Happy Birthday, Dr. Strangelove

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s Substack Between Rock and a Hard Place.

This week we celebrate the 60th birthday of “Dr. Strangelove,” which debuted on January 29, 1964.  The first preview screening had been set for Nov. 22, 1963, but…. well, you know.  The premiere was then pushed back a bit.   Fortunately, Kubrick’s president, the balding Milton Muffley (one of three roles for Peter Sellers), was more Ike than JFK.

As a callow youth, I saw “Strangelove” in the theater and it instantly became my all-time favorite movie, and retained that position for many years. I would also say that it probably had the most influence on my career, since I went on to serve as editor of Nuclear Times, spent a month in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wrote about The Bomb for dozens of leading publications and then in three books, and most recently wrote and directed a PBS film titled “Atomic Cover-up.” So that’s…a lot.

Also, in a bit of homage, a photo taken by Kubrick turns up in my latest PBS film, “Memorial Day Massacre.”

So here are a few “Strangelove”-related highlights, including a couple of parodies.

Here’s the original trailer which was killed and not seen for decades.

A Lego version of one scene:

Homer Simpson rides The Bomb, a la Slim Pickens.

The “Mein Fuhrer, I can walk” climax:

Parody trailer for a fun Oliver Stone re-make titled “Fluoridation.”

Peter Sellers covers The Beatles “She Loves You” in his Dr. S voice. Genius at work. “Yah, yah, she loves you.”

Kubrick on making the film, the script, Terry Southern, directing…. ”I was very pleased with the film.”

Gen. Turgidson calls for all-out attack to catch Russkies “with their pants down.”

Gen. Ripper informs Mandrake about those “precious bodily fluids.”

On the famously deleted final scene, the pie fight in the War Room. Probably a good thing that it was cut.

And a 45-minute “the making of” film.

Finally, yes, Johnny Cash covered the movie’s final number, the Vera Lynn classic, “We’ll Meet Again.”

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” and the recent award-winning The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood – and America – Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning “Atomic Cover-up”). He has written widely about the atomic bomb and atomic bombings, and their aftermath, for over forty years. He writes often at Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.