Hollywood and the Nuclear Age

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Jun 17, 2002

The two topics of Hollywood nuclear war films that I would to discuss for this article are; the "oh my God we're all going to die," topic and the "hero (avatar) shall arise" topic. I will follow with more articles on the subject of Hollywood and the Nuclear Age at the Suite101 - Military Movies site. Future topics include "we're all going to become mutants," and "secret agents and the Bond-ing of America."

A little background is forthcoming. The coming of the nuclear age had been foretold. There had been numerous articles and fiction written about the splitting of the atom since the turn the century. Indeed, Jules Vernes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea intimated that Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus used some sort of hitherto unknown powerful power source. One might have expected to locate the origin of the nuclear war film genre to start at the end of World War II with the explosion of the first atomic bombs. However, the discovery of radium and uranium deposits led to such features as Broadway or Bust (1924), Danger Island (1931), Phantom Empire (1935). Most of these features were of the stereotypical image of the mad scientist using newly discovered radioactive materials as inventions for militaristic purposes. Movies such as The Greatest Power (1917), The Great Radium Mystery (1919), Batman (1943) led the pack. With the splitting of the atom in 1943, humanity finally achieved the technical potential to destroy itself. The blasting of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the scientific phenomena to reality. But what did all that mean to the movie industry?

After the atomic bombings of Japan and the release of information to the press regarding the weapons, filmmakers responded to the news with remarkable speed. Released only six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima, The House on 92nd Street (1945) was set in the early stages of the war. The story involved the FBI thwarting a plot by Nazi agents to obtain the secret ingredient of the atomic bomb "Process 97". Another movie to cash-in on the early atomic mystique was Shadow of Terror (1945), featuring a scientist traveling to Washington with the formula for a new weapon, set upon by foreign agents. In the narrated epilogue is it established that his secret calculus was for the atom bomb. RKO first took advantage of the declassified film of atomic explosions with First Yank in Tokyo (1945). The story was of an American pilot, who after plastic surgery, operated clandestinely behind Japanese lines in order to obtain vital information on nuclear fission from a captive inside a prisoner-of-war camp.

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