The beginning or the end : how Hollywood-and America-learned to stop worrying and love the bomb / Greg Mitchell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitchell, Greg, 1947- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Beginning or the end (Motion picture).

Nuclear weapons in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Production and direction--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Motion picture industry--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Motion picture industry.

Motion pictures in propaganda--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures in propaganda.

Motion picture industry--Political aspects.

Motion pictures--Production and direction.

History.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xvii, 275 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : The New Press, 2020.

Summary:

"Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called "the most important story" he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon. Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film version. His screenwriter: the novelist Ayn Rand, who saw in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer the model for a character she was sketching for Atlas Shrugged. Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military-for reasons of propaganda, politics, and petty human vanity (this was Hollywood). Mitchell has found his way into the lofty rooms, from Washington to California, where it happened, unearthing hundreds of letters and dozens of scripts that show how wise intentions were compromised in favor of defending the use of the bomb and the imperatives of postwar politics. As in his acclaimed Cold War true-life thriller The Tunnels, he exposes how our implacable American myth-making mechanisms distort our history"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 The Donna Reed Show p. 1

2 From Oak Ridge to the Oval Office p. 13

3 The Race for the Bomb (Film) p. 26

4 FBI vs. Oppie p. 34

5 Saboteurs and Bridge-Playing Wives p. 43

6 The Rand Report p. 53

7 Nobody Can Harness Man p. 63

8 Ticking Clocks and Time Capsules p. 73

9 The End of the Beginning p. 80

10 Enter General Groves p. 88

11 "Top Secret" Is Out p. 101

12 Dinner with the Oppenheimers p. 112

13 Those Japanese A-Bombs p. 123

14 Dr. Einstein, I Presume? p. 136

15 A Possible "Prophylactic" p. 147

16 John Hersey and the End of "Whoopee" p. 160

17 Preview in Pomona p. 172

18 "A Problem with the President's Scene" p. 186

19 Truman, Take Two p. 200

20 Stimson to the Rescue p. 212

21 "Hokum" and "Imbecility" p. 220

22 Aftermath, 1947-2020 p. 228.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781620975732

1620975734

OCLC:

1154075982