Destination Moon (1950)
Director: Irving Pichel
Starring: John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers, Dick Wesson
Honors:
Academy Award for Best Special Effects
Adventures in outer space had long been a fascination in the world of motion pictures, dating back to Georges Méliès 1902 classic A Trip to the Moon. However, those science fiction pictures had always been fantastical due to man only being able to dream about that beyond the earth’s atmosphere. 1950’s Destination Moon takes an earnest look at space travel, introducing to many their first genuine scientific look at how men may one day break their terrestrial bonds and explore the cosmos. This independent feature uses special effects considered stunning during its day would dazzle some and inspire countless visionaries in a genre that grew rapidly in the 1950s. However, some found the picture slow and uninteresting, and soon after its release would be left behind by history. Man had yet to grasp the idea of flying to the moon, but this feature would turn many eyes to the stars.
Starring: John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers, Dick Wesson
Honors:
Academy Award for Best Special Effects
Adventures in outer space had long been a fascination in the world of motion pictures, dating back to Georges Méliès 1902 classic A Trip to the Moon. However, those science fiction pictures had always been fantastical due to man only being able to dream about that beyond the earth’s atmosphere. 1950’s Destination Moon takes an earnest look at space travel, introducing to many their first genuine scientific look at how men may one day break their terrestrial bonds and explore the cosmos. This independent feature uses special effects considered stunning during its day would dazzle some and inspire countless visionaries in a genre that grew rapidly in the 1950s. However, some found the picture slow and uninteresting, and soon after its release would be left behind by history. Man had yet to grasp the idea of flying to the moon, but this feature would turn many eyes to the stars.
Destination Moon is a science fiction drama about a group of American scientists tasked to develop the nation’s first successful rocket and their treacherous journey to the moon. Fearful of falling behind the Russians in the space race government rocket scientist Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) recruits Jim Barnes (John Archer) a scientist from the private sector to aid in the nation’s first successful rocket, one that could carry a crew to the moon. Public uproar begins to surface that could scrap the mission as launch day approaches leading Barnes, Cargrave, fellow crewman General Thayer (Tom Powers) and a nervous radio technician Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) to go rogue and launch the rocket without approval. We fallow the crew as they experience the parallels of space travel for the first time, including weightlessness, repairs, and space walks, before successful landing on the moon. However, miscalculation leaves the crew with threat they have lack enough fuel to make the return flight. The men deliberate various ways to shed mass from the rocket to successful return to Earth, even questioning leaving a crewmember behind. Ultimately, they are able to strip the rocket of all access weight and reserves, even ditching their communication system, allowing them to take off and set course for home.
Unlike Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, the popular science fictions attractions of the past, Destination Moon takes a very earnest approach at exploration of outer space and its role with mankind. The film leaves behind the fantastical ideas of science fiction and fills them with more science-based facts on near future space travel as they knew then. What was space like and how man was going to handle exploring it is given an honest look and in Technicolor no less. It makes for a slow, trivial, meandering plot, but its ideas would be fascinating for a world on the cusp of breaking into the new science of space exploration. The film was exciting and new at the time, providing grand effects for the period, but was also observed as a film that quickly lost credibility with the immediacy of science facts just around the corner.
The Cold War was setting in and the idea of a space race was blooming in the minds of world powers the United States and the Soviet Union. To this point space travel was limited to science fiction serials and pulp magazines. Serious students of the scientific ideas of space had their own publications to follow, but for most of the world space travel was an inconceivable subject. Yet in 1950, seven years before the Soviets launched the first man made satellite into orbit came this motion picture, a small, independent feature that attempted to reached for the stars.
When Austrian born animator, puppeteer, and filmmaker George Pal signed a two-picture deal with independent distributor Eagle-Lion he looked to continue his success of small pictures utilizing his niche skill of puppetry as amusement. The first film in the deal, The Great Rupert (1950), featuring Jimmy Durante across from a puppet squirrel did not land so well and the producer was presented with the idea of a space movie for his second feature. A rocket ship to the moon concept grew out the climbing interest in the subject of space travel, and little did he know how much space and science fiction would play in the coming decade. Taking elements from a juvenile novel the script would be developed and Destination Moon was on its way.
Pal brought back his director from The Great Rupert, Irving Pichel, but this time he had to do more than make it look like a squirrel was talking to Jimmy Durante. In a way Pichel helps invent a new genre for a new age with a fact-based science fiction storytelling. In reality he does little more than manipulate the camera to make it appear the cast is walking on walls during weightless scenes, as well as capturing vast matte paintings representing the vastness of the adventure on earth, in space, and on the surface of the moon. From contemporary standards the process may seem all too simple and campy in nature, but for 1950 this was all new and ground breaking in presenting a world of science yet to be explored.
Veteran small time Hollywood actor John Archer anchors the story as Barnes, the civilian scientist and leader of the moon mission, delivering a decent performance for such a small picture. Warner Anderson provides the elder stateman of the crew by this long-time actor of stage, screen, and radio. Tom Powers proves to be a rather expendable performance with a flat and forgettable role in an equally forgettable character. Dick Wesson’s proves to be the comic relief of the picture as a last second fill in crewmember that is overly nervous about everything in space travel. In a way he is the most relatable for audiences during that time, but his phony Brooklyn accent and ham acting makes it a bit difficult to watch now. Wesson’s performance helped garner him a contract with Warner Bros and career that carried him into supporting roles with televisions years later.
The interest in space and space travel led to the extravagance of Destination Moon being shot in the much more expensive Technicolor along with the sets and matte paintings taking up sizable chunk on the near $600,000 budget. Various elements of the picture were inspired by direct interviews with top scientists in the field, making this the most accurate visualization of possible space travel to this point on the screen. Ironically the matte painting of the surface of the moon was highly inaccurate, depicting the moon like a giant dry lake bed, but it was done so to create sense of vastness with its ability to deliver a forced perspective landscape. Public interest in the picture would grow through the year, helping in the publicity of the picture, and when it was finally released it would earn good profits for an independent feature.
Critical reviews for Destination Moon were mixed in 1950, praising it for its effects, but dinging it for its trivial plot. Time would show that much of the scientific outlook would be somewhat different form the facts when man did go to space, but what it does show was impressively not too far off from what would be seen. Even Woody Woodpecker’s appearance in the film, used in a promo package to lobby for a space program, would be copied in real life. Woody was utilized through Pal’s connections to the animators and the cartoon woodpecker would be used in the future by NASA for the very same actual purpose.
History would not be too kind to Destination Moon as the film quickly went from futuristic to being passed by science. As a nugget of history, it delivers the world’s outlook on the potential of space travel. Walt Disney would carry the same torch on his television programs in 1955-56. However, with sending actual rockets to space, followed by men, then finally stepping on the moon all in the near future Destination Moon was left well in the past. Cinematically one can easily see how the film and its Academy Award winning visual effects inspired the imaginations for space features with picture like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or even Star Wars (1977) in the world of space-based films.
For Destination Moon progress in science killed its earnestness, historical events rapidly aged it, its own screenplay made it bland, but what this film does provided is a look back at mankind at it laid at the cusp of visualizing great feats. Little did people know how it’s subject matter would propel society into an age of rapid progress. For the most part the picture was left behind in history, but enthusiasts of the science fiction genre would find a way to memorialize the feature as seen with a “Retro Hugo” Award that praised the picture for its work in 1950. The picture lacks the science and motion picture skill to keep it entertaining or even relevant today, but it still provides a piece of history that captures a very important point in history.
Unlike Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, the popular science fictions attractions of the past, Destination Moon takes a very earnest approach at exploration of outer space and its role with mankind. The film leaves behind the fantastical ideas of science fiction and fills them with more science-based facts on near future space travel as they knew then. What was space like and how man was going to handle exploring it is given an honest look and in Technicolor no less. It makes for a slow, trivial, meandering plot, but its ideas would be fascinating for a world on the cusp of breaking into the new science of space exploration. The film was exciting and new at the time, providing grand effects for the period, but was also observed as a film that quickly lost credibility with the immediacy of science facts just around the corner.
The Cold War was setting in and the idea of a space race was blooming in the minds of world powers the United States and the Soviet Union. To this point space travel was limited to science fiction serials and pulp magazines. Serious students of the scientific ideas of space had their own publications to follow, but for most of the world space travel was an inconceivable subject. Yet in 1950, seven years before the Soviets launched the first man made satellite into orbit came this motion picture, a small, independent feature that attempted to reached for the stars.
When Austrian born animator, puppeteer, and filmmaker George Pal signed a two-picture deal with independent distributor Eagle-Lion he looked to continue his success of small pictures utilizing his niche skill of puppetry as amusement. The first film in the deal, The Great Rupert (1950), featuring Jimmy Durante across from a puppet squirrel did not land so well and the producer was presented with the idea of a space movie for his second feature. A rocket ship to the moon concept grew out the climbing interest in the subject of space travel, and little did he know how much space and science fiction would play in the coming decade. Taking elements from a juvenile novel the script would be developed and Destination Moon was on its way.
Pal brought back his director from The Great Rupert, Irving Pichel, but this time he had to do more than make it look like a squirrel was talking to Jimmy Durante. In a way Pichel helps invent a new genre for a new age with a fact-based science fiction storytelling. In reality he does little more than manipulate the camera to make it appear the cast is walking on walls during weightless scenes, as well as capturing vast matte paintings representing the vastness of the adventure on earth, in space, and on the surface of the moon. From contemporary standards the process may seem all too simple and campy in nature, but for 1950 this was all new and ground breaking in presenting a world of science yet to be explored.
Veteran small time Hollywood actor John Archer anchors the story as Barnes, the civilian scientist and leader of the moon mission, delivering a decent performance for such a small picture. Warner Anderson provides the elder stateman of the crew by this long-time actor of stage, screen, and radio. Tom Powers proves to be a rather expendable performance with a flat and forgettable role in an equally forgettable character. Dick Wesson’s proves to be the comic relief of the picture as a last second fill in crewmember that is overly nervous about everything in space travel. In a way he is the most relatable for audiences during that time, but his phony Brooklyn accent and ham acting makes it a bit difficult to watch now. Wesson’s performance helped garner him a contract with Warner Bros and career that carried him into supporting roles with televisions years later.
The interest in space and space travel led to the extravagance of Destination Moon being shot in the much more expensive Technicolor along with the sets and matte paintings taking up sizable chunk on the near $600,000 budget. Various elements of the picture were inspired by direct interviews with top scientists in the field, making this the most accurate visualization of possible space travel to this point on the screen. Ironically the matte painting of the surface of the moon was highly inaccurate, depicting the moon like a giant dry lake bed, but it was done so to create sense of vastness with its ability to deliver a forced perspective landscape. Public interest in the picture would grow through the year, helping in the publicity of the picture, and when it was finally released it would earn good profits for an independent feature.
Critical reviews for Destination Moon were mixed in 1950, praising it for its effects, but dinging it for its trivial plot. Time would show that much of the scientific outlook would be somewhat different form the facts when man did go to space, but what it does show was impressively not too far off from what would be seen. Even Woody Woodpecker’s appearance in the film, used in a promo package to lobby for a space program, would be copied in real life. Woody was utilized through Pal’s connections to the animators and the cartoon woodpecker would be used in the future by NASA for the very same actual purpose.
History would not be too kind to Destination Moon as the film quickly went from futuristic to being passed by science. As a nugget of history, it delivers the world’s outlook on the potential of space travel. Walt Disney would carry the same torch on his television programs in 1955-56. However, with sending actual rockets to space, followed by men, then finally stepping on the moon all in the near future Destination Moon was left well in the past. Cinematically one can easily see how the film and its Academy Award winning visual effects inspired the imaginations for space features with picture like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or even Star Wars (1977) in the world of space-based films.
For Destination Moon progress in science killed its earnestness, historical events rapidly aged it, its own screenplay made it bland, but what this film does provided is a look back at mankind at it laid at the cusp of visualizing great feats. Little did people know how it’s subject matter would propel society into an age of rapid progress. For the most part the picture was left behind in history, but enthusiasts of the science fiction genre would find a way to memorialize the feature as seen with a “Retro Hugo” Award that praised the picture for its work in 1950. The picture lacks the science and motion picture skill to keep it entertaining or even relevant today, but it still provides a piece of history that captures a very important point in history.
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