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16. The Day the Earth Stood Still: Klaatu's Ultimatum

Description

As usual there are spoilers ahead!

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The Day the earth Stood Still was released in 1951 just like The Thing from Another World. And just like that film The Day the Earth Stood Still is based on a story from Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The flying saucer craze of 1947 has obviously made its impression on Hollywood and The Day the Earth Stood Still delivered a seamless, sleek, futuristic saucer along with an imposing shiny robot and a polite humanoid alien who comes in peace to deliver an ultimatum to a world wrangling with the atomic age.

 

The Experts

Glyn Morgan is Curatorial Lead at the Science Museum in London and a science fiction scholar.

 

Peter Gottschalk is a Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University with a special interest in the South Asian region, empire and science. He also teaches a class called “Awesome Cinema”.

 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the show and guests

02:22 Astounding magazine, The Manhattan project and the Peace Offensive

5:55 From pulps to peace: Sci-fi amid the red scare

11:28 The Flying Saucer

14:00 A benevolent invader and the United Nations

19:39 Gort - Klaatu, Barada Nikto!

25:55 The sane scientist

29:06 Christian themes

34:36 Media frenzy

38:24 The 2008 remake

42:44 Bernard Hermann’s seminal score

44:06 Legacy and recommendations

 

Shownotes

  • Director Robert Wise was an American filmmaker born in 1914. Wise would go on to win Academy Awards for West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also the editor on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

  • Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates was published in 1940 in Astounding Science Fiction.

  • Astounding Science Fiction is a magazine that has published since 1930 under various names and in various formats. It was a central contributor to the 'Golden Age of Science Fiction'.

  • John W Campbell was an American science fiction writer born in 1910. He was editor of Astounding Science Fiction from 1937 till his death in 1971. He was a central figure in the golden era of science fiction but also a public advocate/apologist for slavery who held racist views. In 2019 the John W Campbell prize was renamed due to this. You can read more about it here.

  • Isaac Asimov was an American science fiction writer born in 1920 who wrote many highly influential works including the Foundation Series. I have also just discovered that he also had a well-known history of sexual harassment which has made today a disappointing day.

  • Robert Heinlein was an influential American science fiction writer born in 1907. His most notable works include Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.

  • Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA is where the Manhattan Project (to develop the nuclear bomb) took place. Oppenheimer was the director of the laboratory there.

  • Deadline by Cleve Cartmill published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1944 is the story about the atomic bomb that caused the FBI to investigate the possible links to the Manhattan Project.

  • You can find the poster for The Day the Earth Stood Still here.

  • You can learn a bit about McCarthyism here.

  • You can learn more about the Hollywood Ten here and here.

  • Here is the Britannica entry for the Hollywood blacklist.

  • President Eisenhower made his Atoms for Peace speech in 1953.

  • Here is an overview of the Atomic Age which includes a 1955 commemorative stamp for the Atoms for Peace programme.

  • Sam Jaffe (who played Professor Barnhardt in The Day the Earth Stood Still) was blacklisted in the early 50s. His career was affected significantly until William Wyler hired him for Ben Hur in 1959. You can see that the 1950s were a sparse time for Jaffe’s work on his IMDB page.

  • You can learn more about the flying saucer craze of 1947 here.

  • The United Nations formed after World War II with the hope of maintaining peace and security among nations.

  • The League of Nations was a failed precursor to the United Nations that was formed after World War I. You can learn a bit about it here.

  • This article gives a good overview of Einstein’s changing views on the atomic bomb.

  • There is an image of the “crescent” shaped flying saucer first seen by Kenneth Arnold here.   

  • The IMDB page for The Day the Earth Stood Still from 2008 is here.

  • Bernard Hermann is an American music composer born in 1911 and is well known for his memorable work on many Alfred Hitchcock films.

  • You can see the cover to Ringo Starr’s 1974 album Goodnight Vienna here.

  • The IMDB page for The Twilight Zone episode The Gift.

  • The Wikipedia page for Star Trek TOS episode Assignment Earth.

  • Childhood’s End is a novel from 1953 written by Arthur C Clarke.

  • The Prime Directive is a principle from Star Trek’s Starfleet that bans members from interfering with aliens until they have reached a certain level of technological or cultural advancement.

  • The IMDB page for The Day the Earth Caught Fire can be found here.

  • The IMDB page for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is here.

 

 

NEXT EPISODE!

Next episode we will be taking a closer look at The War of the Worlds (1953). You can check Just Watch to find out where it can be found in your region and is available to buy or rent at many outlets including Apple TV.

 

If you wanted to listen to the famous 1938 radio play from Orson Welles you can hear it here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzC3Fg_rRJM&t=120s

 

And if you want to hear Richard Burton’s hypnotic reverberating voice in Jeff Wayne’s Musical version of War of the Worlds you can hear that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YwFvmnbj3E&list=OLAK5uy_ktYPoln1n-WvUNOQOWtK9BVfl9U_FBVo4&index=3

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