{"id":43349,"date":"2023-08-03T07:18:24","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T15:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=43349"},"modified":"2023-08-03T07:18:24","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T15:18:24","slug":"when-fbi-bugged-oppenheimer-as-he-talked-about-first-a-bomb-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/03\/when-fbi-bugged-oppenheimer-as-he-talked-about-first-a-bomb-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"When FBI Bugged Oppenheimer As He Talked About First ‘A-Bomb Movie’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Three days until Hiroshima Day. Continuing my daily Countdown to Hiroshima over at my Pressing Issues<\/a><\/strong> blog, this time for August 3, 1945:<\/p>\n

\u2013 On Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on the weather, with General Curtis LeMay to make the call for takeoff. Mission starting on the night of August 5 appears most likely scenario. Hiroshima remains primary target, with detonation point the center of the city, not the military base or industrial heart.<\/p>\n

\u2013 On board the ship Augusta<\/em> steaming home for USA after Potsdam meeting, President Truman, Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral William Leahy, and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes \u2013 a strong A-bomb booster \u2013 enjoy some poker. \u00a0Byrnes\u2019 aide Walter Brown notes in his diary that “President, Leahy, JFB agreed Japan looking for peace. (Leahy had another report from Pacific.) President afraid they will sue for peace through Russia instead of some country like Sweden.”<\/p>\n

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Cillian Murphy rightly drawing raves, but J. Robert Oppenheimer has been portrayed in fictionalized film and TV dramas for more than 75 years, long before Christopher Nolan placed him at the center of his bio-pic thriller.<\/p>\n

Renditions include actor Sam Waterston\u2019s depiction in the seven-part Oppenheimer<\/em> series in 1980 for PBS. Nine years later, Roland Joffe\u2019s big-budget studio drama, Fat Man and Little Boy<\/em>, foolishly cast the relatively unknown Dwight Shultz opposite megastar Paul Newman, who portrayed Gen. Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project\u2019s tyrannical military director. That same year, David Strathairn portrayed Oppenheimer in the TV movie Day One<\/em>, and later in a PBS \u201cAmerican Experience\u201d episode about the physicist\u2019s security clearance ordeal, The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In WGN\u2019s little-watched 2014 series Manhattan<\/em> (co-star Rachel Brosnahan had yet to become Mrs. Maisel<\/em>), Oppenheimer was a fringe character, again played by an obscure actor, Daniel London. In the latest film, Nolan gives Oppenheimer star treatment via the charismatic Cillian Murphy. (Matt Damon plays Groves.) But what all of these wildly varying depictions and storylines have in common is this: Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, wasn\u2019t around during their creation to advise, inform, or approve.<\/p>\n

The producer of the one major docudrama that did appear during Oppenheimer\u2019s lifetime \u2013 less than two years after the US detonated its atomic bombs over Japan \u2013 sought the physicist\u2019s input and approval, and in that crucial role, \u201cOppie\u201d succumbed to pressure. He regarded the script for MGM\u2019s big-budget portrayal, The Beginning or the End<\/a><\/em>, as poor, even laughable. Worse, it would be littered with dangerous falsehoods\u2014thanks partly to White House and Pentagon demands\u2014at a pivotal historical turning point, as US officials contemplated designing and testing more new weapons, including an H-bomb, that would set off an epic arms race with the Soviets.<\/p>\n

Oppenheimer, despite his concerns, ultimately agreed to be depicted as a key character and narrator. (He also sat for two interviews by Ayn Rand as she prepared the screenplay for a rival movie.) The making and unmaking of The Beginning or the End<\/em>, a saga I explore fully in my 2020 book of the same title<\/a>, reveals much\u2014not only of Oppenheimer\u2019s character, but what he faced as the target of relentless FBI bugging, tapping and other monitoring.<\/p>\n

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MGM began work on The Beginning or the End<\/em> in the autumn of 1945, inspired by scientists begging Hollywood to produce a film that would discourage the government from building more powerful nukes that would imperil the world. Oddly, it was actress Donna Reed, through her husband, an agent, who got the project rolling after receiving two letters from a former high school chemistry teacher and Manhattan Project scientist.<\/p>\n

As the film project progressed, studio co-founder Louis B. Mayer called it the \u201cmost important\u201d movie he would ever produce. But in the year that followed, the intended message took a U-turn. Major \u2013 sometimes unintentionally comical \u2013 falsehoods were introduced into the script to such an extent that the final product would be little more than pro-bomb propaganda. President Harry S. Truman and Gen. Groves, both of whom were granted script approval, ordered dozens of cuts and revisions. Truman even forced a costly re-take and had the actor playing him fired.<\/p>\n

More troubling for MGM executives, the studio needed to convince the scientists portrayed in the film to sign releases granting their permission for actors to portray them. Producers tried for months to get Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Oppenheimer to sign off, while promising them (unlike Groves) no fee.<\/p>\n

Einstein and Szilard eventually signed off, despite their qualms, but the ever-conflicted Oppenheimer resisted. Prepared for the worst, MGM changed his name in one version of the script to the implausibly WASP-y \u201cWhittier.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Left, Tom Drake as Matt Cochran, the character Oppenheimer called the \u201cethical scientist.\u201d Drake\u2019s character dies only to come back as a ghost to assure everyone that nukes are totally chill. MGM<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

On April 18, 1946, producer Sam Marx sent Oppenheimer a copy of the latest screenplay in the hope he would at least \u201cglance through it\u201d before they met in Berkeley three days hence. That version had the Oppenheimer\/Whittier character narrating and playing a central role in the film.<\/p>\n

After dinner at Oppenheimer\u2019s villa in the Berkeley Hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay, Oppie spoke frankly with Marx about the script, calling most of the supposedly real characters like himself \u201cstiff and idiotic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Oppenheimer told Nickson he found his Hollywood visitor \u201chonestly eager to get the script improved,\u201d but even after the promised revisions, he predicted, \u201cIt won\u2019t be very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least in the current story, he added, the scientists were depicted as \u201cordinary decent guys, that they worried like hell about the bomb, that it presents a major issue of good and evil to the people of the world.\u201d (In fact, Marx\u2019s changes would be minor and the script only became more flaky, but Oppenheimer apparently never followed up.)<\/p>\n

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Gen. Leslie Groves and his secretary, Jean O\u2019Leary, as depicted by actors Brian Donlevy and Audrey Totter. MGM<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

To portray Oppenheimer, the studio was set on the accomplished \u2013 though not A-list \u2013 Canadian actor, Hume Cronyn, who did not resemble him in the least.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, near the end of a lengthy phone conversation \u2013 the FBI had started tapping the home phone and recording the conversations \u2013 Kitty Oppenheimer informed her husband, who was away, that he\u2019d received a letter from a \u201cHugh Cronin.\u201d In the letter,\u00a0 which explained \u201cwhy he would like to be you,\u201d Kitty said (according to a FBI transcript, first revealed in my book<\/a>), Cronyn gently mocked the script but promised to do his best in portraying Oppenheimer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019ll tell you what I did on this,\u201d Oppenheimer replied, before making a reference to Gen. Groves\u2019 top aide: \u201cThis very ugly creature, [Colonel W.A.] Consodine, called me and said that Marx had said it was all right and would I sign the release, and I said, sure. I got the release and I signed it with a paragraph written in saying that all of this is subject to my receipt of a statement from Mr. Sam Marx that he believes the changes that have been made are satisfactory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kitty<\/em>: Oh.<\/p>\n

Robert<\/em>: Well, I didn\u2019t think there was anything else to do.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want anything from them and if I can work on his conscience, that is the best angle I have.\u00a0 It just isn\u2019t worth anything otherwise, darling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The call faded in and out. \u201cThe FBI must have just hung up,\u201d Oppenheimer quipped.<\/p>\n

Kitty: Giggles<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing we can do there is to try to persuade them to do a decent job,\u201d her husband concluded.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Oppenheimer visited the set in Hollywood (see below) to meet Cronyn and view a rough cut of the film. His only recorded note was a complaint that the bomb was raised to the top of the tower at the Trinity test site far too fast.<\/p>\n

As for Cronyn: Forty-three years later he would portray a man who strongly pushed Truman to use the bomb against Japan, Secretary of State James Byrnes.<\/p>\n

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including \u201cHiroshima in America,\u201d and the recent award-winning <\/i>The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood \u2013 and America \u2013 Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb<\/a>, and has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning \u201cAtomic Cover-up<\/a>\u201d). 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<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood. Three days until Hiroshima Day. Continuing my daily Countdown to Hiroshima over at my Pressing Issues blog, this time for August 3, 1945: \u2013 On Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on the weather, with General Curtis LeMay to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-43349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43349"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43353,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43349\/revisions\/43353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43349"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=43349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}