The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood-and America-Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

by Greg Mitchell

Overview

One of Vanity Fair's 21 Best Books of 2020
Winner, 2020 Richard Wall Memorial Award Special Jury Prize, Theatre Library Association
The shocking and significant story of how the White House and Pentagon scuttled an epic Hollywood production.

Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called "the most important story" he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon.

Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film version. His screenwriter: the novelist Ayn Rand, who saw in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer the model for a character she was sketching for Atlas Shrugged.

Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military—for reasons of propaganda, politics, and petty human vanity (this was Hollywood).

Mitchell has found his way into the lofty rooms, from Washington to California, where it happened, unearthing hundreds of letters and dozens of scripts that show how wise intentions were compromised in favor of defending the use of the bomb and the imperatives of postwar politics. As in his acclaimed Cold War true-life thriller The Tunnels, he exposes how our implacable American myth-making mechanisms distort our history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620975749
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	502,621
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Greg Mitchell's books include The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (The New Press) as well as The Tunnels; The Campaign of the Century, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady, a New York Times Notable Book; So Wrong for So Long; and, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and Who Owns Death? He lives in the New York City area.

Greg Mitchell's books include The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (The New Press) as well as The Tunnels; The Campaign of the Century, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady, a New York Times Notable Book; So Wrong for So Long; and, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and Who Owns Death? He lives in the New York City area.

Table of Contents

Cast of Characters ix

A Brief Chronology xiii

Preface xv

1 The Donna Reed Show 1

2 From Oak Ridge to the Oval Office 13

3 The Race for the Bomb (Film) 26

4 FBI vs. Oppie 34

5 Saboteurs and Bridge-Playing Wives 43

6 The Rand Report 53

7 Nobody Can Harness Man 63

8 Ticking Clocks and Time Capsules 73

9 The End of the Beginning 80

10 Enter General Groves 88

11 "Top Secret" Is Out 101

12 Dinner with the Oppenheimers 112

13 Those Japanese A-Bombs 123

14 Dr. Einstein, I Presume? 136

15 A Possible "Prophylactic" 147

16 John Hersey and the End of "Whoopee" 160

17 Preview in Pomona 172

18 "A Problem with the President's Scene" 186

19 Truman, Take Two 200

20 Stimson to the Rescue 212

21 "Hokum" and "Imbecility" 220

22 Aftermath, 1947-2020 228

Acknowledgments 249

Notes 251

Bibliography 267

Index 271

Editorial Reviews

03/16/2020

MGM’s little-seen 1947 docudrama about the creation of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End, provides the unlikely but fascinating subject for this rich look at the early nuclear age from journalist Mitchell (The Tunnels). He gives a full account of the film’s genesis, beginning with the film pitch that star Donna Reed received from her high school chemistry teacher, and continuing with Ayn Rand’s early involvement in the project as a screenwriter and the studio’s difficulties in obtaining approval from Oppenheimer, Einstein, and other scientists for their on-screen depictions. He also details Army general Leslie Groves’s extensive participation in shaping the script, which became a battleground between scientists, who wanted the film to show the true horror of nuclear war, and the military, which wanted to justify the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and undermine calls to place nuclear weapons under international control. Mitchell shows how this desire to control the narrative around the atomic attacks fed into the U.S.’s continued insistence on its right to launch a nuclear first strike. While the film bombed at the box office, Mitchell’s rich account of its making and larger implications should draw both history buffs and those concerned with the continuing issues around nuclear weapons. (July)

Publishers Weekly

“Greg Mitchell’s The Beginning or the End is an engrossing, wry, and always lively look behind the scenes of a historic Hollywood flop. But it’s also much more than that: a deeply serious, meticulously researched account of how the movie industry—and the American public in general—embraced a comforting myth to justify one of the most controversial decisions in history. This is a first-rate piece of work by one of our most accomplished nonfiction storytellers.”

—Gary Krist, author of Empire of Sin and The Mirage Factory

“A story of dishy Hollywood doings but with atomic bombs and a screenplay by Ayn Rand—what more could a reader ask for?”

—Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

“A fascinating and brilliantly researched account of how Hollywood and Washington grappled with how to portray and profit from the new nuclear age. Another great read and exposé from Mitchell.”

—Alex Kershaw, bestselling author of The Liberator and Avenue of Spies

“A fascinating, sharp-eyed study of Hiroshima’s cinematic aftershocks. Mitchell expertly chronicles the gradual transformation of a gigantic, and still-radiating, moral catastrophe.”

—Nicholson Baker, author of Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, and Double Fold, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

“From the nation’s top secret to the silver screen: Mitchell tells an unforgettable tale about a forgotten film and the tug-of-war between scientists, the White House, and the Pentagon over the Hollywood version of the bombing of Hiroshima.”

—Peter Biskind, bestselling author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

“MGM’s little-seen 1947 docudrama about the creation of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End, provides the unlikely but fascinating subject for this rich look at the early nuclear age. . . . While the film bombed at the box office, Mitchell’s rich account of its making and larger implications should draw both history buffs and those concerned with the continuing issues around nuclear weapons.”

—Publishers Weekly

“[Greg Mitchell] uses his sharp investigative reporting skills to unearth this detailed, behind-the-scenes story about Hollywood’s first movie on the atomic bomb. . . . Excellent research and rich dialogue give Mitchell’s book a novelistic flair as he recounts the battles between MGM and the military over actor choices, deletions, revisions, and retakes concerning fact vs. fiction.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“This intriguing, behind-the-scenes look at a disjointed creative partnership is sure to be of interest to readers of history and cinema.”

—Library Journal

“It can safely be said that when it comes to collisions between art and politics, art usually gets maimed and as Greg Mitchell’s quietly amusing book shows, [this film] was no exception.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“This captivating look at the making of a 1947 docudrama about the U.S. decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan shows how far Hollywood would go to get the public waving the American flag.”

—Shelf Awareness

“This is an obvious ‘must buy’—especially if you are interested in WW2, cinema, or modern American history.”

—Rod Lurie, director of The Outpost

“It is a deceptively breezy book that reveals its depths and its profound questions only slowly in the reader’s mind, and one of these is how easily the powerful can sell the country a narrative. . . . A vivid examination of where we are now.”

—Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

“Seriously, this is a great book.”

—Kurt Eichenwald, author of The Informant and Conspiracy of Fools

“Fascinating but also, weirdly, enjoyable to read.”

—Harry Shearer

“A great new book that you’re going to want to read. The book conjures up a compelling cast of characters who got caught in the Cold War propaganda machine.”

—Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Mitchell has done a genuine service by using the rueful history of a subpar MGM production to highlight issues of towering moral and ethical concern.”

—David Sterritt, Quarterly Review of Film and Video

From the Publisher

04/01/2020

In the aftermath of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, concerned scientists reached out to Hollywood in hopes a film could be made that would make plain the devastation caused by nuclear weapons. Mitchell (The Tunnels) chronicles in intricate detail how MGM, the military personnel responsible for the bombings, and a cadre of Oak Ridge scientists all worked together to create The Beginning or the End (1947). Unsurprisingly, the film was not a success, and the blame lay in almost all directions. Though the scientists' aim was to make a statement against the use of atomic weapons, producer Louis B. Mayer and the military—care of President Truman and General Leslie Groves—wanted to create a riveting docudrama that would defend the bombings and bolster their image, going so far as to include mention of leaflets that were dropped in Japan up to ten days in advance of the bombings, when in fact no warnings were given. And while the film was still in production, John Hersey's "Hiroshima" was published in The New Yorker, creating a completely different description of the horrors of the bombing, shifting the public response from patriotic pride to one of shock and remorse. VERDICT This intriguing, behind-the-scenes look at a disjointed creative partnership is sure to be of interest to readers of history and cinema.—Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

Library Journal

2020-04-09
What happens when the military gets involved in an arts project.

Mitchell, the former editor of Nuclear Times and Editor & Publisher, uses his sharp investigative reporting skills to unearth this detailed, behind-the-scenes story about Hollywood’s first movie on the atomic bomb. It begins innocuously enough in October 1945, two months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, with a letter to actress Donna Reed from Ed Tompkins, her former high school chemistry teacher who moved on to become a scientist at Oak Ridge. He asked if she thought a “movie could be planned and produced to successfully impress upon the public the horrors of atomic warfare.” Mitchell sets his tale up as a series of battles. The primary one was between the scientists, including Tompkins and Robert Oppenheimer, who were desperate to control nuclear proliferation and the deployment of nuclear weapons, and the military, led by Gen. Leslie R. Groves, director of the Manhattan project. Reed’s husband, talent agent Tony Owen, helped pitch the idea to MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, who showed a keen interest in the project. Paramount’s Hal B. Wallis had a similar idea, with “controversial novelist Ayn Rand” writing the screenplay. MGM lined up Bob Considine, author of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, to write theirs. MGM talked to President Harry Truman, who was on board, even coming up with an apocalyptic title: “We are either at the beginning or the end.” Wallis’ less dramatic title was Top Secret. In mid-December 1945, the New York Times published a story about the “Hollywood Atom Sweepstakes.” Wallis eventually dropped out of the race. Excellent research and rich dialogue give Mitchell’s book a novelistic flair as he recounts the battles between MGM and the military over actor choices, deletions, revisions, and retakes concerning fact vs. fiction, with the military and the White House usually winning. The Beginning of the End opened with a notice indicating that it was “basically a true story.”

Reel film meets real history in this scintillating tale.

Kirkus Reviews