Dr. Strangelove

For other uses, see Strangelove (disambiguation).

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Original film poster designed by Tomi Ungerer
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Peter George Terry Southern Novel: Peter George Uncredited: Peter Sellers James B. Harris
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Peter Sellers George C. Scott Sterling Hayden Keenan Wynn Slim Pickens James Earl Jones Tracy Reed
Cinematography	Gilbert Taylor
Music by	Laurie Johnson
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	January 29, 1964
Running time	94 min.
Countries	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	US$1,800,000

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (aka Dr. Strangelove) (1964) is a black comedy film directed by Stanley Kubrick. Loosely based upon Peter George's Cold War thriller novel Red Alert (aka Two Hours to Doom) by screenwriter Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove satirises the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.

The story concerns a US Air Force general who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film 'culturally significant' and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Additionally, it was listed as #3 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.

Plot

Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden) is a delusional commander of a United States Air Force base who initiates an Air Force attack plan to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. He hopes to thwart what he believes is a Communist conspiracy which threatens to 'sap and impurify' the 'precious bodily fluids' of the American people with fluoridated water which he believes has caused his impotence.

Ripper orders the 843rd Bomb Wing past its failsafe points (where the nuclear armed B-52s normally hold, awaiting possible orders to proceed) and into Soviet airspace. He also tells the personnel of Burpelson Air Force Base that the US and the USSR have entered into a 'shooting war.' Although a nuclear attack should require Presidential authority to be initiated, Ripper uses 'Plan R', an emergency war plan to enable a senior officer to launch a retaliation strike against the Soviets if the normal chain of command, including the President, has been killed during a sneak attack. Plan R was intended to discourage the Soviets from launching a decapitation strike against the President in Washington, D.C. to disrupt US command and control and stop an American nuclear counterattack.

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (played by Peter Sellers), a Royal Air Force exchange officer serving as General Ripper's executive officer, realises that there is no attack on the US when he turns on a radio and hears pop music instead of Civil Defense alerts. Mandrake attempts to recall the wing but Ripper refuses to disclose the three-letter code necessary for recalling the bombers. Without the code, the B-52's on-board radios will not allow incoming communications, to prevent false orders being issued by the enemy.

In the War Room at the Pentagon, Air Force General Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott), loosely based on Air Force General Curtis LeMay, briefs President Merkin Muffley (also played by Sellers), loosely based on unsuccessful presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, on these developments. Although he had been unaware of Ripper's initiative, Turgidson zealously tries to take advantage of the situation to convince Muffley to launch a full scale attack on the Soviets. Turgidson believes that the United States is in a superior strategic position, and a first strike against the Soviet Union would destroy 90% of their missiles before they could retaliate, resulting in a global victory for the US with 'acceptable' American casualties of, as Turgidson puts it, 'no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops ... depending on the breaks.' He is shocked when Muffley instead admits the Soviet Ambassador to the War Room, contacts the Soviet Premier on the hotline and insists on giving the Soviets all the information necessary to shoot down the American planes before they can carry out their strikes.

The horrified Soviet Ambassador reveals that his country has constructed a doomsday device which will automatically destroy all human and animal life on Earth if a nuclear attack hits the Soviet Union. The Doomsday Device is operated by a network of computers and has been conceived as the ultimate deterrent. As a safeguard, it cannot be deactivated. Ironically, the Russians turned it on a few days before they were going to announce it publicly to the world.

The President now calls upon Dr. Strangelove, (a.k.a. Merkwürdigliebe) a former Nazi and strategy expert (Sellers in his third role - a slight pastiche of ex-Nazi scientists such as Wernher von Braun). The wheelchair-bound Strangelove is a type of 'mad scientist', whose eccentricities include a severe case of alien hand syndrome — his right hand, clad in an intimidating black leather glove, occasionally attempts to strangle Strangelove and shoots out the Nazi salute inappropriately. Strangelove explains the principles behind the Doomsday Device, which he says is 'simple to understand... credible and convincing.' He seems to find nuclear annihilation sexually stimulating and in moments of excitement refers to the President as either 'Mein Präsident' or 'Mein Führer'.

US Army troops sent by the President arrive at Burpelson AFB to arrest General Ripper. Ripper has warned his men that the enemy might attack disguised as American soldiers, so the base's security forces open fire on them. Ripper and Mandrake fire a machinegun from the window of Ripper's office, while Mandrake continues his attempts to extract the recall code from Ripper.

The Army forces win the battle and gain access to the base, and Ripper commits suicide. Army Colonel 'Bat' Guano (played by Keenan Wynn), shoots his way into Ripper's office to arrest him, and fails to recognize Mandrake's RAF uniform as that of an allied nation. He suspects that Mandrake is leading a mutiny of 'deviated preverts' (sic) against General Ripper and wants to arrest the Englishman, but Mandrake finally convinces Guano that he has to call the President to tell him the recall code, which he has deduced from Ripper's desk blotter doodles (OPE, based on the rearranged initials for PEACE ON EARTH and PURITY OF ESSENCE).

The code is issued to the planes, and those that have not been shot down return to base. Amidst great relief, the officials in the War Room pray, led by General Turgidson. However, the Soviets now tell them that one B-52 has not been shot down as they had previously reported. A Soviet anti-aircraft missile came close to downing the plane, and as a result, the secure radio system, which would have received the recall message, was destroyed. Damaged, flying below Soviet radar and leaking fuel, the aircraft cannot reach its intended primary or secondary targets, where the Americans have advised the Soviet defenses be concentrated. The plane's crew proceeds instead on its own initiative to a 'target of opportunity,' evading the combined efforts to stop them.

As they start their bomb run, the damaged B-52's doors jam, and in forcing them open, the aircraft commander, Major 'King' Kong (played by Slim Pickens), ends up riding a nuclear bomb to the ground like a cowboy in the rodeo riding a bull or a bucking bronco, whooping and hollering as he plummets to his demise. Major Kong's position straddling the end of the bomb causes the larger bomb body to extend from his crotch like a huge phallus, following the film's overall 'war as sex' theme.

File:Slim-pickens riding-the-bomb.jpg

Major Kong, the commander of the 'Leper Colony,' riding the bomb to nuclear oblivion.

The bomb explodes, and the Soviet 'Doomsday Device' is assumed triggered. According to the Soviet ambassador, life on Earth's surface will be extinct in ten months. Dr. Strangelove recommends to the President that a group of about 200,000 people be relocated deep in a mine shaft, where the nuclear fallout cannot reach them, so that the USA can be repopulated. Because of obvious limits to space in the mines, Strangelove suggests a gender ratio of 'ten females to each male.' The chosen women would be selected largely on their youth and beauty (to ensure their attractiveness to the sexually overworked males), while the chosen males would be selected based on their intellectual and physical strength and their importance in business and the government (presumably ensuring the selection of everyone in the War Room).

General Turgidson rants that the Soviets will likely create an even better bunker than the West, including nuclear weapons. He argues to the President that America 'must not allow a mine shaft gap', and worries that America will be at a military disadvantage when everyone emerges from their mine shafts a century later. During this rant, the Soviet ambassador retreats into the shadows and starts taking pictures of the war room with a camera disguised as a clock, just as Turgidson earlier accused him of doing.

In the concluding scenes, a visibly excited Strangelove bolts out of his wheelchair shouting 'Mein Führer, I can walk!', mere seconds before the film ends with a barrage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's famous World War II song 'We'll Meet Again'.

Cast

Main Cast

• Peter Sellers as
  • Group Captain Lionel Mandrake: A British exchange officer with an upper-class English accent.
  • President Merkin Muffley: The American Commander-in-Chief.
  • Dr. Strangelove: The wheelchair-bound, German nuclear war expert and ex-Nazi. The character is a combination of various historical persons (see below).
• George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson: A strategic bombing enthusiast
• Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper: Who is equally (and rabidly) paranoid and patriotic.
• Slim Pickens as Air Force Major T. J. 'King' Kong: The B-52 Stratofortress aircraft commander and a stereotypical 'American cowboy'.
• James Earl Jones as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg: A bombardier.
• Keenan Wynn as Army Colonel 'Bat' Guano:
• Peter Bull as Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadesky:
• Shane Rimmer as Captain 'Ace' Owens:
• Tracy Reed as Miss Scott: General Turgidson's seductive secretary and mistress, the film's only female character. She also appears as the centerfold in the Playboy magazine that Major Kong is shown reading. For the pose, Reed lay face down with her breasts covered with her arms and a book was placed over her bikini bottom. In spite of this, her mother was furious. In the novel the Playboy model is referred to as 'Miss Foreign Affairs'.

Peter Sellers' roles

File:3SellersRoles.jpg

Peter Sellers plays three roles: Dr. Strangelove, President Merkin Muffley and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake.

Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing for the film only on the condition that Peter Sellers would play at least four major roles. This condition stemmed from the studio's impression that much of the success of Lolita (1962), Kubrick's previous film, was based on Sellers' playing multiple roles. Kubrick accepted the demand considering that 'such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business'.

Ultimately, Peter Sellers played just three of the four roles initially allocated to him. At the start of production, it was expected that he would also play the role of Air Force Major T. J. 'King' Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress aircraft commander, but from the beginning, Sellers was reluctant to do so. He felt that his workload was too heavy, and he was concerned that he would not be able to reproduce the Texan accent required for the character of Kong. Kubrick pleaded with him, and asked screenwriter Terry Southern (who had been raised in Texas) to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in the correct accent. Using Southern's tape, Sellers managed to get the accent right, and started shooting the scenes in the airplane. However, Sellers sprained an ankle and could not play the role, as technical constraints would have confined him to the cramped space of the cockpit set. (In the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, it is suggested that Sellers faked the injury as a way to force Kubrick to release Sellers from the contractual obligation to play this fourth role).

Peter Sellers is said to have improvised much of his dialogue during filming. Kubrick, the director, is said to have incorporated Sellers' ad-libbed lines into the written screenplay as shooting progressed, so that the improvised lines became part of the canonical screenplay.

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake
According to film critic Alexander Walker, the author of biographies of both Sellers and Kubrick, the role of Lionel Mandrake was the easiest of the three for Sellers to play, as he was aided by his experience of mimicking his superiors while engaged in national service who is a group captain in the RAF during World War II.. There is also a heavy element of Sellers' friend and occasional co-star Terry-Thomas.

President Merkin Muffley
For his performance as President Merkin Muffley, a decent character, understandably flustered somewhat by the situation, Sellers flattened his natural English accent to sound like an American Midwesterner. Sellers drew inspiration for the role from Adlai Stevenson, a former Governor of Illinois, who had been the unsuccessful Democratic nominee in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections.

In early takes, Sellers faked cold symptoms in order to exaggerate the character's apparent weakness. This caused frequent laughter among the film crew, ruining take after take. This comic portrayal was ultimately deemed to be inappropriate by Kubrick, who felt that Muffley should be shown as a serious character. In subsequent takes, Sellers played the role straight, though the president's cold is still evident in a couple of scenes.

Dr. Strangelove
The title character, Dr. Strangelove, serves as President Muffley's scientific advisor in the War Room, presumably making use of prior expertise as a Nazi physicist: upon becoming an American citizen, he translated his German surname "Merkwürdigliebe" to the English equivalent. Twice in the film, he accidentally addresses the President as "Mein Führer".

The character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, Nazi SS officer-turned-NASA rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb". The character was also compared to the later US Secretary of State and controversial Nobel Peace Prize laureate Henry Kissinger. However, it is unlikely that he served as a basis for Dr. Strangelove as, at the time the film was made, Kissinger was only a Harvard professor who wrote some books on nuclear war strategy, being relatively unknown to the public. At one point, Strangelove refers to a study which he had commissioned from the "BLAND Corporation" (see above; a parody of RAND Corporation, a US military think tank). In his interpretation of Dr. Strangelove, Sellers' accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee (the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig), who was hired by Kubrick as a special effects consultant.

Strangelove's appearance echoes the movie villains of the Fritz Lang era in 1920s Germany, in which sinister characters were often portrayed as having some disability. Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture. Kubrick perpetually wore the gloves on the film set in order to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers found the gloves to be especially menacing.

At the end of the film, Dr Strangelove is animated by the thought of a post-war, centrally controlled, male-dominated society whose members have been specially selected from the population, to the point where he is apparently cured of his need for his wheelchair. This idea is evocative of Nazi visions, suggesting that the destructive bickering between the USA and USSR has allowed the ideology of both powers' most hated enemy to win through in the end.

Slim Pickens as Air Force Major T. J. 'King' Kong

Slim Pickens, an established character actor and veteran of many Western films, was quickly chosen to replace Sellers as Major Kong. Terry Southern's biographer Lee Hill reports that the part had originally been written with John Wayne in mind, and Wayne was in fact offered the role after Sellers was injured, but he immediately turned it down. Dan Blocker of the Bonanza western TV series was approached to play the part, but according to Terry Southern, Blocker's agent rejected the script as being 'too pinko'. Kubrick then recruited Pickens, whom he knew from his stint working on Marlon Brando's One Eyed Jacks.

Fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, 'He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior.' According to some sources, the British film crew thought he was a method actor, and his mannerisms were his way of 'finding' his performance for the character, unaware that that was the way he really behaved. He was also not told that the movie was a comedy and was to play it straight, only given the scenes he was in and not the entire script.

Kubrick biographer John Baxter further explains in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:

As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, 'Gosh, he's arrived in costume!,' not realizing that that's how he always dressed... with the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked.

Pickens, who had previously played only minor supporting and character roles, stated that his appearance as Maj. Kong greatly improved his career. He would later comment, 'After Dr. Strangelove the roles, the dressing rooms and the checks all started getting bigger.'

George C. Scott as Gen. Buck Turgidson

Director Kubrick tricked Scott into playing the role of Gen. Turgidson far more ridiculously than Scott was comfortable with doing. Kubrick talked Scott into doing "over the top" practice takes, which Kubrick told Scott would never be used, as a way to warm up for the "real" takes. Subsequently, Kubrick used these takes in the final film, causing Scott to swear never to work with Kubrick again.

Production

Novel and screenplay

Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident, building on the widespread Cold War fear for survival. While doing in-depth research for the planned film, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and unstable 'Balance of terror' existing between nuclear powers and its intrinsic paradoxical character. At Kubrick's request, Alistair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies), recommended the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George. Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' and reprinted in 'The Observer,' and immediately bought the film rights.

File:Kubrickstrangelove.jpg

Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove.

Kubrick, in collaboration with George, started work on writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and, later, Herman Kahn. In following the tone of the book, Stanley Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. However, as he later explained during interviews, the comedy inherent in the idea of mutual assured destruction became apparent as he was writing the first draft of the film's script. Kubrick stated:

My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question.

After deciding to turn the film into a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer. The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian (1959), which Kubrick had received as a gift from Peter Sellers. Sellers is also sometimes considered an uncredited co-writer, as he changed many lines by way of improvisation.

Sets and filming

Dr. Strangelove was filmed at Shepperton Studios, in London, as Peter Sellers was in the middle of a divorce at the time and, thus, unable to leave England. The sets occupied three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Room, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor. The studio's buildings were also used as the air force base exterior. The film's set design was done by Ken Adam, the famous production designer of several James Bond films (at the time, he had already worked on Dr. No). The black and white cinematography was by Gilbert Taylor, and the film was edited by Anthony Harvey and Stanley Kubrick (uncredited).

For the War Room, Ken Adam first designed a two level set which Kubrick initially liked, only to decide later that it was not what he wanted. Adam next began work on the design that was used in the film, an expressionist set that was compared with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was an enormous concrete room (130 feet long and 100 feet wide, with a 35-foot high ceiling) suggesting a bomb shelter, with a triangular shape (based on Kubrick's idea that this particular shape would prove the most resistant against an explosion). One side of the room was covered with gigantic strategic maps reflecting in a shiny black floor inspired by the dance scenes in old Fred Astaire films. In the middle of the room there was a large circular table lit from above by a circle of lamps, suggesting a poker table. Kubrick insisted that the table be covered with green baize (although this could not be seen in the black and white film) to reinforce the actors' impression that they are playing 'a game of poker for the fate of the world.' Kubrick asked Adam to build the set ceiling in concrete to force the director of photography to use for filming only the on-set lights from the circle of lamps. Moreover, each lamp in the circle of lights was carefully placed and tested until Kubrick was happy with the result.

Lacking cooperation from The Pentagon in the making of the film, the set designers reconstructed the cockpit to the best of their ability by comparing the cockpit of a B-29 Superfortress and a single photograph of the cockpit of a B-52, and relating this to the geometry of the B-52's fuselage. The B-52 was state of the art in the 1960s, and its cockpit was off limits to the film crew. When some United States Air Force personnel were invited to view the reconstructed B-52 cockpit, they said that 'it was absolutely correct, even to the little black box which was the CRM.' It was so accurate that Kubrick was concerned whether Ken Adam's production design team had done all of their research legally, fearing a possible investigation by the FBI.

In several shots of the B-52 flying over the polar ice en route to Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, is visible on the snow below. The B-52 was a model composited into the arctic footage which was sped up to create a sense of jet speed. The camera ship, a former USAAF B-17G-100-VE, serial 44-85643, registered F-BEEA, had been one of four Flying Fortresses purchased from salvage at Altus, Oklahoma in December 1947 by the French Institut Geographique National and converted for survey and photo-mapping duty. It was the last active B-17 of a total of fourteen once operated by the IGN, but it was destroyed in a take-off accident at RAF Binbrook in 1989 during filming of the movie Memphis Belle. Home movie footage included in Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove on the 2001 Special Edition DVD release of the film show clips of the Fortress with a cursive 'Dr. Strangelove' painted over the rear entry hatch on the right side of the fuselage.

The original musical score for the film was composed by Laurie Johnson and the special effects were by Wally Veevers.

Fail-Safe and Seven Days in May

Red Alert author Peter George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and satirist Terry Southern. Red Alert was far more solemn in tone than its film version and the character of Dr. Strangelove never even existed on its pages. The main plot and technical elements, however, were quite similar. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a re-print of the original novel, was also published by George. This was based on an early draft, where the film was intended to be bookended by aliens arriving at a wrecked earth and trying to determine what had happened. George committed suicide in 1966.

During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail-Safe, a film with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail-Safe was to be an ultra-realistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its overall plot resemblances would damage Strangelove's box office run, especially if it were to be released first. Indeed, the novel Fail-Safe (on which the film of the same name is based) is so similar to Red Alert that Peter George sued on charges of plagiarism and settled out of court. What worried Kubrick the most about Fail-Safe was that it boasted an acclaimed director, Sidney Lumet, and first-rate dramatic actors, Henry Fonda as the American President and Walter Matthau as the bold ex-Nazi advisor to the Pentagon, Professor Groeteschele. Kubrick decided that it would be in his film's best interests for a legal wrench to be thrown into the gears of the Fail-Safe production. Director Sidney Lumet recalls in the documentary, Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:

We started casting. Fonda was already set... which of course meant a big commitment in terms of money. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set... And suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures.

Kubrick tried to halt production on Fail-Safe by arguing that its own 1960 source novel of the same name had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, to which Kubrick himself owned the creative rights. Also, he pointed out the unmistakable similarities in intentions between the characters Groeteschele and Strangelove. The plan ended up working exactly as Kubrick intended; Fail-Safe opened a full eight months behind Dr. Strangelove to critical acclaim, but mediocre box office results.

Also released in 1964 was Paramount Pictures' Seven Days in May (now owned by Warner Bros. Pictures). The plot involves a coup attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prevent the President of the United States from signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, who, they believe, cannot be trusted.

The Kennedy assassination

A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but as a result of the assassination, the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.

Additionally, one line by Slim Pickens ('a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff') was dubbed to become 'in Vegas'. The dub is apparent if Pickens' lips are watched closely when he speaks. The original reference to Dallas survives in some dubbed versions of the film (eg the French release of the film).

Alternate ending

The cream pie fight removed from the final cut.

The end of the film shows Dr. Strangelove exclaiming 'Mein Führer, I can walk!' before cutting to footage of nuclear explosions. This footage comes from actual nuclear tests, many of them from Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll. In some, old warships (such as the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen), which were used as targets, are plainly visible. In others the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop can be seen.

Accounts vary as to why the original pie-fight ending was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said: 'I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film.' Alexander Walker observed that 'the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at.' Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggests that the fight was intended to be less jovial. 'Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.' However, editor Anthony Harvey states that 'it would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family.'

The scene included General Turgidson exclaiming, 'Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!' after Muffley takes a pie in the face.

Themes

Sexuality

From the opening scene of the B-52 'mating' in flight with the KC-135 Tanker (set to an instrumental version of 'Try a Little Tenderness') to General Ripper's sexual frustration being at the root of the eventual apocalypse, sexual references are readily apparent.

The character of Strangelove is laced with innuendo-aside from his suggestive name. He is the character responsible for creating fantasies of a polygamous postapocalyptic society with a ratio of 'ten females to each male.' Drawing allusions to his ex-Nazi status and Nazi efforts like the Lebensborn project or that a postapocalyptic society could renew such endeavors (possibly explaining the title of the film- that it is Dr. Strangelove who learned to 'love the bomb' by way that its mutually assured destruction, of the current powers, would make way for the return of his old allegiances). His arm involuntarily snaps up in a Nazi salute toward the end of the film.

General Jack D. Ripper is named after Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer who murdered prostitutes in the late 1880s. General Ripper's primary concern about Communism is his assertion that water fluoridation is 'a Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,' of which he was made aware when his 'loss of essence' during sexual intercourse greatly fatigued him. He continues to explain that women 'seek the life essence' and then states, 'I do not avoid women...but I do deny them my essence'.

Many characters' names are sexual plays-on-words. Group Captain Lionel Mandrake's last name refers to the Mandrake plant which has mythical fertility properties. The Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadesky is named for the Marquis de Sade, and Dmitri Kisov's last name is pronounced 'Kissoff'. Major 'King' Kong rides a phallic H-bomb, which explodes as he approaches the 'nearest target of opportunity', Laputa, (in Spanish: la puta meaning 'the whore'). President Merkin Muffley's first and last name each crudely imply that he is a pussy by nature, since 'Merkin' is a female pubic wig used mainly by prostitutes in the 18th century and 'muff' (pubic hair) references the area where the wig is applied. The name of General Buck Turgidson is derived from turgid, a biological term meaning full of fluid to the point of hardness, as in an erection, applied to 'buck' as an explicit symbol of virility.

Colonel Bat Guano's name literally means 'bat shit' - scatalogical and sexual humour are often combined. The term 'bat-shit' is also a slang word for insanity. Although sent to arrest General Ripper, Colonel Guano turns out to be another anti-communist who feels the communist threat as sexual, namely 'preversion' [sic].

There is only one woman in the entire film, General Turgidson's secretary. She appears not in an office, but in a small bedroom with twin beds and a sun lamp, wearing a bikini swimsuit. The General, when he appears from the bathroom, is also in bathing trunks. Although she tells a caller that she and the General are catching up on paperwork, the clear implication is that they have a sexual relationship. In fact, in a later phone call, Turgidson tells her that he doesn't just love her for her body, and intends to make her 'Mrs. Buck Turgidson.'

Satirizing the Cold War

Dr. Strangelove takes passing shots at numerous Cold War attitudes, such as the "missile gap". But it focuses its satire on the theory of mutual assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to be deterred by the fact that a nuclear war would be a cataclysmic disaster for both sides, regardless of who 'won'. Herman Kahn in his 1960 On Thermonuclear War used the concept of a doomsday machine in order to mock mutually assured destruction - in effect, Kahn argued, both sides already had a sort of doomsday machine. Kahn was a leading critic of American strategy during the 1950s, urged Americans to plan for a limited nuclear war, and later became one of the architects of the MAD doctrine in the 1960s. The prevailing thinking that a nuclear war was inherently unwinnable and suicide was illogical to the physicist turned strategist. Kahn came off as cold and calculating; for instance, in his works, he estimated how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically. This attitude is reflected in Turgidson's remark to the president about the outcome of a pre-emptive nuclear war: 'Now I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I am saying no more than 10 to 20 million killed. Tops!' Many have compared the portrayals of Ripper and Turgidson as being composites of the fiery Air Force general, Curtis LeMay and many of his direct subordinates who openly lobbied for war with the Soviet Union. In the War Room, Turgidson also has a binder which is labeled 'World Targets in Megadeaths'.

Reception

Dr. Strangelove was listed as #26 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies (#39 on the 10th Anniversary Edition) and #3 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs. Sellers' line 'Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!' made #64 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes. The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedy film of all time. It is one of the films to have received a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is ranked 15th top movie of all time on TopTenReviews Movies. In addition to this, the movie is ranking #5 in the All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section with an average score of 96 .

Roger Ebert has Dr. Strangelove in his list of Great Movies, saying it is 'arguably the best political satire of the century.'

Awards

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and seven BAFTA awards of which it won four. It was nominated for the following Academy Awards: best actor (Peter Sellers), best adapted screenplay, best director and best picture, and for the following BAFTA awards: best British actor (Peter Sellers), best British screenplay, and best foreign actor (Sterling Hayden). It won the following BAFTA awards: best British art direction (B/W) (Ken Adam), best British film, best film from any source, and the UN award. In addition, the film won the best written American comedy award from the Writers Guild of America and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Kubrick himself won two awards for best director from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists and was nominated for one by the Directors Guild of America.

See also

• Strangelove! A Cold War Musical
• Films that have been considered the greatest ever
• Water fluoridation
• Politics in fiction
• Alien Hand Syndrome

External links

• Dr. Strangelove at IMDb
• Template:Filmsite
• 'Dr. Strangelove' at DVD Journal
• Continuity transcript
• Commentary on Dr. Strangelove
• Great Movies: Dr. Strangelove By Roger Ebert
• Study Guide by Dan Lindley. See also: longer version
• [5] Annotated bibliography on Dr. Strangelove from the Alsos Digital Library