Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
File:DrstrangeloveCover.jpg DVD cover, based on the film poster by Tommy Ungar
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Peter George (novel and screenplay) Stanley Kubrick Terry Southern Peter Sellers (uncredited) James B. Harris (uncredited).
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Peter Sellers George C. Scott Sterling Hayden Keenan Wynn Slim Pickens James Earl Jones Tracy Reed
Cinematography	Gilbert Taylor
Music by	Laurie Johnson
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	January 29, 1964
Running time	94 min.
Country	UK / US
Language	English
Budget	$1,800,000

"Strangelove" redirects here. For other uses, see Strangelove (disambiguation).

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a 1964 film directed by Stanley Kubrick. Based loosely upon the Cold War thriller novel Red Alert (also known as Two Hours to Doom) by Peter George, the source material was refashioned as a black comedy by screenwriter Terry Southern. Dr. Strangelove satirizes the fragile nature of the Cold War conflict and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. The film opens at the fictional Burpelson Air Force Base, where the insane General Jack D. Ripper has just ordered a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and proceeds to follow the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and an RAF officer as they try to recall Ripper's bombers in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

In 1989 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Additionally, it was listed as #26 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years, 100 Movies" and #3 on its "100 Years, 100 Laughs." Film critic Roger Ebert included Dr. Strangelove in his list of Great Movies, saying it is "arguably the best political satire of the century."

Plot

Template:Spoiler Jack D. Ripper, a delusional United States Air Force general, executes his plan to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, in order to thwart a Communist conspiracy which he believes threatens to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. Exceeding his authority, Ripper convinces everyone at Burpelson Air Force Base that the United States is in a "shooting war" with the Soviet Union, and orders the 843rd Bomb Wing (which is then airborne in a training exercise called "Operation Dropkick") past its fail-safe points and into Russia. Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, an RAF officer participating in an "exchange program" with the USAF, suspects that all is not as it seems when he turns on a radio and hears pop music instead of Civil Defense alerts.

File:Slim-pickens riding-the-bomb.jpg

Major Kong, the captain of the "Leper Colony," riding the bomb to nuclear oblivion.

General Ripper is unaware that the Soviets have constructed a doomsday machine which will automatically destroy all life on Earth if it detects a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The president asks nuclear war expert and German expatriate Dr. Strangelove to discuss the possibility of the doomsday machine. Strangelove himself is a type of "mad scientist", whose eccentricities include a severe case of alien hand syndrome — his right hand, clad in an intimidating black leather glove, alternates between attempting to strangle Strangelove and shooting out in a Nazi salute. Strangelove explains to the staff assembled in the Pentagon war room that the device is a natural extension to the Cold War stratagem of mutually assured destruction as a deterrent to a nuclear exchange. Moreover, the machine cannot be turned off as this would mitigate its value as a deterrent.

The United States government cooperates with the Soviets in shooting the American planes down until they can be recalled. As American troops attack Ripper's base, Ripper commits suicide. The feckless commander of the unit attacking the base, Colonel "Bat" Guano, fails to recognise Mandrake's RAF uniform as that of an allied nation, and believes that Mandrake is leading a mutiny of "deviated preverts" (sic) against General Ripper. However, Guano ultimately relents, and helps Mandrake to call the President to tell him the recall code, which Mandrake has deduced from Ripper's doodles. Mandrake is forced to use a telephone booth to inform the President. Not having enough change, he tells Guano to shoot the coinbox on a vending machine, which Guano, still suspicious of Mandrake, does reluctantly.

However, one B-52 ("The Leper Colony") cannot be recalled, as a Soviet anti-aircraft missile has triggered the self-destruct system of the airplane's radio (presumably designed to prevent the CRM114 code machine from being reverse-engineered should it be captured). Damaged by the missile hit, and leaking fuel, the aircraft cannot reach its intended target, the Laputa Missile Complex, where the remaining Soviet defenses have been concentrated. The plane continues instead to the Kodlosk ICBM complex (not the plane's secondary target, but still within its range), evading the combined efforts of both the US and the USSR to stop it. However, the B-52's bay doors have jammed, and in forcing them open, the pilot, Major "King" Kong, ends up riding one of the bombs to the ground, cheering all the way. Kong straddles the bomb, gripping it with one hand and waving his cowboy hat in the air with his other fashioned to rodeo bull riding technique, whooping and hollering as he plummets to his thermonuclear death.

The doomsday device is triggered. According to the Soviet ambassador, life on Earth's surface will be extinct in ten months; Dr. Strangelove recommends to the President that a group of about 100,000 humans be relocated deep in a mine shaft, where the nuclear fallout cannot reach, so that the Earth can be repopulated. Because of obvious limits to space in the mines, Strangelove suggests a gender ratio of "ten females to each male." The chosen women would be selected based on their youth and beauty (to ensure the males would want to impregnate them), while the chosen males would be selected based on their intellectual and physical strength. The Soviet ambassador states at that point, "I must confess, that is an astonishingly good idea you've got there..." Turgidson, however rants that the Soviets will likely create an even better bunker than the West, with nuclear weapons stores inside, cautions the President that America "cannot allow a mine shaft gap" (spoofing the missile gap fears), and begins planning a war to take place when their decendents emerge a century later. During this rant, the Soviet ambassador retreats into the shadows and takes pictures of the war room display screens. In the concluding scenes, a visibly excited Strangelove bolts out of his wheelchair shouting "Mein Führer, I can walk!", mere seconds before the film ends with a barrage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by the voice of Vera Lynn singing the famous World War II song "We'll Meet Again". Template:Endspoiler

Cast

File:Strangelove123.jpg

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove.

• Peter Sellers as:
  • Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a British exchange officer with an upper-class English accent
  • President Merkin Muffley, the American Commander-in-Chief
  • Dr. Strangelove, the sinister German nuclear war expert
• George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, a strategic bombing enthusiast
• Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper, who is equally (and rabidly) paranoid and patriotic.
• Slim Pickens as Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber captain
• A young James Earl Jones, acting in his first film, plays bombardier Lieutenant Lothar Zogg
• Keenan Wynn as Colonel "Bat" Guano
• Peter Bull as Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadesky
• Shane Rimmer as Captain "Ace" Owens
• Tracy Reed as Gen. Turgidson's seductive secretary Miss Scott, the film's only female character; she also appears as the centerfold in the "Playboy" magazine that Major Kong is reading

Peter Sellers' roles

Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing for the film only under the condition that Peter Sellers would play at least four major roles. This condition stemmed from the studio's impression that much of the boxoffice success of Lolita (1962), Kubrick's previous film, was based on Sellers' playing multiple roles. Kubrick accepted the demand considering that "such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business".

File:3SellersRoles.jpg

Peter Sellers plays three roles: Dr. Strangelove, President Merkin Muffley and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (left to right).

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake

Peter Sellers is said to have improvised much of his dialogue during filming. For his role as Lionel Mandrake, it is said that he was aided by his experience of mimicking his uptight superiors as a Royal Air Force airman during World War II. His appearance and interpretation of Mandrake's manners are reminiscent of actor Terry-Thomas.

President Merkin Muffley

For his performance as President Merkin Muffley, a decent character, understandably flustered somewhat by the situation, Sellers drew inspiration from unsuccessful presidential contender Adlai Stevenson. Sellers had to flatten his natural English accent to sound like an American Midwesterner (Stevenson was from Illinois). In early takes Sellers faked cold symptoms to amplify the character's apparent impotence, although this was ultimately deemed inappropriate by Kubrick (the film crew burst out laughing every time Sellers spoke, ruining take after take) and in the takes used in the film he played the President straight.

Dr. Strangelove

The title character, Dr. Strangelove, serves as President Muffley's scientific advisor in the War Room, presumably making use of prior expertise as a Nazi physicist: upon becoming an American citizen, he translated his German surname "Merkwürdigliebe" to the English equivalent. Twice in the film, he accidentally addresses the President as "Mein Führer."

The character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, Nazi SS officer-turned-NASA rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and "father of the hydrogen bomb" Edward Teller. At one point, Strangelove refers to a study which he had commissioned from the BLAND Corporation (a pun on the RAND Corporation, a US military think tank). In his interpretation of Dr. Strangelove, Sellers' accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee (the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig), who was hired by Kubrick as a special effects consultant.

Strangelove's appearance echoes the movie villains of the Fritz Lang era in 1920s Germany, in which sinister characters were often portrayed as having some disability. Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture. Kubrick perpetually wore the gloves on the film set in order to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers found the gloves to be especially menacing.

At the end of the film, Dr. Strangelove is animated by the thought of a post-war, centrally controlled, male-dominated society whose members have been specially selected from the population. This idea is evocative of Nazi visions.

Slim Pickens as Major Kong

At the start of production, Sellers was set to play a fourth role,Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber captain. From the beginning, Sellers was reluctant to play the role, concerned that he could not reproduce the Texan accent required. Kubrick pleaded with him and requested Terry Southern (who had been raised in Texas) to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in the correct accent. Using Southern's tape, Sellers finally managed to get the accent right and started shooting the scenes in the airplane. However, the actor sprained an ankle while going to a restaurant and could not play the role, as technical constraints would have confined him to cramped space of the cockpit set.

Slim Pickens, an established character actor and veteran of many Western films, was quickly tapped to replace Sellers as Major Kong. It is no coincidence that his performance turned out so authentic; fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, "He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior." According to some sources, the British film crew thought he was a method actor, and his mannerisms were his way of "finding" his performance for the character, unaware that that was the way he really behaved.

Kubrick biographer John Baxter further explains in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:

"As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, "Gosh, he's arrived in costume!," not realizing that that's how he always dressed… with the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked."

Pickens, who had previously played only minor supporting and character roles, stated that his appearance as Maj. Kong greatly improved his career. He would later comment, "After Dr. Strangelove the roles, the dressing rooms and the checks all started getting bigger."

Production

File:Warroom.jpg

The iconic Pentagon War Room set.

Filming took place at Shepperton Studios in London at three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Room, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor. The studio's buildings were used as the military airport's exterior.

Novel and screenplay

Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident, building on the widespread Cold War fear for survival. While doing in-depth research for the planned film, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and unstable "Balance of Terror" existing between nuclear powers and its intrinsic paradoxical character. At Kubrick's request, Alistair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies), recommended the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George. Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and reprinted in the "Observer" , and immediately bought the film rights.

File:Kubrickstrangelove.jpg

Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove.

Kubrick, in collaboration with George, started work on writting a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and, later, Herman Kahn. Following his initial intention and the tone of the book, Stanley Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. However, as he later explained during interviews, the comedy inherent in the idea of Mutual assured destruction became apparent as he was writing the first draft of the film's script. Kubrick stated:

"My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question."

After deciding to turn the film into a bleak comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer. The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian (1959), which Kubrick had received as a gift from Peter Sellers.

B-52s: Pentagon cooperation

Without the cooperation from The Pentagon in the making of the film, the set designers reconstructed the cockpit to the best of their ability by comparing the cockpit of a B-29 Superfortress and a single photograph of the cockpit of a B-52, and relating this to the geometry of the B-52's fuselage. The B-52 was state of the art in the 1960s, its cockpit was off limits to the film crew. When some American Air Force personnel were invited to tour the B-52 set, they said that "it was absolutely correct, even to the little black box which was the CRM." It was so correct that Kubrik was concerned whether Ken Adam, the production designer, had done all of his research legally because they "could be in serious trouble, with a possible investigation by the FBI."

In several shots of the B-52 flying over the polar ice en route to Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, is visible on the snow below. The B-52 was a model composited into the arctic footage which was sped up to create a sense of jet speed. The camera ship, a former USAAF B-17G-100-VE, serial 44-85643, registered F-BEEA, had been one of four Flying Forts purchased from salvage at Altus, Oklahoma in December 1947 by the French Institut Geographique National and converted for survey and photo-mapping duty. It was the last active B-17 of a total of fourteen once operated by the IGN, but it was destroyed in a take-off accident at RAF Binbrook in 1989 during filming of the movie Memphis Belle. Home movie footage included in Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove on the 2001 Special Edition DVD release of the film show clips of the Fortress with a cursive "Dr. Strangelove" painted over the rear entry hatch on the right side of the fuselage.

Fail-Safe and Seven Days in May

Red Alert author Peter George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and satirist Terry Southern. Red Alert was far more solemn in tone than its film version and the character of Dr. Strangelove never even existed on its pages. The main plot and technical elements, however, were quite similar. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a re-print of the original novel, was later penned by George. George committed suicide in 1966.

During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail-Safe, a film with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail-Safe was to be an ultra-realistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its overall plot resemblances would damage Strangelove's box office run, especially if it were to be released first. Indeed, the novel Fail-Safe (on which the film of the same name is based) is so similar to Red Alert that Peter George sued on charges of plagarism and settled out of court[4]. What worried Kubrick the most about Fail-Safe was that it boasted an acclaimed director, Sidney Lumet, and first-rate dramatic actors, Henry Fonda as the American President and Walter Matthau as the bold ex-Nazi advisor to the Pentagon, Professor Groepenschelesche. Kubrick decided that it would be in his film's best interests for a legal wrench to be thrown into the gears of the Fail-Safe production. Director Sidney Lumet recalls in the documentary, Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:

We started casting. Fonda was already set... which of course meant a big commitment in terms of money. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set... And suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures.

Kubrick tried to halt production on Fail-Safe by arguing that its own 1960 source novel of the same name had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, to which Kubrick himself owned the creative rights. Also, he pointed out the unmistakable similarities in intentions between the characters Groeteschele and Strangelove. The plan ended up working exactly as Kubrick intended; Fail-Safe opened a full eight months behind Dr. Strangelove to critical acclaim, but mediocre box office results.

Also released in 1964 was Paramount Pictures' Seven Days in May (now owned by Warner Bros. Pictures). The plot involves a coup attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prevent the President of the United States from signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, who, they believe, cannot be trusted.

The Kennedy assassination

A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but as a result of the assassination, the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.

Additionally, one line by Slim Pickens ("a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff") was dubbed to become "in Vegas". The dub is apparent if Pickens' lips are watched closely when he speaks.

Alternate ending

The cream pie fight removed from the final cut.

The movie ends with Dr. Strangelove exclaiming "Meine Fuehrer, I can walk!" And cuts to shots of nuclear explotions. They are all actual US nuclear tests. Many of them were shot at Bikini Atoll, and old warships (such as the German Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser) expended as targets are plainly visible. In others the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop on the sky behind the explosion can be seen. Reportedly, Spike Milligan was responsible for suggesting the montage ending. When asked what would be best for the ending song, not knowing how the film would end, Tracy Reed, suggested "We'll Meet Again".citation needed

This nuclear explosion ending was a replacement to the original climactic cream pie fight scene, which has become one of the most famous "deleted" scenes in cinema history; the scene was never released to the general public and not included in the laserdisc and DVD releases of Dr. Strangelove. The only known public showing of the footage was in the 1999 screening at the National Film Theatre in London following Kubrick's death.

Accounts varies as to why the scene was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said: "I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film."

Film critic and Kubrick biographer Alexander Walker observed that "the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at."

Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggests that the fight was intended to be less jovial. "Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.' "

However, editor Anthony Harvey states that "it would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family."

The scene included General Turgidson exclaiming, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!" after Muffley takes a pie in the face. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, this line, no matter how coincidental, would have hit too close to home to be used.

Reception

Critical views

Dr. Strangelove was listed as #26 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies and #3 on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs. Sellers' line "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" made #64 on AFI's 100 Years, 100 Quotes. The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedy film of all time.

Roger Ebert has Dr. Strangelove in his list of Great Movies, saying it is "arguably the best political satire of the century."

This film is number 53 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

Awards

The film was nominated for four academy awards and three BAFTA awards and won four BAFTA awards. It was nominated for the following Academy Awards: best actor (Peter Sellers), best adapted screenplay, best director, and best picture, and for the following BAFTA awards: best British actor (Peter Sellers), best British screenplay, and best foreign actor (Sterling Hayden). It won the following BAFTA awards: best British art direction (B/W) (Ken Adam), best British film, best film from any source, and the UN award. In addition, the film won the best written American comedy award from the Writers Guild of America and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Kubrik himself won two awards for best director from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists and was nominated for one by the Directors Guild of America.

Trivia

• During the filming, Stanley Kubrick and George C. Scott had differences of opinions regarding certain scenes. However, Kubrick got Scott to conform based largely upon his ability to beat Scott at chess (which they played frequently on the set).
• The photographic mural in General Ripper's office, is actually a view of Heathrow Airport, London.
• On the opening title sequence, the movie proclaims "Base on the book Red Alert by Peter George". A spelling error wasn't noticed until the final print had been made.
• "Peace is Our Profession" is the actual motto of the Strategic Air Command.
• Major Kong's B-52, The Leper Colony, has a designation similar to the name of a B-17 in the movie 12 O'Clock High. In that movie, "Leper Colony" is crewed by the worst airmen in the 918th Bombing group.
• The right-wing John Birch Society opposed fluoridation at the time claiming it was a government-mandated and involuntary medical treatment that violated citizens' civil rights .
• "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye", a traditional Irish anti-war song shares the same tune with the American patriotic song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and the "The Animals Went in Two by Two". The tune is used to accompany the B-52 flight.

See also

• List of cultural references to Dr. Strangelove
• Slim Pickens
• Films that have been considered the greatest ever
• Water fluoridation
• Politics in fiction

External links

• Template:Filmsite
• "Dr. Strangelove" at DVD Journal
• Herman Kahn's doomsday machine
• Continuity transcript
• Commentary on Dr. Strangelove
• Great Movies: Dr. Strangelove By Roger Ebert