Posted on 01/30/2025 5:02:26 AM PST by Kid Shelleen
As Stanley Kubrick's satirical masterpiece Dr Strangelove turns 60, an ongoing mystery endures: who was the real-life inspiration for his demonic central character?
In 1999, a reporter from Scientific American asked the 91-year-old physicist Edward Teller whether it was true that he had been the real-life template for Dr Strangelove, the chilling scientific adviser played by Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's movie Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Rumours had been circulating ever since the movie's release on 29 January 1964
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The article mentions Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute.
He was best known for his book “On Thermonuclear War” where he argued that nuclear war was winnable.
In Dr. Strangelove that view was best expressed by the George C. Scott character who advises the president that a first strike would only lead to ten to twenty million killed and therefore could be “won”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcK6ad_t9ak
Masterpiece? IMHO, it was one of the stupidest movies I ever saw.
One of the classics. George C. Scott was hilarious as General Buck Turgidson.
review
Every stand up comic knows that at least ten percent of the audience will hate even their best jokes.
We are all different that way.
The movie specialized in irony.
One example was the troops shooting at each other with a big “Peace is our Business” sign overhead.
or....”You can’t fight in the War Room”
or....”You are going to have to answer to the Coca Cola Company” for stealing a dime....
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed up, but we could keep it to 10-20 million tops”
I thought George C. Scott stole the show in a movie filled with great acting performances.
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.”
Slim Pickens.
I disagree...it was a masterpiece of satire, IMO, but...there are too many who view it as more than what it was. It was, as a product of the times, an anti-war movie, but more so...a satire. And in the end, a movie...entertainment.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
And in the end, it is a movie, and people’s tastes in movies are certainly a very disparate thing. I rarely hold someone’s tastes in movies fully against them, but I still do that myself, as evidenced by the latest “Barbie” movie that I did not see.
The last time I saw that movie, I noticed that James Earl Jones was in it. I recognized his voice. In the scene where Slim Pickens is flying the B-52 he is talking with the other crewmen. Jones was one of them. He was very young.
Major Kong IIRC
I appreciate your point of view about this movie, and I realize I’m probably in the minority in disliking it. I suppose if I were to view “Dr. Strangelove” through a different lens, I’d see it as a masterpiece as well.
Dr.Strangelove to Barbie....Hmm.
.
IIRC Kubricks favorite movie
Was ‘The Jerk’ Steve Martin.
.
Jack D. Ripper was right. The do want our bodily fluids, (DNA).
Kubrick himself claimed he was compelled by hearing the phrase
“mutually assured destruction” coined by Donald Brennan in 1962.
Brennan was a military analyst and strategist at the Hudson Institute.
He used the term to criticize the idea that both sides in
a nuclear war would be prepared to destroy each other.
I didn’t get it when I was young, but now I do.
In fact, it looks more and more prescient, as time goes by...............
I always thought that Dr. Strangelove was based on Wernher von Braun.
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