1953

DIRECTOR: BYRON HASKIN PRODUCER: GEORGE PAL SCREENPLAY: BARRÉ LYNDON, BASED ON THE NOVEL BY H. G. WELLS STARRING: GENE BARRY (DR. CLAYTON FORRESTER), ANN ROBINSON (SYLVIA VAN BUREN), LES TREMAYNE (GENERAL MANN), ROBERT CORNTHWAITE (DR. PRYOR), SANDRO GIGLIO (DR. BILDERBECK), LEWIS MARTIN (PASTOR MATTHEW COLLINS), HOUSELEY STEVENSON JR. (AIDE TO GENERAL MANN), PAUL FREES (RADIO ANNOUNCER)

The War of the Worlds

PARAMOUNT • COLOR, 85 MINUTES

A scientist and a teacher join forces to fight a race of killer Martians invading Earth.

Paramount costume designer Edith Head fashions a Martian wardrobe.

By 1953, extraterrestrial life was cropping up on movie screens across the nation, but the world had yet to witness a full-scale alien invasion. Enter The War of the Worlds, a blockbuster that launched itself on the unsuspecting public like a nuclear bomb. In this film, the aliens come not to strike bargains or issue warnings, but with one single mission: to annihilate life on Earth. It was World War III in full color, a bloodcurdling prospect for the Cold War crowd. “Viewers,” Variety’s early review predicted, “will walk out of theatres relieved to find the world still as it was.”

Without rushing, The War of the Worlds packs a lot into its swift eighty-five minutes. Opening with black-and-white footage of World War I and World War II, director Byron Haskin grounds the fantastic tale in the gritty realism of a newsreel before transitioning to color. Sir Cedric Hardwicke’s godlike narration commands us to believe that Martians have decided to invade and colonize Earth—and the war is on. In the spirit of the novel, the movie focuses on regular people rather than presidents and generals: scientist Clayton Forrester and library-science teacher Sylvia Van Buren, played by Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, get to know each other better during the course of the invasion. Richly saturated in the rainbow of Technicolor, the film makes extensive use of paintings, models, and indoor sets (it was shot almost entirely on Stage 18 at Paramount), giving it a comic-book quality, an intriguing combination of reality and fantasy.

The fantasy element was courtesy of producer George Pal, who had ushered in the 1950s sci-fi craze with his low-budget lunar escapade Destination Moon (1950) and his follow-up, When Worlds Collide (1951). With the flying-saucer trend heating up, Pal knew the time was right to turn the 1898 H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds into a feature film. Orson Welles had panicked the nation with his 1938 radio broadcast of the tale, but special-effects hurdles had always prevented a believable visualization from reaching the screen. As far back as 1926, Paramount announced that Cecil B. DeMille would direct a silent version of The War of the Worlds, but the technical obstacles proved impossible to overcome, and the property lay dormant until Pal revived it in 1952.

The Martian, created by Charles Gemora

Art director Albert Nozaki’s Martian machine

Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, and Houseley Stevenson Jr.

Gene Barry and Ann Robinson read the H. G. Wells novel.

With only $2 million to dramatize Earth’s war with Mars, Pal’s team of artists and special-effects wizards had to get very creative. Switching Wells’s setting from Victorian-era Sussex to modern-day southern California helped cut costs, but their biggest challenge was conjuring the Martian war machines described by Wells as having “tripod legs.” Art director Albert Nozaki designed long, black legs on which the machines could walk, but they almost electrocuted the crew. George Pal recalled, “It was dangerous to generate a million volts on a regular soundstage…. It could have killed someone, perhaps set the studio on fire.” So the legs were scrapped, and the Martian machines hovered in midair instead, suspended by barely noticeable wires.

The airborne machines are equipped with snakelike heat-rays that destroy everything—humans, buildings, tanks—with a single blast. In one disturbing sequence, a pastor ventures toward one of the machines with a prayer and a cross, only to be incinerated to ashes in an instant. As the earthling death tolls start to rise, panic sets in, followed by mass hysteria. The undercurrent of paranoia tapped into America’s Red Scare mentality, as did the religious motif, supplied not by H. G. Wells but by screenwriter Barré Lyndon. In the end, it is only a miracle “which God in his wisdom had put upon this earth” that can save humanity from the godless invaders.

Though very much a product of its era, The War of the Worlds remains a paragon of creative ingenuity and pre-CGI craftsmanship. It also set the standard for subsequent versions to follow, from Independence Day (a 1996 loose reworking of the story) to Spielberg’s 2005 summer blockbuster, War of the Worlds.

FAR-OUT FACTS

The Martian seen grabbing Sylvia’s shoulder and scurrying away was made and operated by sculptor Charles Gemora. Gemora and his daughter, Diana, constructed the monster from papier-mâché, wire, rubber, tape, and plywood the night before the scene was shot.

Gordon Jennings was in charge of the special effects. Sadly, Jennings died of a heart attack before the film was released, unaware that his work would win an Academy Award.

The U.S. War Department declined to provide the filmmakers with battle footage they requested, in part because the film, they said, “shows the military to be inept and incapable of stemming the imaginary attack from Mars.”

MIND-BLOWING MOMENT

Moviegoers in the 1950s were horrified when the meteoric spacecraft unscrews and the sinister metallic probe emerges. Albert Nozaki designed the Martian machines in the shape of manta rays, their probes made to resemble cobras.

KEEP WATCHING

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951)

INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)