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The Day the Earth Stood Still: The Spaceman Slaps Our Wrists
SteynonLine ^ | July 19, 2025 | Rick McGinnis

Posted on 07/20/2025 6:59:25 AM PDT by Twotone

There was a small renaissance in science fiction movies in the early '50s, aside from the space operas and creature features there were politically resonant, to include big budget titles like Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still. How and why science fiction films took themselves seriously isn't hard to understand if you just look at the headlines from the moment the film began production to after it hit theatres.

Screenwriter Edmund North was working on the script for the film in the first two months of 1951, at the beginning of the first full year of the Korean War. The year began with Chinese and North Korean forces capturing Seoul, and on January 11th a report was delivered to U.S. president Truman by the National Security Resources Board recommending the expansion of the war to the bombing of China and even a potential nuclear strike on the USSR.

Just two weeks after North delivered his final draft, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg began; the Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb just a year and a half earlier, and they would test two more weapons in September and October of that year. Two days after filming began on April 9, Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command of the Korean War. As filming was wrapping in May, the U.S. was testing its first thermonuclear warheads at Eniwetok Atoll. Just a few days after production wrapped Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to the Soviet Union.

That year, the U.S. Census department took delivery of the UNIVAC 1 computer from Remington Rand and the USSR sent two dogs, Dezik and Tsygan, on a sub-orbital spaceflight.

(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...


TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: coldwar; klaatu; movies; pacifism; rickmcginnis; scifi; spacerace; trollfarm

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1 posted on 07/20/2025 6:59:25 AM PDT by Twotone
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To: Twotone

Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still was communist propaganda.


2 posted on 07/20/2025 7:05:26 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: Twotone

3 posted on 07/20/2025 7:09:21 AM PDT by P.O.E. (Pray for America.)
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To: Twotone

Klatu Barada Nicto


4 posted on 07/20/2025 7:17:55 AM PDT by beethovenfan (The REAL Great Reset will be when Jesus returns. )
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To: beethovenfan

Yup. I remember Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal and Sam Jaffe.


5 posted on 07/20/2025 7:25:00 AM PDT by Mark17 (Retired USAF air traffic controller. Father of USAF ISR pilot. Both bitten by the aviation bug)
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To: BenLurkin

Yup


6 posted on 07/20/2025 7:33:30 AM PDT by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you. )
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To: beethovenfan

i read somewhere that they had to keep reshooting that scene because Patricia Neal kept bursting out laughing when she was to say that phrase...,i can def see why she laughed.


7 posted on 07/20/2025 7:38:12 AM PDT by basalt (Y ou new to this??)
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To: basalt

Yeah she thought the entire script was a joke and the film silly, until she saw the finished edit. She was always one of my favorites. Smouldering, intelligent sexuality.


8 posted on 07/20/2025 7:43:10 AM PDT by montag813
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To: BenLurkin

It’s okay. “The Thing” was its healthy antidote.


9 posted on 07/20/2025 7:47:28 AM PDT by Sirius Lee ("Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”)
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To: Twotone

I loved sci-fi when I was younger, but I looking back it seems so much was trying to “send a message”. Usually about the futility of nuclear war, but still a veiled political message. Today, the movies want to “raise awareness” about this or that leftist trope, but it is the same thing.


10 posted on 07/20/2025 7:48:30 AM PDT by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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To: montag813

Didn’t Patricia Neal have a terrible stroke that left her paralyzed? She had to claw her way back from that to become the great actress again...


11 posted on 07/20/2025 8:18:20 AM PDT by ArtDodger
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To: bk1000

There are some good audio books on amazon and you tube. But a lot of trash also.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=old+man%27s+war+john+scalzi&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=1332609480797794&hvadid=83288293606656&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=105709&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=p&hvtargid=kwd-83289014885530%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=22565_13494486&mcid=1846a9eae5f833f28794a7705371c266&msclkid=9a90de8d5a431eda1469b6f0522ca310&tag=mh0b-20&ref=pd_sl_811g2jqcf9_p


12 posted on 07/20/2025 8:18:58 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued, but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere)
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To: Mark17

I saw that movie before I was in my teens and liked it.


13 posted on 07/20/2025 8:29:26 AM PDT by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possible.)
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To: ArtDodger

Yes, she recovered. I think here part in “In Harms Way” with John Wayne was filmed after she recovered. Great WW II movie.


14 posted on 07/20/2025 8:31:06 AM PDT by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possible.)
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To: BenLurkin

From someone who didn’t see the film, or someone who is just clueless. Comparing the film to communism is like comparing apples to uranium. There was never a commie controversy, much less a coherent connection. But there was a Christian connection that viewers and critics saw.


15 posted on 07/20/2025 9:04:12 AM PDT by The_Harlequin (…the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, wi)
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To: The_Harlequin

Thank you. Some people just have no clue whatsoever. Communist propaganda? Lol....


16 posted on 07/20/2025 9:17:49 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: The_Harlequin

“apples to uranium”

I’m stealing that.


17 posted on 07/20/2025 9:19:09 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: Twotone

I liked Cleese’s performance in the remake


18 posted on 07/20/2025 9:19:36 AM PDT by NonValueAdded (First, I was a clinger, then deplorable, now I'm garbage. Feel the love? )
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To: Twotone

This film was shown on TV in the 50’s or early 60’s - something like Saturday Night at the Movies. It was a huge event. It was like a first run movie. I remember our whole neighborhood of kids came inside to watch it. I bet more people saw it that one night than attended it in all the movie theaters ever. It was the talk of the school on the Monday following.


19 posted on 07/20/2025 9:20:50 AM PDT by oldplayer
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To: Twotone
I really like this era of films. A lot of them featured giant bugs/rodents/bats/monsters.
Yet they all had one thing in common, people won the day. American perseverance and ingenuity.
A few of them brought up social issues, such as the original Star Trek did a decade later.
Politics aside, what is or could be was the theme for most of these types of films
Unless you want to read into them your own ideology and or religion or present pollical views.
Perspective, these were quickly made, cheap to produce films that may or may not have reflected a producers views.
It was a golden age of "what if".
They paved the way for the films of today... Be that good or bad.

20 posted on 07/20/2025 9:34:42 AM PDT by captnemo1 (online since 1983 not being younger just smarter)
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