70th Anniversary Destination Moon

[Al Jackson]

Soon the 70th anniversary of Destination Moon.
It's origin was George Pal's desire to make a space flight film.
George Pal optioned Robert Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo, story first appeared in Boy's Life... it lead to Heinlein's young adult novels, but it was a learning curve for Heinlein , it's not really very good. Heinlein learned from that novel because his 1948 novel Space Cadet is a new level of sophistication for a young adult novel.
Pal hired James O'Hanlon and Rip Van Ronkel to write a screenplay , those two only kept the backbone of the story mostly nuclear power powered spaceship.
Heinlein worked with the screen writers to fashion a totally different story.
Heinlein also wrote a 'short story' called Destination Moon, tho at length it is more of a novella.
Heinlein wrote this in 1949* , tho not published until 1950.

*Curious footnote: Wernher von Braun had written a novel called "Project Mars: A Technical Tale" in 1948 that he thought would be a definitive science fiction story that would fire the American public's interest into manned space flight. He shipped it around to 18 publishers in the US all rejected it.
It was not published until 2006.
It is not very good.
Interesting the technical appendix to that book became the Collier's Space Flight Series and three episodes of TV on Disney's show.
I have never found out if von Braun saw Destination Moon.

 

[BAYLOR]

Ive seen Destination Moon on one occasion. It was enjoyable and thought it decently made film.

 

[Al Jackson]

Ive seen Destination Moon on one occasion. It was enjoyable and thought it decently made film.

It premiered in June 1950 …
Even tho there had been Metropolis , Frau im Mond and Things to Come, Destination Moon started the 1950s , and well decades to come line of science fiction films (I know Rocket Ship XM was that same year, but that film was ripping off publicity for Destination Moon)…. the screenplay was worked over several times by Robert A. Heinlein, Rip Van Ronkel, and James O'Hanlon, but feels like a Popular Mechanics movie! It is doggedly plain vanilla , I think due to Pal who wanted , what we call now, a docudrama. I watched again the other night , it is only 91 min. long.
The dialog is stolid … it really shows it 600,000 dollar budget , tho they did good enough VFX , … noticeable how we don't have an outside POV of take off from the Earth but there is one from the Moon.
I did notice technicalities that I don't think few , then, would have noticed, like the cycling of an air lock... Heinlein tried to keep rigor in all the engineering physics.
Pioneering if not a great movie.

 

[BAYLOR]

It premiered in June 1950 …
Even tho there had been Metropolis , Frau im Mond and Things to Come, Destination Moon started the 1950s , and well decades to come line of science fiction films (I know Rocket Ship XM was that same year, but that film was ripping off publicity for Destination Moon)…. the screenplay was worked over several times by Robert A. Heinlein, Rip Van Ronkel, and James O'Hanlon, but feels like a Popular Mechanics movie! It is doggedly plain vanilla , I think due to Pal who wanted , what we call now, a docudrama. I watched again the other night , it is only 91 min. long.
The dialog is stolid … it really shows it 600,000 dollar budget , tho they did good enough VFX , … noticeable how we don't have an outside POV of take off from the Earth but there is one from the Moon.
I did notice technicalities that I don't think few , then, would have noticed, like the cycling of an air lock... Heinlein tried to keep rigor in all the engineering physics.
Pioneering if not a great movie.

Pal tried the same docudrama approach with Conquest of Space a few years later . It didn't fare so well at the box office. Wasn't a bad film but kind of tedious.

 

[Al Jackson]

Pal tried the same docudrama approach with Conquest of Space a few years later . It didn't fare so well at the box office. Wasn't a bad film but kind of tedious.

I think what went wrong with Conquest of Space was that Pal did not reign in James O'Hanlon who wrote the screen play.
On Destination Moon Heinlein and director Irving Pichel scrapped O'Hanlon's rewrite of the film.
Heinlein objected to a scene being set in a Las Vegas night club, with a stage act, Pichel agreed and it did not go in.
Funny thing is that 5 years later in Conquest of Space a scene with Rosemary Clooney appears. On a TV screen in the space station.
Odd thing is that Byron Haskin a very capable director (he had done Pal's 1953 War of the Worlds) went along with the lame screenplay.

 

[dask]

I saw Destination Moon in the theater as a kid (though not in 1950) and don't remember too much about it but when I read the story in 3 X Infinity edited by Leo Margulies about a year ago I was stunned by the ending. I know film often veers from the written word but I have no recollection of this artistic detour at all.

 

[Al Jackson]

I saw Destination Moon in the theater as a kid (though not in 1950) and don't remember too much about it but when I read the story in 3 X Infinity edited by Leo Margulies about a year ago I was stunned by the ending. I know film often veers from the written word but I have no recollection of this artistic detour at all.

From 1950 to 1960 George Pal did five science fiction films, Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds, Conquest of Space, the Time Machine.... only two of the five are winners 1953 War of the Worlds and 1960 Time Machine, Destination Moon is the odd one, it is a straight forward Popular Mechanics sort of docu-drama. It deserves notice as the first really realistic space flight film. AT least Pal did not make shlock like Queen of Outer Space or Plan 9 From Outer Space (or one of the many many other junk SF films of the era)….. it is not clear why War of the Worlds had a 'religious coloring' to it, Well's would have turned over in his grave had he seen that , it did not detract from the 'updated' story but was un-needed. The religious shading in Conquest of Space came from James O'Hanlon's screenplay , tho it may have been Pal ?.... O'Hanlon was a 2nd rate screen writer had nearly messed up Destination Moon..... I don't remember a religious sub theme in When Worlds Collide … I thought Pal made a mistake by picking this 2nd rate 1933
Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie novel , which has some the worst physics in a SF tale of all time.

 

[BAYLOR]

From 1950 to 1960 George Pal did five science fiction films, Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds, Conquest of Space, the Time Machine.... only two of the five are winners 1953 War of the Worlds and 1960 Time Machine, Destination Moon is the odd one, it is a straight forward Popular Mechanics sort of docu-drama. It deserves notice as the first really realistic space flight film. AT least Pal did not make shlock like Queen of Outer Space or Plan 9 From Outer Space (or one of the many many other junk SF films of the era)….. it is not clear why War of the Worlds had a 'religious coloring' to it, Well's would have turned over in his grave had he seen that , it did not detract from the 'updated' story but was un-needed. The religious shading in Conquest of Space came from James O'Hanlon's screenplay , tho it may have been Pal ?.... O'Hanlon was a 2nd rate screen writer had nearly messed up Destination Moon..... I don't remember a religious sub theme in When Worlds Collide … I thought Pal made a mistake by picking this 2nd rate 1933
Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie novel , which has some the worst physics in a SF tale of all time.

I read both When World Collide and After Worlds Collide about 40 years ago and at theme , enjoyed them. But they are very flawed books. One problem in particular. The planet Bronson Alpha and Beta wouldn't have come anywhere near inner solar system. The sun's gravity would have captured both planets long before that would caused them to assume an orbit within the system.

 

[Al Jackson]

I read both When World Collide and After Worlds Collide about 40 years ago and at theme , enjoyed them. But they are very flawed books. One problem in particular. The planet Bronson Alpha and Beta wouldn't have come anywhere near inner solar system. The sun's gravity would have captured both planets long before that would caused them to assume an orbit within the system.

Adding even one planet to the solar system would mess up the mean motion resonances the planets are in, this in turn would mess with , for one, the climate of the earth … or worse the ejection of a planet... in the movie it is a star!!! Jez! That would have destroyed the whole solar system! The stupidest celestial mechanics ever used in a movie. It was an insane idea.