January 29, 1964: "Dr. Strangelove" Premieres

January 29, 1964: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premieres. It would have premiered a few weeks earlier, but was postponed due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the preceding November 22.

Director Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a film about the Cold War, and a friend gave him Peter George's 1958 novel Red Alert. At first, Kubrick intended the film as a serious drama and a warning. But the more he read about the idea of MAD -- Mutually Assured Destruction -- the more he saw how absurd the whole thing was. He said:

My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question.

Stanley Kubrick

Among the titles that Kubrick considered for the film were Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying (a parody of the Broadway musical How to Succeed In Business Without Even Trying), Dr. Strangelove's Secret Uses of Uranus, and Wonderful Bomb (also a play on a Broadway title: Wonderful Town). After deciding to make the film a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer in late 1962.

Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played multiple roles. Kubrick had no problem with this, as Sellers had appeared in his previous film, an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

But Kubrick had to film in London, because Sellers, was going through a divorce from Anne Howe, the 1st of what turned out to be 4 ex-wives -- he was cheating on her with Swedish actress Britt Ekland, who became his 2nd ex-wife -- and could not leave the United Kingdom. In spite of being unable to visit Washington, D.C. -- and he wouldn't have been allowed into the room anyway, due to security concerns -- someone who had been there at the time said, years later, that Kubrick had come very close to getting the scene right.

Sellers played 3 roles: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a Royal Air Force officer on exchange in the United States; Merkin Muffley, a bald, indecisive President of the United States based on former Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson; and the title character, a German scientist named Merkwürdigliebe, which translates to "Strange love." His nuclear experiments have left him blind, confined to a wheelchair, and with a right arm that occasionally, involuntarily, goes up into a Nazi salute. And, in his ever-present German accent, he calls the President "Mein Führer." This character was not in Red Alert.

Among the other stars: George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper, who acts on his anti-Communist paranoia and launches a nuclear attack; James Earl Jones, in his very 1st film, as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the bombardier in the one and only B-52 bomber that wasn't successfully recalled; and Slim Pickens as Major T.J. "King" Kong, the commanding officer of the B-52, last seen riding a dropped bomb like a bucking bronco, waving a cowboy hat around in the air.

Kubrick had a stroke of genius: He only told half the cast that the film was a comedy, so half of them acted as though it was serious, while the other half pretended to.

As of January 29, 2022, only 2 actors from the film are still alive: James Earl Jones, and Glenn Beck, who played Air Force Lieutenant Kivel. Beck should not be confused with the controversial talk show host of the same name, who was born 12 days after the film premiered. This Glenn Beck also worked with Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and later played Abraham Lincoln in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Six months before the film premiered, Marvel Comics debuted the character of Doctor Strange, a superhero magician. Perhaps the hype around Dr. Strangelove helped the character gain fans. And Dick Stuart, a 1st baseman then playing for the Boston Red Sox, was a powerful slugger, but a horrible fielder, in an era before the designated hitter. Already nicknamed Stonefingers, after the James Bond novel Goldfinger, he soon received a new nickname: Dr. Strangeglove.

In a 2014 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, rapper Ruggles Outbound played Kubrick. It became a "battle royale" of film directors, with "Nice" Peter Shukoff playing Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay, while "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Alfred Hitchcock, and rapper Michael "Wax" Jones played Quentin Tarantino.

*

January 29, 1964 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the St. Louis Hawks, 105-104 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

* And there was a doubleheader at the Boston Garden. In the opener, the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 102-97. Elgin Baylor had 34 points in defeat.

* In the nightcap, the San Francisco Warriors beat the Boston Celtics, 100-92. Wilt Chamberlain had 28 points and 22 rebounds.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Chicago Stadium. The New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins did not play that night.