Destination Moon (a.k.a. Operation Moon) is a 1950 American Technicolor science fiction film, independently produced by George Pal and directed by Irving Pichel, that stars John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers, Dick Wesson and Grace Stafford (voice). The film was distributed in the United States and the United Kingdom by Eagle-Lion Classics.
Destination Moon was the first major U.S. science fiction film to deal with the practical scientific and engineering challenges of space travel and to speculate on what a crewed expedition to the Moon would look like. Noted science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein contributed to the screenplay.
The film's premise is that private industry will mobilize, finance, and manufacture the first spacecraft to the Moon, and that the U.S. government will be forced to purchase or lease the technology to remain the dominant power in space. Different industrialists cooperate to support the private venture.
Plot When their latest rocket test fails and government funding collapses, rocket scientist Dr. Charles Cargraves and space enthusiast General Thayer enlist the aid of aircraft magnate Jim Barnes. With the necessary millions raised privately from a group of patriotic U.S. industrialists, Cargraves, Thayer, and Barnes build an advanced single-stage-to-orbit atomic powered spaceship, named Luna, at their desert manufacturing and launch facility.
The project is soon threatened by a ginned-up public uproar over "radiation safety" but the three circumvent legal efforts to stop their expedition by launching the world's first Moon mission ahead of schedule. As a result, they must quickly substitute Joe Sweeney as their expedition's radar and radio operator, a replacement for Brown, now in the hospital with appendicitis.
En route to the Moon they are forced to spacewalk outside. They stay firmly attached to Luna with their magnetic boots so they can easily walk up to and free the frozen piloting radar antenna that the inexperienced Sweeney innocently greased before launch. In the process, Cargraves becomes untethered in free fall and is lost overboard. He is retrieved by Barnes, who cleverly uses a large oxygen cylinder with nozzle, retrieved by General Thayer, as an improvised propulsion unit to return them to Luna.
After achieving lunar orbit, the crew begins the complex landing procedure, but expedition leader Barnes uses too much fuel during the descent. Safely on the Moon, Cargraves and Barnes don space suits and descend rungs down the side of the rocket to explore the lunar surface. Urged by Barnes, Cargraves claims the Moon: "By the grace of God, and in the name of the United States of America, I take possession of this planet on behalf of, and for the benefit of, all mankind". Put in contact with Earth by radio, Cargraves describes what they see—a barren, desolate, and silent landscape, with a star-filled black sky and Earth "many times larger than the harvest Moon". Later, using forced perspective, Cargraves photographs Sweeney pretending to "hold up" the Earth like a modern Atlas. General Thayer surveys their surroundings with a Geiger counter and finds from the direction of the clicks that the lunar mountains further away may contain uranium. Events take a serious turn for the crew, however, when they realize that with their limited remaining fuel they must lighten Luna in order to achieve lunar escape velocity.
No matter how much non-critical equipment they strip and discard on the lunar surface, the hard numbers radioed from Earth continue to point to one conclusion: one of them will have to remain on the Moon if the others are to safely return to Earth. With time running out for their return launch window, the crew continues to engineer their way home. They finally jettison the ship's radio, losing contact with Earth. In addition, a spent oxygen cylinder is used as a tethered, suspended weight to pull their sole remaining space suit outside through the open airlock, which is then remotely closed and resealed. With the critical take-off weight finally achieved, and with all her crew safely aboard, Luna blasts off from the Moon for home.
In the final scene, as the crew approaches the Earth, the traditional "The End" title card heralds the dawn of the coming Space Age: "This is THE END...of the Beginning".
Cast John Archer as Jim Barnes Warner Anderson as Dr. Charles Cargraves Tom Powers as General Thayer Dick Wesson as Joe Sweeney Erin O'Brien-Moore as Emily Cargraves Franklyn Farnum as Factory Worker (uncredited) Everett Glass as Mr. La Porte (uncredited) Knox Manning as Knox Manning (uncredited) Kenner G. Kemp as Businessman at meeting (uncredited) Mike Miller as Man (uncredited) Irving Pichel as Narrator of Woody Woodpecker Cartoon (uncredited) Cosmo Sardo as Businessman at Meeting (uncredited) Bert Stevens as Businessman at meeting (uncredited) Ted Warde as Brown (uncredited) Grace Stafford as Woody Woodpecker (voice) (uncredited) Mel Blanc as Woody Woodpecker's trademark laugh (archive recording; uncredited)
Production Before Destination Moon, there were very few serious science fiction films: 1929's Frau im Mond (English Woman in the Moon), 1931's Frankenstein, and 1936's Things to Come are antecedents (though containing fantasy elements). However, the more juvenile-oriented Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers stories of the 1930s syndicated science fiction newspaper comic strips that were both adapted into radio serials and Universal Pictures film serials.
George Pal was a Hungarian who made commercials that played as short subjects with feature films in Europe. He later advanced into animated cartoon-like short features that were made using carefully hand-manipulated tiny sculptures instead of drawings; these shorts were called “Puppetoons”, and they became popular in Europe. Pal was in the U.S. when Hitler invaded Poland. He was offered a contract to produce his Puppetoons for Paramount Pictures, some of which were later nominated for Academy Awards.Hickman, Gail Morgan. The Films of George Pal. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1977. .Miller, Thomas Kent. Mars in the Movies: A History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2016. .
Development By 1949, Pal wanted to get into feature film production. He convinced the independent Eagle-Lion Films to co-finance his own two-picture deal, with him putting up half of the money. Part of the finance came from Peter Rathvorn and Floyd Odlum, who used to run RKO.HOLLYWOOD 'ANGELS': Rathvon and Odlum Ready to Finance Independent Producers -- Other Items By THOMAS F. BRADY HOLLYWOOD. New York Times 24 July 1949: X3. The first of the two films, The Great Rupert, about a Puppetoon-like dancing squirrel, starring popular comic Jimmy Durante, flopped at the box office. But his second feature, Destination Moon, was a major hit.
Eagle-Lion's publicity department saw the promotional possibilities for a film about a rocket expedition to the Moon. They promoted the film heavily in both general family magazines and in many science fiction digest magazines, emphasizing its Technicolor visuals and expert consultants. Destination Moon was constantly in the limelight of the era's popular press, including the high-profile Life magazine; by the time the film was shown in theaters, its success seemed a foregone conclusion.Enter Robert L. Lippert, a producer of very inexpensive, very quickly made films designed to lure droves of the unwary into theaters. He noticed all this nationwide publicity for Destination Moon and decided to take advantage of all this free promotion for Destination Moon. While Destination Moon had been in production for two years and was costing more than half a million dollars, Lippert was able to quickly combine two rejected plots pitched earlier and separately by Kurt Neumann and Jack Rabin to create a similar film, Rocketship X-M, with $94,000 and a shooting schedule of 18 days. In fact, he made it so fast, it arrived in theaters a month before Destination Moon. Both films were hugely popular and financial successes, leading to the science fiction film boom of the 1950s. If Destination Moon had not appeared to have been a slam-dunk, Lippert would never had bothered to make Rocketship X-M. If both pictures, released one right after the other, had not provided the one-two punch of major unexpected financial success, studio executives would never have awakened to the fact that there was a big market for films about outer space and rockets. But once producers saw the writing on the wall, throughout the very next year, in 1951, audiences were treated to The Day the Earth Stood Still, Flight to Mars, Lost Continent, The Man from Planet X, The Thing from Another World, and When Worlds Collide. If Destination Moon had failed at the box office, George Pal’s film career could well have been over, and he may have never made When Worlds Collide and The War of the Worlds. If both those Paramount films had not succeeded, there would likely never have been Forbidden Planet or This Island Earth.
Pal commissioned an initial screenplay from screenwriters James O'Hanlon and Rip Van Ronkel, but science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein contributed significantly to Destination Moons final screenplay, and also served as the film's technical adviser, recounting his experience in the article "Shooting 'Destination Moon'" in the July 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Certain story elements from Heinlein's 1947 juvenile novel Rocket Ship Galileo were adapted for use in the film, and in September, 1950, he published a tie-in novella, "Destination Moon", based on the screenplay. The film's storyline also resembles portions of Heinlein's novel The Man Who Sold the Moon, which he wrote in 1949 but did not publish until 1951, a year after the Pal film opened.
Matte paintings by Bonestell Destination Moon uses matte paintings by noted astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell. These were used for the departure of the Luna from Earth; its approach to the Moon; the spaceship's landing on the lunar surface; and a panorama of the lunar landscape.Spudis, Paul D. "Chesley Bonestell and the Landscape of the Moon." Airspacemag.com, June 14, 2012. Retrieved: January 12, 2015. Bonestell's depiction of the lunar landscape for the film featured sharp and craggy mountain peaks and crater walls. However, photographs of the Moon from orbiting lunar satellites in the 1960s and from later human exploration revealed a less dramatic, more rounded and worn-down topography, eroded by millions of years of micrometeorite impacts. An oft-noted criticism of the film is the fact that the lunar surface is crisscrossed with gaping cracks. Mudcracks would imply that the surface was once mud, which requires water, and the Moon does not have water. Bonestell, who painted the large backdrop that mimicked lunar crags and mountains, was unhappy with the cracks, which were designed by art director Ernst Fegté. “That was a mistake”, he insisted to Gail Morgan Hickman, author of The Films of George Pal. But Pal explained to Hickman, “Chesley was right, of course ... but we were shooting on a small sound stage because of our limited budget. We had to make the set look bigger. Chesley designed a beautiful backdrop, but it needed something to give it depth. That’s why we made the cracks. The cracks in the foreground were big and those in the distance were small, so it gave a real feeling of perspective. For some scenes we even used midgets in small spacesuits to add to the feeling of depth.”Readers may recall that the final airport scene in Casablanca also employed little people working around a cardboard cutout airplane in the foggy distance in order to give that dramatic scene depth and perspective.
Luna rocket design