilots but couldn’t get me, because I had established myself as a pretty bad guy — I did ‘heavies’ at that time — and the network couldn’t see it.” Then NBC watched Kelley play a good guy: a criminologist. “Gene called and said, ‘Don’t hang up, De. Now NBC wants you for the doctor!’ So I came in the back door.”
As McCoy In 1990
Uhura herself in 2002.
Photo by Kathy Voglesong
Photo by Kathy Voglesong
TOYS OF TOMORROW
After the war – WWII,
“the big one” – the economy in the United States got a boost.
The able-bodied-men segment of the population was no longer depleted. America’s general became America’s president. “Post-war optimism” sweetened the air. This gave way to the proliferation of these things called “supermarkets” and “television sets.”
The trend even had an effect on the toys under the tree on Christmas morning. During the darkest days of the war, a walking robot toy made in Japan out of tin was unthinkable. But by the middle 1950s, the adorable little guys were everywhere.
Toy ’bots ranged from the grand to the good enough. In the higher range were Marx’s Electric Robot and Son, a 14-inch-tall, buzzer-equipped, self-propelled automaton with a “son” in a silver diaper; and Mr. Atom, a 21-inch-tall figure that made quite a ruckus when it walked. On the quainter side were Winky Robot, whose eyes “winked,” flicker ring style; and Lantern Robot, who gave off “smoke,” Charlie Weaver style.
Marx’s Robot and Son (1956) were two toys in one — and one weird concept.
There was a concurrent renaissance of science fiction TV shows. The two leading series in the swag sweepstakes were “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” and “Space Patrol.”
“The secondary rights sprang into being almost immedi ately,” said Frankie Thomas, who played Tom Corbett.
“Before we were finished, there were 135 different products bearing the name of Tom Corbett. Kellogg’s, which was a wonderful sponsor, renamed their second-biggest seller, Pep, the ‘Solar Cereal.’ My picture was on the box.
“The secondary rights, by the way, had a very good influence on the show. Because the producers — that is, the owners of the show, Rockhill Radio — were so interested in the secondary rights, which was a big moneymaker, they didn’t pay any attention to the show itself. They just left us alone! They probably figured, ‘Well, whatever they’re doing, it’s OK. But let’s get another product on the market.’ ”
Ed Kemmer, the star of “Space Patrol,” also began to notice his likeness appear on merchandise. “I was on just about every thing you could think of,” Kemmer said. “I’d go in a store and see the stuff. I remember seeing kids’ suspenders with my picture on them. There were all sorts of space toys. The plastic rayguns are worth a lot of money now. I suppose it was flattering.”
Aliens and astronauts knocked on doors to collect Halloween candy in masks by Ben Cooper (cheapo) and Don Post (chichi ).
From top left: Cooper masks of a lady astronaut; a spaceman; Buck Rogers; another spaceman; a silly robot; Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk from “Star Trek”; George from “The Jetsons”; and a “Planet of the Apes” orangutan. Left: “Apes” box detail. Opposite: Don Post’s exquisite mask of the Metaluna Mutant from “This Island Earth.”
Colorforms’ Outer Space Men gave alien toys a makeover. Below:
NEW LOOKS
Those don’t look like Sixties space alien toys.
You have to give toy designer Mel Birnkrant (born 1937) the credit for his ahead-of-their-time concepts for the Outer Space Men figures made by Colorforms, of all companies, beginning in 1968. Birnkrant first consulted his stockpile of Famous Monsters of Filmland editions.
As Birnkrant told an interviewer in 1991: “I gathered my 60-some issues together and looked through every page of every one, placing a strip of paper in any page that had a visual image that attracted my attention. Then I went back through every page that I had marked, glanced at the image, and looked away, as I built an idea around that starting point. I was seeking inspiration, but didn’t want to merely copy. So one rule I set for myself was to grab the spark, then never look back. To do so would be cheating in this little game I had created.”
Likewise, Marx’s blue and red boxing figures, the Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots (first sold in 1964), were a far cry from the tin windup ’bots of a decade earlier. Is it just me, or do those bold designs kinda look like figures from Russian propaganda posters of the Thirties?
It fell on the written word, the birthplace of science fiction, to push the genre’s boundaries.
This first happened in those 10-cent wonders, the pulp fiction magazines, which enjoyed a golden period during the 1930s. On film and in the comics, science fiction was virtually synonymous with “space operas,” but pulps did the serious stuff.
Other print formats, other vehicles of delivery for science fiction, would soon emerge and prove to be economical and profitable for publishers, while affordable and convenient for readers.
During the Great Depression and World War II, Americans learned the art of belt-tightening. Money was dear, the supply chain unstable. In war time, paper drives were organized (“Save waste paper ... call your salvage committee today!”).
Meanwhile, publishers were issuing compact books as small as 4 by 5½ inches known as Armed Services Editions, which servicemen could carry with relative ease for those times when a moment of escape was welcome. (Even sci-fi and horror were represented, with H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds,” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” and George Lowther’s “The Adventures of Superman.”)
This coincided with something of a revolution in printed products for the masses: the rise of the “paperback” book. This format, while not exactly new, proliferated during the war. Paperbacks were everywhere, providing a much different reading experience from the pulps.
Many of the science fiction pulps survived into the 1950s, if not much beyond that. However, the pulp spirit was carried on in yet another print format: the “digest.” (I use the term to connote the roughly 7½ by 5½-inch dimensions and the use of less-raggedy paper stock, and not to imply that editorial content was necessarily condensed.)
The digests still had painted covers, but Fifties modernity had crept in. A surprising number of scifi digests, as well as full-sized magazines, popped up throughout the decade. Some died within a year or two; a couple made it all the way to 1980.
The pulp fiction publication that started it all, Amazing Stories, was converted into a digest with its April/May 1953 edition, 27 years after its newsstand debut (though it was no longer under founding editor Hugo Gernsback).
“First in science fiction since 1926” was a constant in the digest version’s masthead. Amazing Stories continued to publish (with wavering regularity) into the new millennium.
Gernsback returned to the genre, however briefly, with the digest Science Fiction Adventures beginning in 1956. He died in 1967.
The surprising — in retrospect, at least — pervasiveness of printed science fiction demonstrated that once upon a time, regular folks used to read. In the days before handheld devices, they walked around with these compact, practical print products known as digests and paperbacks tucked away in their jacket pockets, back pockets or pocketbooks, and they read them — on buses, trains and subways, in cafeterias, on office breaks, while relaxing at home, before bed. They navigated their days with fantastic concepts of space travel, time travel, robots, and life on other planets bouncing around in their noggins. They used the inner mind.
Fifties sci-fi-a-rama
n Fantasy Fiction (1950) n Worlds Apart (1950-51) n Imagination (1950-58) n Galaxy Science Fiction (1950-80) n Fantasy Fiction (1952-54) n If (1952-74) n Fantastic Stories of Imagination (1952-80) n Orbit Science Fiction (1953-54) n Beyond Fantasy (1953-55) n Fantastic Universe (1953-60) n Imaginative Tales (1954-58) n Infinity Science Fiction (1955-58) n Science Fiction Adventures (1956-58) n Satellite Science Fiction (1956-59) n Super-Science Fiction (1956-59) n Venture Science Fiction (1957-58) n Saturn: The Magazine of Science Fiction (1957-65)
George Orwell’s “1984” wasn’t about rockets, robots or rayguns.
Rather, Orwell’s dystopian novel, first published in 1949, was about how an autocratic government, enabled by technology, can utterly dominate the proletariat. Many of Orwell’s unsexy but dire predictions have since come true: the dumbing down of language, the rewriting of history, the incessant surveillance, the surrender of individuality, the eradication of free speech.
And the crippling paranoia that all of the above bring about.
In Orwell’s story, protagonist Winston Smith works in London of the future, though the lines have been redrawn and the territories renamed; London is no longer in England, but in Airstrip One, “itself the third most populous of the provinces in Oceania.”
Winston toils for the Ministry of Truth, which is really a ministry of lies. He has the unenviable task of rewriting history whenever the Party so commands. Telling are the Party’s three tenets: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. The daily propaganda program, the “Two Minutes Hate,” is compulsory viewing. Signs everywhere read: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.
Orwell (1903-1950) was a Brit as well as a liberal, a socialist, and an anti-Stalinist. (Look it up.) As with the best science fiction, “1984” makes us think about our current situation. As you read it, you think: This is today. Given the slow (at first) to warp-speed advance of technology throughout the decades since Orwell published this, his final novel, that’s quite a trick.
WITH THE METEORIC (PUN INTENDED) RISE IN THE popularity of science fiction during the Space Age, the film world increasingly turned to literature for inspiration. Some of that literature had circuitous paths to publication in the first place.
“When Worlds Collide” (1933) by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie was serialized in The Blue Book Magazine beginning in 1932; then published as a novel; and finally made into a movie in 1951. “The Body Snatchers” (1954) by Jack Finney was serialized in Collier’s magazine before taking novel form, and it became a movie in 1956 (retitled “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”).
Nineteenth-century sci-fi classics were not overlooked by Hollywood during the Fifties-Sixties period. “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865) by Jules Verne became a 1958 movie; “The Time Machine” (1895) by H.G. Wells became a 1960 movie; and “The War of the Worlds” (1898) by Wells became a 1953 movie.
Curt Siodmak’s “Donovan’s Brain” (1942) became a 1953 movie with future First Lady Nancy Reagan, nee Davis. There was also “The Shrinking Man” (1956) by Richard Matheson, retitled “The Incredible Shrinking Man” for the 1957 film, with Matheson co-writing his first of many screenplays. “On the Beach” (1957) by Neville Shute became a 1959 all-star movie. (Gregory Peck! Ava Gardner!) Peter George’s doomsday thriller “Red Alert” (1958) became Stanley Kubrick’s doomsday comedy “Dr. Strangelove” (1964). “La Planète des singes” or “Monkey Planet” (1963) by Pierre Boulle was renamed “Planet of the Apes” for the 1968 film. Outside of some character names and the idea of a civilization of talking apes, Rod Serling and Michael Wilson’s screenplay wasn’t strictly faithful to Boulle.
Much of Orwell’s 1949 novel came to pass. Opposite: The Fifties and Sixties were a watershed period for sci-fi.
Along the way, yet another print market opened up: novels based on movies that, themselves, were not based on novels. (Did you follow that?) These were ingeniously called “novelizations.” The novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke was based on the screenplay, scant as it was, by Kubrick and Clarke. There was never a “Planet of the Apes” novelization; Boulle’s original was instead reprinted, despite liberties taken in the film. And yet, faithful novelizations of all four “Apes” sequels were published. TV sci-fi got in on the act, with at least two novelizations based on “The Time Tunnel,” three based on “The Invaders,” and three based on “Star Trek” during its original run. (Since then, there have been more than 800 “Star Trek” books.)
IN HIS 1942 STORY “RUNAROUND,”
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) conceived the “Three Laws of Robotics,” a declaration of principles of sorts. It wouldn’t be long before the first such law was disregarded in subsequent fiction: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
Counter to Asimov’s laws, robots and tech have worked against us in real life, too. Insurers used algorithms to deny coverage of medical procedures. Facial recognition technology inordinately implicated people of color for crimes they were nowhere near. Social media became a cesspool of disinformation. Our private information is snatched, and traded, every day. Where’s good, old, reliable Rosey of “The Jetsons” when you need her?
Isaac Asimov in 1990. Photo by Kathy Voglesong
PANELS ’N’ PERILS
The Sunday funnies and the pulps begat sci-fi comic books.
The first comic book devoted entirely to sci-fi, Fiction House’s Planet Comics (1940a spinoff of the pulp fiction magazine Stories. Likewise, Better Publications’ Startling Comics (1940-1948) was descended from the pulp Startling Stories. Both comic books predated America’s involvement in World War II, and both continued publish ing into the Atomic Age.
As the genre flourished on television and in the movies after the war, comics followed (space) suit. Heroes abounded. There were a number of comic books with “Captain” in the title — Captain Rocket, Captain Science, Captain Aero Comics, Captain Flash — plus Space Detective, Rocketman (a weird one-shot) and John Carter of Mars (an Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation). Once the Space Race was ignited with Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite, comics such as Race to the Moon, Space Mysteries and Outer Space struck a more urgent, even patriotic, tone.
BUT WHEN YOU THINK OF 1950s sci-fi comic books, the publish er that springs uppermost to mind is EC, a.k.a. Entertaining Comics.
EC published horror, crime, war and humor comics, but regularly ran house ads that proclaimed: “We at EC are proudest of our science fiction maga zines.” These included Weird Fantasy, Weird Science (both 1950-53) and an amalgam of the two, Weird Science-Fantasy (1954-55).
Many artists from EC’s prestigious roster of talent contributed to the sci-fi books (Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, George Roussos, George Evans, et al.). But the confirmed science fiction fanatics — the ones who were sci-fi — included Wally Wood (could that guy draw spaceship interiors!), Frank Frazetta, Joe Orlando, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, and editor-artist Al Feldstein.
“Yeah, we loved that stuff,” EC publisher William M. Gaines (1922-1992) told me in 1992. “They lost money most of the time, but we didn’t care. We ran the business from the point of view of an ‘entity.’
“If the business was making money, that was fine. It didn’t matter to us that part of the business was making it all, and part of the business was losing it. We just enjoyed our science fiction.”
EC adapted stories by author Ray Bradbury, but this partnership had a rocky start.
“We stole a few of his stories,” Gaines admitted, “and he caught us. He sends a letter, ‘I think you have overlooked sending me some royalties for this, that and that.’ And so, of course, we instantly sent him his royalties. He didn’t ask for very much, maybe $25 a story. We asked him if we could now adapt his stories for so much a story. He agreed, and we adapted many of them.”
The stories were adapted to the comic book format by that workhorse, Feldstein.
“Oh, Al did a magnificent job on them,” Gaines said. “Bradbury loved them. The only thing he was offended by was our exclamation points. We never used a period anywhere. Every sentence ended in an exclamation point. This was almost comic book format at the time. So when Bradbury complained, we stopped. At a certain point, you may notice that the Bradbury stories no longer have exclamation points.”
From the late Fifties through the mid Sixties, anthology TV series such as “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits” presented stories similar to those found in EC comic books. I asked Gaines if he agreed.
“I really didn’t watch them,” he said, “so I don’t know. It’s just that for five years, we lived horror and science fiction. We were just so saturated with it. So that by the time we stopped writing it
EC HIRED JOE ORLANDO (1927-1998) because his work — so they said — resembled that of Wally Wood. Even in the staff biography that EC published about Orlando, they referred to him as “another Wood.”
But a robot came to Orlando’s rescue, and helped him emerge as a talent in his own right — a fictional robot named Adam Link, which Orlando brought to life with his pen.
“Because of the initial success of the Adam Link stories,” Orlando told me in 1994, “people began to notice my work, to distinguish me from Wally Wood. I mean my peers. So I do have an affection for Adam Link.”
Orlando and Wood had founded an art studio, cranking out work for Charlton, ZiffDavis and Avon. When Wood defected to EC in 1951, Orlando soon followed.
“It was very friendly there,” Orlando said. “Most publishing houses at the time were not friendly, but EC was unbelievably friendly. You got to see the publisher, which was rare. They asked you personal questions. They were very encouraging.”
Orlando drew the odd horror or crime story for EC, but preferred sci-fi. Said the artist: “The science fiction easily had a bizarre twist to it, except for the Adam Link stuff, which was kind of sweet.”
Link was the robot hero in a series of stories written by “Eando” Binder. (The byline combined the initials of brothers Earl and Otto Binder.) The first and most famous was “I, Robot,” which debuted in Amazing Stories in 1939. Link was a robot with feelings and intelligence who was sometimes more human than the actual humans around him. Orlando’s sensitive handling of the series — not to mention his novel robot design — was a bright spot in Weird Science-Fantasty #27 (1955). But it was only planned as a one-shot.
“It was just assigned to me by Al Feldstein,” Orlando recalled. “I thought it was going to be the one story. But I understood then from Al that it got a lot of mail. It was very popular. They used to take votes, mail votes, on a story, and I got a lot of votes. So they decided to continue with Adam Link, which was to the amazement of everybody.
“I think it was because it was really gentle and sweet kind of material, as opposed to the usual material they were doing.”
Orlando drew three Adam Link stories for EC in 1955. A decade later, he drew eight more Link stories for Creepy, Warren Publishing’s horror anthology magazine. (Link was revived at the suggestion of Creepy editor Archie Goodwin.) This time around, Orlando redesigned the robot and rendered him in ink and wash.
Orlando became the vice president of DC Comics in 1985. Wood committed suicide at age 54 in 1981, reportedly because he was gravely ill and in much pain. “It’s all hearsay,” Orlando said of the circumstances surrounding Wood’s death, “but definitely he committed suicide.”
TO YOU AND ME, THEY’RE
just shoes, ties, collars, hats. To Al Williamson — another artist who specialized in EC’s excellent, respected science fiction stories — they were “civilian stuff.” In fact, Williamson’s sci-fi specialization was his defense mechanism, his way of avoiding said shoes, ties, collars, hats.
“I conned them into giving me nothing but science fiction,” the artist told me in 1994. “I was always afraid to draw the civilian stuff.”
Though Williamson (1931-2010) produced art for EC’s other genres, most of his work for EC was in the Feldstein-edited sci-fi titles Weird Science and Weird Fantasy.
“Al was not only a writer, but also an artist,” Williamson said.
“He planned his scripts with the picture in mind. When you do that — when you’re a writer and you know how to draw — it’s much easier for the artist.”
On many of his EC stories, Williamson collaborated with Roy Krenkel (1918-1983), a Hugo Award-winning artist.
“Roy did a lot of the interiors of rocket ships and so forth for me,” Williamson pointed out.
“Not all of it — I did do some of the rockets and interiors myself — but a lot. Because really, I just wanted to draw figures, basically, and dinosaurs and stuff like that.
“But I never felt that what Roy did was just backgrounds, like a picture on a wall. These backgrounds had something. They were the atmosphere. Between the two of us — since we didn’t live on this planet; we were somewhere else — we conveyed that sense of fantasy in those drawings. The sense of another world. Roy was so good at that. I wanted to live in his cities.”
Maybe Marvel Comics didn’t invent superheroes who don’t get along?
Everybody remembers Marvel’s Fantastic Four #1 (1961) as the comic book that introduced the then-undreamed-of concept of a superhero team that bickers, sometimes bitterly so. (The members of DC Comics’ Justice League of America conversed exclusively in harmonious, albeit bald, exposition.)
But a scant four months after FF #1 hit the newsstands, DC published Showcase #37, which introduced the Metal Men — six (later seven) robots with human personalities. Like the FF, the MM were a group therapy session masquerading as a superteam.
That four-month gap tells us that, while Marvel undeniably beat DC to the punch, DC couldn’t possibly have seen FF #1 before producing Showcase #37. Therefore, we must allow that there was a bit of comic-book synchronicity at work here.
Whipped up to satisfy a crunch deadline, the Metal Men were created by writer-editor Robert “Bob” Kanigher, penciller Ross Andru, and inker Mike Esposito. The robots’ powers and dispositions were based on properties of the metals they were made from. Comprising the original lineup were Gold, the pure-hearted leader; Mercury, the group’s hothead; Iron, the group’s muscle; Lead, the group’s shield; Tin, the bashful striver; and Platinum (nicknamed “Tina”), who was madly in love with “Doc” Will Magnus, the Metal Men’s pipe-smoking inventor.
LATE ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON IN 1961, the prolific Kanigher was on his way out the door to begin his weekend when, fortunately or unfortunately for him, he was intercepted by his boss.
Recalled Kanigher (1915-2002) when we spoke in 1993: “What happened was that Irwin Donenfeld came to me and said, ‘I know it’s not your turn to do Showcase, but none of the other editors can come up with an idea. Ya got anything?’ ”
Showcase was the “tryout” title DC kicked off in 1956 in answer to an industry-wide slump. The theory was that Showcase would present new characters, or new takes on established characters, every few issues. Reader response determined whether these characters graduated to their own titles. (Some who did: Lois Lane, the Flash, the Inferior Five.) Kanigher was one of a team of rotating Showcase editors.
Kanigher’s response to Donenfeld: “I said, ‘Metal Men.’ I said, ‘Metal robots with human characteristics that retain their metal characteristics simultaneously.’ And he said, ‘Do it.’ That’s all.
“Now, I knew nothing about chemistry. I know very little about science, I’m ashamed to say. I saw a book called ‘The Science Dictionary’ on (Julius Schwartz’s) desk. It was a battered, old edition. I gave myself about an hour’s crash course on the nuclear-metallurgical signs and the properties of each metal. For instance, I learned that gold could be hammered out to a thickness of 1,000th of a human hair, and stretched out to one mile. Well, that gave me all the freedom in the world to do whatever I wanted to do! I learned that tin and iron merged together were stronger than steel. So I used that.
“Then I put (the character) Tin in, and I felt that tin was the lowliest metal. How can I show that? I give him an inferiority complex. How can I show an inferiority complex? I give him a stutter. That’s the way my brain works.
“I had to have a woman, a female. So I made Platinum the female. Called her Tina. And Platinum firmly believes that she’s not a robot, that she’s human. And she just as firmly believes that her inventor doesn’t realize that he’s in love with her.
“The only thing I knew about Mercury was that it’s in a thermometer. When your temperature’s high, it shoots up. When it’s low, it goes down. So I made him the cranky one. He shoots up and down and he thinks he should be the leader of the group and so forth. People love him.”
IT THEN FELL UPON ARTIST ANDRU TO flesh out — or should that be “metal out” — Kanigher’s concepts. Andru and Kanigher were already an in-synch team, having collaborated on DC’s Wonder Woman for more than three years by 1961.
As Andru (1927-1993) told me in 1992: “First of all, I decided to come up with a common costume for all of them, and then modify it according to their bodies and temperaments. In those days, we always put a symbol on each superhero’s chest, so I followed through and took the symbols that Bob suggested, which were the actual symbols for the metals.”
Doc, Tina and the rest of the Metal Men gang. Opposite: Pandemonium on the MM #8 cover (1964). Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.
NEXT CAME THE CHARACTER DESIGNS.
“I thought about the different characteristics of each metal,” Andru recalled. “We decided to make Mercury red. I wanted to convey the idea of the old Fahrenheit thermometer; one end was a bulb and the other was a tube. So in a sense, Mercury’s head was the bulb and his spinal column was the tube, to which I added arms and legs.
“I thought of Tin as being angular and flat. Since he had an inferiority complex, he would be the smallest of the bunch.
“Gold, of course, had to be the noble metal. I thought he would be an athletic figure, a modi fied Greek ideal of eight-heads-tall. He would essentially be a good-looking guy wearing the regular Metal Men suit.
“I thought of Lead as being heavy and corpulent. My first idea was to make him a big chunk. But I didn’t want to overdo it. If he were too far off, he wouldn’t appear human. So I just heavied everything up, rather than really exaggerate it.
“Iron, I figured, had to be stronger than Lead, so he would be taller than Lead. Of course, he would be blue, dark blue. And black was added to his figure to, again, give him a feeling of solidity. It seemed to work well.
“So Platinum wore the female version of the same outfit. On the top of her head, she had a cap with a different kind of shape, so that we could see her ‘hair.’ Her torso was the female ver sion of the same kind of costume that the men had. So there was a uniformity to the group.
“It was sort of like taking different racial characteristics — and metals have their racial characteristics, in a sense — and translating them to the character of the metal itself. Anyway, that was my solution.”
Andru also had to create the gadgets and locales that appeared in Metal Men stories, such as the flying saucer-like Jetaway, the Metal Recovery Room, and Doc Magnus’ sprawling laboratory complex. “I evolved the complex,” the artist said. “It sort of grew from sequence to sequence. It began from the center out, from his laboratory out.”
ESPOSITO, WHO WAS ANDRU’S most frequent collaborator, did the finishes.
“Ross and I went to art school together,” Esposito (1927-2010) told me in 1990.
“Burne Hogarth was our teacher. He was the guy who drew ‘Tarzan’ The Sunday Mirror. He gave Ross a chance to ghost for him on the Sunday page.”
After graduating, Esposito got a job with Fox Periodicals (for which he said he was never paid); then worked for Stan Lee at Timely during a slow period; and then reunited with Andru at DC.
“When we first started with them,” he said, “we did a lot of war stuff, because that was all they were doing at the time. Then we more or Wonder Woman from H.G. Peter.
“We were a team, Ross and me. That’s the way we worked. If Ross had 100,000 Koreans running down the mountain slope in Joe Yank in ’52, with belts on and buckles and shoes, I put every one in there. Because he did it. If the penciller puts it in, it deserves to stay in. The inker is like a musician. He’s got to play every note that’s written on that paper. He can alter it slightly with personality and expression and intensity, but that’s what the inker should do.” Gold
SCI-FI SUBGENRES
Genre films of the 1950s and ’60s were all about the sub-categories. The lists on these pages come with a few necessary caveats. Some categories considered, such as ALIEN MOVIES, were way too expansive to include. Others were way too narrow. Not every list has every applicable movie. (We decided not to include “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” under MARS MOVIES, for instance.) As there are countless robots in countless sci-fi movies, the ROBOT MOVIES list is limited to robot-centric movies. Monster movie characters like Godzilla aren’t included despite their sci-fi origins. Asterisks denote movies that fall into more than one category. OK? Let’s blast off ...
GIANT BUG MOVIES
“Them!” (1954)
“Tarantula” (1955)
“Beginning of the End” (1957)
“The Deadly Mantis” (1957)
“Monster From Green Hell” (1957)
“Earth vs. the Spider” (1958)
“The Cosmic Monsters” (1958)
GIANT PEOPLE MOVIES
“The Amazing Colossal Man” (1957)
“War of the Colossal Beast” (1958)
“Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” (1958)
“Village of the Giants” (1965)
GIANT ETC. MOVIES
“Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” (1953)
“Monster From the Ocean Floor” (1954)
“The Monolith Monsters” (1957)
“The Giant Claw” (1957)
“The Black Scorpion” (1957)
“Attack of the Crab Monsters” (1957)
“Attack of the Giant Leeches” (1959)
“The Giant Gila Monster” (1959)
“The Giant Behemoth” (1959)
TIME TRAVEL MOVIES
“Invaders From Mars” (1953) *
“World Without End” (1956) *
“The Time Machine” (1960)
“Beyond the Time Barrier” (1960)
“The Time Travelers” (1964)
“Planet of the Apes” (1968)
MOON MOVIES
“Destination Moon” (1950)
“Project Moonbase” (1953)
“Cat Women of the Moon” (1953) *
“From the Earth to the Moon” (1958)
“Missile to the Moon” (1958) *
“12 to the Moon” (1960)
“First Men in the Moon” (1964)
MARS MOVIES
“Rocket Ship X-M” (1950)
“Flight to Mars” (1951) *
“Red Planet Mars” (1952)
“The War of the Worlds” (1953)
“Invaders From Mars” (1953) *
“The Day Mars Invaded Earth” (1953)
“Devil Girl From Mars” (1954)
“Conquest of Space” (1955)
“World Without End” (1956) *
“It! The Terror From Beyond Space” (1958)
“Angry Red Planet” (1959)
“Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964)
“The Wizard of Mars” (1965)
“Mission Mars” (1967)
“Mars Needs Women” (1967)
DAVID PROWSE
YOU NEVER SAW HIS FACE NOR HEARD HIS voice. But “Star Wars” fans know David Prowse.
The 6-foot-6 British actor played the supervillain Darth Vader in the 1977 film and its sequels. Prowse’s lifelong devotion to physical fitness helped him endure the rigors of his most famous role — and its unwieldy costume.
“To start with, the suit went on in 15 different pieces and weighed about 40 pounds total,” Prowse (1935-2020) told me in 1993. “It was all made from quilted matter and fiberglass. As soon as you put the suit on, you’d sweat buckets, it was so hot and heavy. A lot of heat rose up through the mask right into the eyepieces, so you couldn’t see where you were going — a major problem.
“On top of all that, the camera people would say, ‘We can see inside of the mask. We can see your eyes. We don’t want to see your eyes.’ So they covered my eyes in black makeup. I looked like a huge, great panda. Then they put darker glass in the eyepieces of the mask. So my vision was very restricted.
“If you look at the Darth Vader mask, you’ll see two triangular mesh pieces, one I used to breathe through. But they decided they could see through that, so they put black gauze over it. And the other one I used to see where all of my marks were on the floor. They put gauze on that as well, so I was practically blind.
“And the sweat! You could only do one take. I would go through the scene, and as soon as I got to the other end of the scene, I would have to be led back to where the scene started, because I couldn’t see where I was going.”
ALTHOUGH PROWSE LEARNED AND SPOKE every line of Darth Vader’s dialogue in “Star Wars,”
James Earl Jones overdubbed the voice of the baddie.
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO ORDER THIS BOOK!
Said Prowse: “We got to the end of the movie and they raced back to America. In America, they suddenly realized — this is 20th Century-Fox and Lucas — that they had no Black people in ‘Star Wars.’ And many people around 20th Century-Fox suddenly started worrying that the Black faction in America would boycott the movie because there were no Blacks in it. So the only thing they could do, having completed all the filming, was to overdub my voice with an obvious Black voice. So they brought in James Earl Jones to be the voice of Darth Vader.”
FUTURISTIC
ROCKETS, ROBOTS AND RAYGUNS OF SPACE AGE POP CULTURE
by MARK VOGER
Blast off to the SPACE AGE, when the future was always bright! FUTURISTIC is a FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER about a time of limitless possibilities... and anxieties. It covers all aspects of 1950s and ’60s pop culture from the “duck and cover” era of the Cold War, the Space Race, the UFO Craze, and the 1969 moon landing. Read about the movies (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), TV shows (Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, The Jetsons), and collectibles (robots, rockets, comic books, TV tie-ins) that had us looking to the stars. Also featured are interviews with such comic book creators as WILLIAM GAINES, JOE ORLANDO, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, ROBERT KANIGHER, ROSS ANDRU, MIKE ESPOSITO, and LARRY LIEBER about their sci-fi work, plus recollections from sci-fi movie stars (KEVIN McCARTHY, PETER GRAVES, LINDA HARRISON), TV cast members (from shows including Lost in Space, Star Trek, and The Invaders), and others. A graphically immersive experience written and designed by MARK VOGER (Monster Mash, Zowie!), FUTURISTIC is a time trip to a future that never exactly came to pass, but lives on vividly in our imaginations!
(Interviewer’s note: This was the first I’d heard that James Earl Jones had an “obvious Black voice.”)
“All sorts of things happen in the movies. It was their prerogative,” Prowse said. “If they want to overdub your voice, you’ve signed a contract saying they can do it.”
After “Star Wars,” many blessings came Prowse’s way.
“It was marvelous to be able to work on the trilogy, and to be part of what is basically the most successful film trilogy of all time,” the actor said. “I hear Darth Vader is regarded as the ultimate screen villain of all time, for which I’m justly proud. I’m proud to have created the role.”
