Facts > Films > Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Facts
| Director(s) | Stanley Kubrick |
| Producer(s) | Stanley Kubrick, Victor Lyndon, Leon Minoff (uncredited) |
| Featured Cast | Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens |
| Total Facts | 68 |
Terry Southern was brought in as co-writer by Peter Sellers because Sellers was a big fan of Southern's novel The Magic Christian, which later became a Sellers film vehicle.
Stanley Kubrick intended to film in the United States. Filming was moved to England's Shepperton Studio because Peter Sellers had to stay in England due to his pending divorce.
Stanley Kubrick usually gave directions to actors without cracking a smile. However, during the shooting of this film, Kubrick was laughing a good deal of the time while Peter Sellers was performing, often so hard that he brought himself to tears.
Stanley Kubrick wanted the tablecloth on the War Room table to be green, so it looked like the world leaders were playing poker with the world's fate. However, this makes little sense, since the film's budget required it to be shot in black & white, so color of the tablecloth would make no difference on the final film release.
Stanley Kubrick: [114] Name of the message decoder CRM-114.
Stanley Kubrick: [faces] General Turgidson, General Ripper, and Dr. Strangelove.
Stanley Kubrick: [three-way] USA vs. Russia vs. General Ripper.
Stanley Kubrick's last black and white film.
Tracy Reed, the only female seen in the film, plays Turgidson's secretary Miss Scott, was billed in some early adverts as 'Miss Foreign Affairs'. This was due to her also appearing as that character in the centerfold of Playboy magazine (June 1962), which is read by Major Kong in the cockpit. The magazine covering her butt is Foreign Affairs.
George C. Scott was reputedly annoyed that Stanley Kubrick was pushing him to overact for his role. While he vowed never to work with Kubrick again, Scott eventually saw this as one of his favorite performances. Many fans consider it some of his best work on-screen.
Peter Sellers improvised most of his lines.
Peter Sellers was also cast as Maj. T.J. "King" Kong, but he had trouble developing a Texas accent. When Sellers broke his ankle, Stanley Kubrick decided to cast another actor who naturally fit the role. John Wayne never responded. Bonanza star Dan Blocker, declined the role because of the script's progressive political content. Kubrick cast Slim Pickens because of his work on One-Eyed Jacks. Kubrick told Pickens to play it straight.
Peter Sellers was not keen on multiple takes, one of Stanley Kubrick's trademarks. Kubrick felt that Sellers's performance improved with each successive take, while Sellers couldn't understand why he was being asked to keep doing the same scene over and over.
Peter Sellers was paid $1 million, 55% of the film's budget. Stanley Kubrick famously quipped "I got three for the price of six".
Peter Sellers was the first actor to be nominated for a single Academy award (best actor) for a film in which he portrayed three different characters in the same film.
James Earl Jones' film debut. Stanley Kubrickcast Jones after seeing him in a production of William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", in which George C. Scott also appeared.
According to Christiane Kubrick in her 2002 book "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures," her husband Stanley Kubrick often played chess with George C. Scott on the set between setups. Kubrick, renowned as a master-level chess player who used to hustle other players in his youth in New York City, outclassed Scott as a player and easily beat him, which had the effect of winning Scott's admiration for the director and keeping the famously volatile actor (who was only a few months younger than Kubrick) focused during the down-time.
As research, Stanley Kubrick read nearly 50 books about nuclear war.
As seen in the code book ("today's codes", on top of the page just after the crew member finds the right codes), the action takes place on Friday, 13 September 1963.
Based on the novel "Red Alert" by Peter George, and originally conceived as a tense thriller about the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Stanley Kubrick was working on the script when he realized that many scenes he had written were actually quite funny. He then brought in Terry Southern to turn the story into a satire. Among the changes were the addition of the title character and the renaming of other characters using satirical names such as Turgidson, Kissoff, Guano, DeSadesky, and Merkin Muffley.
Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing only if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. In their eyes, Sellers playing multiple roles was one reason Lolita was so successful.
Depite the editing and cross-cutting, Peter Bull, playing Soviet Ambassador de Sadesky, is glimpsed trying to keep himself from cracking up in the scene where Dr. Strangelove's mechanical arm and hand are moving out of control.
Director Trademark (Stanley Kubrick): bathroom: General Turgidson is in the bathroom when first summoned to the War Room, Later, General Ripper commits suicide in a bathroom.
Dr. Strangelove apparently suffers from agonistic apraxia, also known as "alien hand syndrome". It's caused by damage to the corpus collosum, the nerve fibers that connect the brain's two hemispheres. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen who identified it named it Dr. Strangelove Syndrome. According to Professor Sergio Della Sala, the patients "slam their hand and shout 'My hand does things that I don't want it to do!'"
Dr. Strangelove's glove is from Stanley Kubrick's personal collection. Peter Sellers had seen Kubrick wearing them to handle hot lights on the set, and thought they looked sinister. He wore one on his right hand (the one not under his control) to add to Strangelove's eeriness.
During the deleted pie-fight scene, President Muffley took a pie in the face and fell down, prompting General Turgidson to cry, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has just been struck down in his prime!" Stanley Kubrick had already decided to cut the pie fight by the time President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but the line (or possibly whole sequence) likely would have been cut anyway due to its eerie similarity to real events.
Early titles for the project were "The Edge of Doom" and "The Delicate Balance of Terror".
For the role of Gen. Jack D. Ripper, Stanley Kubrick was able to talk Sterling Hayden into coming out of retirement to make his first film in five years. Kubrick had previously used Hayden in The Killing.
Gen. Ripper's paranoia about water fluoridation being a Communist plot is based on a conspiracy theory circulated by the extreme-right-wing John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s. The organization, which was founded in 1958, was quite influential in conservative politics at the time, and the "fluoridation is a Communist plot" theory took hold in many rural areas of the US, with some small towns going as far as to not only ban fluoridation of water but to pass ordinances requiring the arrest and jailing of anyone who advocated it.
General Turgidson (George C. Scott) is a veteran of both WWII and Korea; wearing the Army Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart, among numerous campaign medals.
Has the longest title for a Best Picture nominee or winner, at 13 words long.
In Terry Southern's script, Muffley has a bad cold. Peter Sellers played this up so hilariously that the cast kept cracking up during filming. Stanley Kubrick decided to make him a foil for everyone else's craziness instead, and re-shot the scenes with Sellers now playing the role straight.
In addition to the 100 megaton bomb citation there are other oblique references to the Soviets' "Tsar Bomba" project in regards to the Doomsday Machine: The Ambassador laments his citizens' wanting, among other things, "more nylons" and the political difficulty this presented to defense spending. It is alleged that construction of the retardation parachute for the tested bomb's air drop disrupted the Soviet hosiery industry for months in order to secure enough material. Dr. Strangelove says "When you only wish to bury bombs there is no limit to the size". The manufactured test bomb was so large and heavy that no early 1960s vintage strategic bomber was capable of carrying it without substantial modifications impacting speed, range and radar-eluding capabilities. Its utility as a strategic weapon was therefore so severely limited as to render it negligible. Announcement of the Doomsday Machine was supposed to be announced at a coming party conference because "the Premier loves surprises". The Tsar Bomba test took place during what was supposed to be a several year nuclear test suspension between the US and USSR.
In an original script draft, Dr. Strangelove is referred to as Von Klutz.
In one version of the script, aliens from outer space observed all of the action.
In the early 60s, the B-52 was cutting-edge technology. Access to it was a matter of national security. The Pentagon refused to lend any support to the film after they read the script. Set designers reconstructed the B-52 bomber's cockpit from a single photograph that appeared in a British flying magazine. When some American Air Force personnel were invited to view the movie's B52 cockpit, they said it was a perfect copy. Stanley Kubrick feared that Ken Adam's production design team had used illegal methods and could be investigated by the FBI.
In the novel by Peter George the two H-bombs are named Hi There! and Lolita. Two years earlier, Stanley Kubrick directed Lolita. The graffiti on the second bomb is Dear John in the movie.
In the War Room scenes, General Turgidsen and the Air Force general officer seated next to him both wear wings of the lowest Air Force aeronautical rating ("pilot"). Although it is possible nowadays, in the era in which the film was made it is highly unlikely that a senior Air Force general officer (and the apparent Air Force Chief of Staff) would have any aeronautical rating lower than "command pilot" (wings with a star and a wreath), which required 15 years as a rated pilot and a minimum of 3,000 flight hours.
Initially, the President was played in a slightly effeminate manner. Those scenes were later re-shot to make him seem like an oasis of reason amidst all the madness.
Major Kong's comment about the survival kit was originally "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff". "Dallas" was overdubbed with "Vegas" after President John F. Kennedy was assassination in Dallas. Kong still mouths the word "Dallas".
Major Kong's plane's primary target, is an ICBM complex at Laputa. In Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel 'Gulliver's Travels', Laputa is a place inhabited by caricatures of scientific researchers. It's also a play on words: "la puta" is Spanish slang for "prostitute."
Many of the characters have names which are double entendres or innuendos: Jack D. Ripper refers to the famous London murderer; Merkin Muffley's names refer to female parts - a merkin is a pubic hair wig and muff is slang for women's pubic hair; Turgidson's first name is "Buck" and "turgid" is a word describing the condition of an erect penis; the Soviet premier is "Kissoff"; the Soviet ambassador is named after the Marquis de Sade (the original "sadist"); and the title character is called "Strangelove".
One definition of the word "guano" is "A substance composed chiefly of the dung of sea birds or bats", meaning Col. "Bat" Guano's name can be translated into "Bat Shit", which could also describe his reasoning with Mandrake about not wanting to shoot the Coca-Cola machine.
Over 10 miles of electrical cable was required to light up the giant screen in the War Room set.
Produced and filmed during the spring and summer of 1963, the first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The producers felt that the public would not be in a mood for a black comedy so soon after such a traumatic event, so the premiere was moved back to late January 1964.
Shortly after the release of the movie, Stanley Kubrick met with Arthur C. Clarke to talk about making the "proverbial good science-fiction movie". During a discussion of ideas (that eventually became 2001: A Space Odyssey, the two men saw what they at first thought was a satellite moving in a polar orbit, but it abruptly changed direction. When Clarke suggesting calling in a UFO report, Kubrick said, "After 'Dr. Strangelove', the Air Force doesn't want to hear from me."
The background footage for the model B-52 is filmed from a Boeing B-17G, whose shadow can be seen on the ground.
The character of General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) was patterned after Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who was renowned for his extreme anti-Communist views and who once stated that he would not be afraid to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union if he was elected president. Similarly, Brigadier General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) was patterned after General Thomas S. Power, LeMay's protégé and successor as Commander in Chief of Strategic Air Command. When briefed on a RAND proposal to limit U.S. nuclear strikes on Soviet cities at the beginning of a war, Power responded, "Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives! The whole idea is to kill the bastards!...At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"
The character of President Merklin Muffley (Peter Sellers) was patterned after Adlai Stevenson II, who lost two presidential elections to Dwight D. Eisenhower before becoming America's ambassador to the United Nations (1961-1965, dying in office), which was his position at the time this film was made.
The end sequence, in which Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" is played over several shots of nuclear explosions, was suggested by Peter Sellers' fellow ex-Goon, Spike Milligan.