Singin' In The Rain

In 1949, the writing team of Betty Comden & Adolph Green walked into the MGM offices of Arthur Freed. Freed, a lyricist and renowned film producer, specialized in movie musicals. He told Comden & Green, "Kids, your next movie is going to be Singin' In The Rain and it's going to have all my songs in it." There was no plot. No characters. Just a bunch of unrelated songs and the notion that one scene would have someone singing while it was raining. Somehow this became the greatest movie musical ever made.

Singin' In The Rain debuted in 1952. The film offers a comedic depiction of Hollywood's transition from silents to talkies. Choreographed and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the film stars Kelly, Donald O'Connor and 18-year old beauty pageant winner Debbie Reynolds. Reynolds was a gymnast with no dance experience.  Kelly was a harsh taskmaster who criticized her dancing skills. One day, Fred Astaire visited the set and found Reynolds crying beneath a piano. He agreed to give her dance lessons. By the time she filmed the "Good Morning" scene, she was able to keep up with Kelly and O'Connor. The 14-hour shooting days caused burst blood vessels in Reynolds' feet. Years later she said, "The two hardest things I ever did in my life are childbirth and Singin' In The Rain."

O'Connor also succumbed to the stress of production. During the "Make 'Em Laugh" number, he resurrected an old vaudeville routine of running up a wall and completing a somersault. A four-pack-a-day smoker, O'Connor was so debilitated he had to be hospitalized for exhaustion and severe carpet burns. When an accident destroyed the footage, O'Connor gamely agreed to re-shoot the scene from scratch.

The iconic "Singin' In The Rain" number was filmed while Gene Kelly had a 103-degree temperature. The scene took 2-3 days to shoot and Kelly was constantly soaked causing his wool suit to shrink. Technicians covered two city blocks on the MGM backlot with tarp to create darkness for the night scene. Overhead sprays were installed, a potential problem since there was a water shortage in Culver City. During dailies, it was determined the rain did not show up properly on screen.  Milk was added to make the rain more visible.

The song "Singin' In The Rain" appeared six previous times on the big screen. It debuted in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Jimmy Durante sang the song in Speak Easily (1932) while Judy Garland sang it in Little Nellie Kelly (1940). The song also appeared as a musical sequence in The Babe Ruth Story (1948). In Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), Malcolm McDowell performs "Singin' In The Rain" during a controversial rape scene. Gene Kelly was so incensed, he deliberately ignored McDowell at the 1972 Academy Awards.

O'Connor respected Kelly but dreaded making a mistake for fear Kelly would yell at him.  Reynolds wrote that Kelly "was a perfectionist and a disciplinarian" but he was also "the most exciting director I've ever worked for."  Kelly later admitted he'd been ill mannered on set but he claimed it was all an act to get the studio to release him from his contract.  MGM obliged in 1954.

Singin' In The Rain was initially released in 1951 but pulled from theaters so it didn't compete with An American In Paris, also starring Gene Kelly. The film did modest box office at the time, though it was not nominated for Best Picture. Over the years, the film became influential among modern filmmakers. Francois Truffaut and Alain Resnais both listed the movie as their favorite. The 2011 Best Picture The Artist was clearly influenced by Singin' In The Rain as was La La Land. Ryan Gosling acknowledged, "We watched Singin' In The Rain everyday for inspiration."

The network television premiere of the film was scheduled for November 23, 1963. It had to be postponed two weeks due to the assassination of President Kennedy. The original negative of the film was destroyed in a fire. In 2007, the American Film Institute rated the movie the "#5 Greatest Film of all time." (7" x 9", black ink print)

New York Love Letter

Manhattan is Woody Allen's heartfelt ode to New York. Shot in gorgeous black & white, the film opens with a stunning montage of New York City set to the strains of Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue."  Unlike Scorsese's gritty Mean Streets & Sidney Lumet's Serpico, Manhattan offers an idealized view of New York.  This is Allen's attempt to make sense of his relationship with the city and the difficulty of living a decent life amid society's loose contemporary morals.

Manhattan is the perfect example of a "Woody Allen movie."  It's funny, romantic and serious with multiple actors and naturalistic dialogue.  The characters go through a steady stream of affairs, break-ups and divorces.  New York is a solipsistic climate with it's own rules of fidelity.  Allen's best friend Yale (played by Michael Murphy) voices his opposition to infidelity by saying, "I've only had two, maybe three, affairs ever."

The New Yorkers of Manhattan are selfish, passive aggressive and emotionally immature.  They immerse themselves in psychoanalysis as a means of fending off inevitable bouts with depression.  Allen plays a divorced television writer dating an underaged girl who falls in love with his best friend's mistress.  He has two current girlfriends and two ex-wives, one whom he tried to run down with a car.

The most moral character in the film is 17-year old Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway.  She is the only one who believes in the possibility of monogamy. All she wants is to be with Allen while he spends the entire movie trying to break up with her.  By the end, Allen realizes a 17-year old is far too mature for him and a deep melancholy pervades the story.

Allen initially disliked the film so much he asked United Artists not to release it, even offering to make another film for free instead.  Perhaps he was reacting to his own character's negative portrayal, a trifecta of divorce, infidelity & statutory rape (raw meat for Woody Allen haters.)  United Artists
distributed the film as the studio was falling to pieces due to the Heaven's Gate fiasco.

Allen credited his love of Gershwin's music as his inspiration for the film.  The star of the film was New York itself gleaming like an emerald in the night. Allen opted for black and white celluloid because "that's how I remembered New York."  Cinematographer Gordon Willis (who also shot The Godfather, Annie Hall and The Purple Rose of Cairo) said this was his favorite of all his movies. The scene with Allen and Diane Keaton sitting by the Queensboro Bridge has become an iconic moment in American cinema history.  The production had to bring their own bench for the scene since there were no park benches in the area.

At one point in the film, Allen's character Isaac makes a list of things that make life worth living.  They include Groucho Mark, Willie Mays, Louis Armstrong's Potato Head Blues, Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, the 2nd Movement of the Jupiter Symphony, the crabs at Sam Wo's and those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne,

Allen's one-liners are classic.  He tells Keaton, "You know a lot of geniuses. You should meet some stupid people, you could learn something."  He says he wrote a shorty story about his mother called "The Castrating Zionist." Reflecting on relationships he utters the film's most famous joke, "I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics."

Behind the humor there's a deep sense of sadness.  The city might be gorgeous but it's also a lonely place.  Perhaps this is why Allen compared the film to Interiors, his most bleak movie.  Manhattan garnered a Best Screenplay nomination and it ranks 46th on AFI's 100 Best Comedy list.  The film was Allen's second highest-grossing film behind Annie Hall.

After the release of the film, actress Stacy Nelkin claimed the movie was based on her relationship with Allen when she was a 17-year old student at Stuyvesant High School.  She'd had a bit part in Annie Hall but her role was led on the cutting room floor.  Allen did not publicly acknowledge the relationship with Nelkin until 2014.

Woody Allen is the embodiment of the adage "Never confuse an artist with his work."  Say what you will about him as a person but without his movies there is no Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm or It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia or Louie.  His influence is also felt in films like This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, Being John Malkovich, Garden State and Do The Right Thing.

Perhaps Allen's character is best described in a scene from Manhattan as taken from the book written about him by his ex-wife (played by Meryl Streep). "He was given to fits of rage, Jewish liberal paranoia, male chauvinism, self-righteous misanthropy and nihilistic moods of despair.  He had complaints about life, but never solutions.  In his most private moments he spoke of his fear of death which he elevated to tragic heights when, in fact, it was mere narcissism."  (5" x 7", black ink print)

Macguffin

Alfred Hitchcock always wanted to make a film involving a chase scene across the presidential faces of Mount Rushmore. He had no specific idea for a plot.  All he knew was he wanted the hero to hide from villains in Lincoln's nose while suffering an uncontrollable sneezing fit. In 1957, Hitchcock teamed with screenwriter Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell Of Success) to write what would become North By Northwest.  (The working title was The Man In Lincoln's Nose.)

Hitchcock wanted the story to start with a murder at the United Nations and he wanted a plot where the protagonist is mistaken for a non-existent secret agent.  Somehow, Lehman and Hitchcock combined these elements into an original spy thriller.  The film includes several Hitchcock signatures: an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances, POV shots forcing the audience to engage in voyeurism, a hero with an unresolved mother complex, a creative chase scene and the use of a famous landmark.  Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive mistaken by Communist spies as an undercover agent named George Kaplan.  After being kidnapped, Grant escapes across country, falls in love with a beautiful blonde and desperately tries to figure out who George Kaplan is.

James Stewart wanted to play the lead role but Hitchcock preferred Cary Grant. The director waited until Stewart committed to the Otto Preminger film Anatomy Of A Murder before casting Grant.  For the female lead, Hitchcock wanted Sophia Loren but she wasn't available.  He opted for Eva Marie Saint who'd come to prominence in On The Waterfront.  Saint was from the method acting school for which Hitchcock had notorious disdain.  When a method actor once asked Hitchcock, "What's my motivation," he replied, "Your salary."  Eva Marie Saint later said that Hitchcock gave her only three pieces of direction.  "Keep your voice low, always look directly at Cary Grant and stop moving your hands so much."

North By Northwest was Cary Grant's fourth Hitchcock film, and he could be demanding.  Throughout North By Northwest, Grant is almost always on the left side of screen presenting the right side of his face to the camera.  He preferred the right side of his face because of a small mole on his left cheek.  Grant was also a known penny-pincher.  A few weeks into production, Saint was impressed by how many autographs Grant gave to star struck fans.  She later learned Grant charged fifteen-cents per signature.

Hitchcock was denied permission to film at the United Nations building. Undeterred, he hid in the rear of a cleaning supply truck while the crew secretly filmed master shots of Cary Grant walking into the UN.  Hitchcock was also denied permission to film at Mount Rushmore.  South Dakota Senator Karl Mundt felt portraying a murder at the location would "desecrate the monument."  MGM created a massive replica of Mount Rushmore in a Culver City soundstage.  The set was so large it included 100 ponderosa pine trees.

The most famous scene in the film is a crop duster chase through a barren cornfield.  The 8-minute tension-filled scene is largely silent and has no music. Cary Grant stands beside a highway in the middle of nowhere thinking he's about to meet George Kaplan.  A stranger appears and points out a crop duster plane in the distance telling Grant, "That's funny.  He's dusting crops where there ain't no crops."  The resulting scene is one of the most iconic in movie history.

North By Northwest was the first spy film filled with deadpan humor.  The film served as a creative template for the James Bond movies that came out a few years later.  Cary Grant's drink of choice is a Gibson--gin & dry vermouth--similar to Bond's "shaken, not stirred" martini.  The crop duster scene is blatantly copied as a helicopter chase in From Russia With Love.  And the pre-Bondian dialogue includes lines like, "I never make love on an empty stomach."

Renowned graphic designer Saul Bass created the film's opening credits. Hitchcock's signature cameo appears just after the credits.  He arrives late at a bus stop and misses the bus.  The modernist home owned by the villain at the peak of Mount Rushmore was based on a Frank Lloyd Wright design.  The house didn't actually exist.  It was recreated in an MGM studio.

North By Northwest was nominated for 5 Academy Awards.  The American Film Institute lists it as one of the top ten movies ever made.  The film's title is taken from Hamlet and the meaning is a class MacGuffin (unexplained plot point) since north by northwest is not a true aviation direction.  (5" x 7", black ink print)

The Jewish Superhero

His name is synonymous with magic, but Harry Houdini (born Erich Weiss) rose to fame as an escape artist and stunt performer. Long before David Blaine, Houdini perfected the art of death-defying public spectacle. He hung from skyscrapers while tied in a straightjacket and he immersed himself in freezing rivers while trapped in a barrel.

The son of a rabbi, Houdini became a strong moral figure in the magic community often resolving disputes between competing magicians. In 1906 he started the magazine Conjurer's Monthly which helped unite magicians who had no union at the time.

Legend has it that Houdini was killed by a punch to the stomach.  Though parts of the story are accurate, it's not the whole truth.  Here are the details.

It was October 18, 1926.  Houdini was scheduled to perform at the Princess Theater in Montreal.  On the day of the performance, Houdini gave a lecture at McGill University about exposing fraudulent spiritualists and mediums.  After the speech, three students visited Houdini backstage.

As the students entered his dressing room, Houdini was lying on a couch reading mail.  One of the students, Joselyn Gordon Whitehead, brought up the question of Houdini's strength and his ability to take a punch to the stomach.  Houdini stated that his stomach could resist much, but he did not offer to test the statement.  He remained reclined on the couch having broken his ankle a few days earlier while performing his famous Water-Torture Cell Escape.

Suddenly, Whitehead struck several fierce blows into Houdini's gut.  Houdini winced in pain and gestured for the student to stop.  Houdini stated he'd not been given time to prepare.  Had he known the punches were coming, he would have stood up.

By mid-afternoon, Houdini was suffering from severe stomach pain.  He made it through that evening's performance as well as two more shows the next day.  On a train to Detroit for a week of new shows, his stomach pain had become insufferable.  His wife Bess wired ahead for a doctor whom met them in the Detroit theater dressing room.  Houdini had a 104-degree temperature.

The doctor urged that Houdini go straight to the hospital.  Houdini proclaimed, "I'll do this show if it's my last."  By the show's third act, Houdini could not go on.  His assistants finished his act and Houdini finally agreed to go to the hospital.

The surgeon determined that Houdini had a ruptured appendix and he was suffering from peritonitis.  These were the days before antibiotics and Houdini's condition was serious.  Houdini hung on for four days before undergoing a second operation.  Though he seemed to be recovering, Houdini died a few days later on Halloween.

Newspaper reporters wrote that the blows to Houdini's stomach had killed him. Today, medical experts agree that appendicitis caused by blunt trauma is not possible.  Houdini was likely already suffering from appendicitis when Whitehead punched him.  (His wife Bess confirmed Houdini was in discomfort for weeks.) Houdini possibly wrote off his pain as a residual effect from the blows thus delaying the medical treatment that might have saved his life.  At the time of his death, Houdini was just 52 years old.  (5" x 7", black ink print with watercolor)

At Breath's End

Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 French film Breathless is one of the most influential movies ever made.  Along with Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge, Breathless signaled the emergence of French New Wave Cinema known as the "nouvelle vague."  The movement purported to see filmmaking in a new way viewing film directors as auteurs responsible for everything on screen.  Godard utilized documentary style hand-held cameras, natural lighting and frequent jump cuts.  Breathless was shot on location in Paris without permits and the style is daring, frenetic and raw.

The story is deceptively simple.  Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a smalltime gangster who idolizes American crime films and yearns to be Humphrey Bogart.  He steals a car in Marseilles, shoots a policeman and turns to his American girlfriend played by Jean Seberg who tries to help him escape to Italy.  Seberg ultimately betrays him to police and in the closing scene he is shot to death in the street.

The film is a "nihilistic road movie" with a pre-punk rock sensibility.  The plot is disjointed, the dialogue meanders and the film quality is overexposed and grainy.  Godard could not afford a camera dolly so he pushed the cinematographer around in a wheelchair.  He started production without a shooting script and he wrote scenes each morning and filmed them the same day.  The put Belmondo and Seberg off balance since they had no time to rehearse or build character motivation.  Their frustration and confusion yielded an edge and naturalism to their performance that came off as completely real.

The storytelling is ragged at times, shifting from kinetic action to leisurely dialogue where nothing much happens.  Godard embraced style over story and his movies can seem pompous, self-obsessed and even clunky at times. In Breathless, passersby stare directly at camera and the jump cut editing makes the plot hard to follow.  But this was Godard's intent.  He wanted audiences to see movies in a new way even if the viewing experience was uncomfortable.

Godard once said, "To make a film all you need is a girl and a gun." Breathless embodies this ethos.  The movie is inspired by the American gangster genre and Godard pays homage to his predecessors.  Belmondo's character quotes dialogue from John Huston's The Maltese Falcon.  Seberg tries to evade police by escaping into a cinema where Otto Preminger's Whirpool is playing.  The lobby card outside the cinema displays Bogart's final film The Harder They Fall.

Godard's influences included jazz, the Beat Generation, film noir and the Italian neorealist filmmakers of the late 40's and early 50's.  Breathless was as much a documentary about Paris as it was a crime thriller and romance.  The free-form realism and lack of regard for traditional storytelling methods influenced directors like Sidney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma.  Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie And Clyde has been referred to as a more violent version of Breathless.

No American director owes a greater debt to Godard than Quentin Tarantino. The films Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were virtual homages to Breathless including non-linear plot lines, non sequitur dialogue, aspiring tough guys and stylish anti-heroes.  The famous dance scene in Godard Band of Outsiders directly influenced the John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance sequence in Pulp Fiction.

Breathless still embodies the essence of cool.  In 2012, the British Film Institute ranked the film as the 13th best movie of all time.  It was made for just $90,000 and shot in three weeks.  A half-century later, the film remains fresh and spontaneous and still inspires people the world over to flock to Paris. (5" x 7", black ink print)

C'est La Vie

The French Connection is a 1971 police thriller starring Gene Hackman. Hackman plays Jimmy 'Popeye Doyle,' a racist, trash-talking cop chasing drug smugglers between France and New York.  Based on the life of actual NYC Detective Eddie Egan who broke a drug smuggling ring in 1961, the film features the most famous car chase in movie history.

William Friedkin was a young, unknown director with four movies under his belt. He'd just made the unpopular gay-themed film The Boys In The Band and his career was going nowhere.  He called legendary filmmaker Howard Hawks for advice.  Hawks told him, "People don't want stories about people's problems or any of that psychological shit.  They want action stories."

The French Connection was Friedkin's stab at an action film.  This was the Vietnam-era and the movie reflected the murky morality of the period.  The hero is gruff, unsympathetic and not afraid to shoot bad guys in the back.  The villain is suave and likable and, in true anti-genre fashion, he gets away with his crime in the end.

The lead role of 'Popeye Doyle' was turned down by a spate of Hollywood stars. Steve McQueen felt the movie was too much like Bullitt.  Lee Marvin hated New York cops.  James Caan feared the character was too unlikable.  Jackie Gleason called the story depraved.  Robert Mitchum thought the screenplay was garbage. Peter Boyle turned down the role because he wanted more romantic parts. Amazingly, the role was initially given to New York newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, a non-actor. Breslin was summarily fired after Friedkin learned he didn't know how to drive.

Gene Hackman had burst on the scene in 1967 after his appearance in Bonnie And Clyde.  Friedkin gave the role of 'Popeye Doyle' to Hackman without the benefit of an audition, script reading or screen test.  When reading the screenplay, Hackman cringed at the racist dialogue he had to utter.  Only after spending a week on the New York streets with Eddie Egan (the real 'Popeye Doyle') did Hackman realize the dialogue reflected real life.

The film starts out slow for an action movie.  An hour goes by before gunshots are fired.  The story focuses on the drudgery of police work, the uneventful stakeouts, the hours of paper work.  Cops slowly cruise city streets looking for criminals.  Details are subtle, the tone brooding (much like Scorcese's Taxi Driver that came out five years later).  The film has a documentary feel as if we're watching unedited B-Roll from 1970 New York.  At one early point we can see the first World Trade Center Tower under construction in the background.

When the action finally kicks in, it's relentless.  The highlight is a scene where a car chases an elevated subway line through Lower Manhattan.  The chase was not in the original script.  Producer Phil D'Antoni, who also produced Bullitt (with it's memorable San Francisco car chase), suggested the idea to Friedkin.  Details were improvised on a last-minute location scout.

The chase was filmed without obtaining proper city permits.  Traffic was cleared for five blocks in each direction and the filmmakers shot between 10am-3pm.  Off-duty NYPD officers teamed with assistant directors to direct traffic.  The producers had permission to control traffic signals on streets where they ran the chase car. But the chase illegally spilled onto streets where there was no traffic control forcing stunt drivers to evade real cars and pedestrians.  The crash that occurs midway throughout the chase involved a local man driving to work when his car was suddenly struck by the picture car.  He was unhurt but producers had to pay for his car repairs.

A camera was mounted on a car's bumper for low-angle POV shots of the streets racing by.  The camera was undercranked to 18 frames per second enhancing the sense of speed.  Famed stunt driver Bill Hickman drove at 90 mph for 26 blocks without stopping.  Friedkin wanted a hand-held camera in the back seat. His camera operators, all of whom were married with children, felt the scene too dangerous.  Friedkin, young and single, operated the camera himself.

Hackman did some of his own stunt driving until he struck another vehicle and crashed into a concrete pillar.  At this point, the producers pulled the plug. Friedkin lacked the coverage he wanted but he made do with the footage.  The final scene has no music, only the ambient sounds of screeching tires, car horns and smashing metal.  Friedkin claims he edited the scene to the tempo of Santana's "Black Magic Woman."

The French Connection spawned an era of documentary-style cop movies dedicated to gritty authenticity and morally ambivalent characters.  The film won 5 Academy Awards.  It was the first R-Rated movie to win Best Picture.  (5" x 7", black ink print)

Strange Love

In 1963, America was in a heightened state of anxiety.  The country had witnessed the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The Cold War was at its peak and civilization was at the brink of nuclear annihilation.  Director Stanley Kubrick was obsessed about the possibility of nuclear war.  He read a novel by Peter George called Red Alert about a rogue US Military Officer who attempts to trigger an unauthorized nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Kubrick paid $3,500 to option the screen rights to the novel.  He began writing the screenplay, a dramatic thriller he titled Edge Of Doom.

Kubrick completed the screenplay around the time the United States discovered Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.  Public anxiety was so intense Kubrick realized the only way to tell the story was as a satirical comedy.  He began remaining the screenplay in comic form.  He explained, "Confront a man in his office with a nuclear alarm and you have a documentary.  If the news reaches him in his living room, you have a drama.  If it catches him in the lavatory, the result is comedy." (An early draft of the comedy screenplay begins with extra-terrestrials observing earth after a nuclear holocaust.)

Kubrick decided his new comic approach required a sense of inspired lunacy.  He turned to novelist Terry Southern, writer of the book Candy that offered an absurd look at modern sexuality.  Kubrick told Southern to come up with "the most outrageous thing a character can say and still be credible."  Southern responded with classic dialogue.  Base Commander Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) says, "I can no longer sit back and let the international Communist conspiracy sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids."  Later, President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) yells out, "Gentleman, you can't fight in here!  This is the War Room!" Southern came up with the name "Dr. Strangelove."  Kubrick added the film's subtitle, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

The film was shot at Shepperton Studios in England.  The primary set was the awe-inspiring War Room.  Production Designer Ken Adam devised initial sketches inspired by the classic films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis.  The huge triangular room was 130 feet long, 100 feet wide and 35 feet high.  A massive electronic "Big Board" showing the paths of bombs headed toward Russia  took up the back wall.  Crew members wore slippers to avoid scratching the shiny black Formica floor. The room's centerpiece was a 22-foot diameter circular table suspended under a ring of light.  Kubrick insisted the table be covered by green felt to give the impression of a high-stakes poker game (even though the film was shot in black and white).

Ken Adam also had to recreate the interior of a B-52 Bomber without the cooperation of the US Government.  His only reference photo was a blurry image of a B-52 cockpit featured on the cover of an obscure book called Strategic Air Command.  Adam built the sent from his imagination spending hours designing switches and warning lights.  His ultimate creation was so accurate that military air personnel thought Adam had obtained unauthorized access to an actual B-52. Kubrick feared he might be investigated by the FBI for revealing government secrets.

When it came to casting, Kubrick approached Peter Sellers who'd appeared in his last film Lolita.  Sellers would play three roles: RAF Captain Lionel Mandrake, American President Merkin Muffley and wheelchair-bound, ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove.  The part of Mandrake was easy for Sellers.  He'd impersonated British officers for years.  For President Muffley, Sellers initially portrayed the role as a meek, effeminate character constantly using an inhaler to treat a bad cold. Kubrick instructed Sellers to be more serious since Muffley was the only character who understood the consequences of his actions. Sellers mimicked the voice and gestures of Adlai Stevenson for the new persona.  The role of Dr. Strangelove was an amalgam of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn and rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun.  Much of Sellers' dialogue was improvised as when he refers to the president as "Mein Fuhrer."  Kubrick and Sellers both denied patterning Dr. Strangelove after Henry Kissinger.

Sellers initially agreed to play a fourth role that of B-52 pilot Major King Kong. During rehearsals, Sellers & Kubrick were seated in a plane suspended 15 feet off the ground.  Sellers fell out of the plane and broke his leg.  Kubrick had to recast Major Kong.  He turned to Slim Pickens, a character actor he'd seen in the Marlon Brando film One-Eyed Jacks.  When Pickins arrived on set, he wore a cowboy hat, fringed jacket and weathered cowboy boots.  The crew assumed he's come in costume not realizing this was how Pickins always dressed.  The final scene of Pickins riding the nuclear bomb toward Russia remains the most iconic image in the film.

George C. Scott was cast as General Buck Turgidson.  The part was loosely based on hawkish, anti-Communist General Curtis LeMay.  Scott, known for his volatility and heavy drinking, initially resisted Kubrick's urgings to play the role for laughs.  After Kubrick destroyed him in several games of chess, Scott relented. General Turgidson is stuck in perpetual adolescence pouting when scolded by the president and taking calls from his mistress while he's in the War Room.  He is always the optimist as when he voices his opinion about nuclear war.  "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed.  But I am saying no more than 10 to 20 million killed, depending on the breaks."

Production on Dr. Strangelove was completed in spring 1963.  The original climax to the film featured an epic pie fight in the War Room.  Kubrick removed the scene fearing the farcical aspect would undermine the film's satirical tone.  The first test screening was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day JFK was assassinated.  The film was delayed until January 1964.  Because of the tragedy, one line of dialogue had to be changed.  When Slim Pickens say, "A fellow could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with that stuff," the line is reduced as "Vegas."

The film was a box office and critical success.  Theaters promoted the film by giving away pocket radioactivity detectors.  The movie ultimately received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  AFI called the movie the #3 comedy of all time behind Some Like It Hot and Tootsie. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, he asked to see the White House War Room.  His Chief of Staff had to tell him no actual War Room ever existed.  (5" x 7", black ink print)