Dr. Strangelove

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m_calingo

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In a scene from the 1963 movie Dr. Strangelove, the B-52 bomber captain played by actor Slim Pickens was going over the survival items with his crew in case they needed to bail out after a bombing run over Russia.

I remember some of the items mentioned included Hershy bars, some gold coins, some condoms, and nylon stockings! There was a comment made in the film along the lines of, "I could have a great week in Vegas with all of this!" :)

My question here, if anyone remembers, is: 1)what the full list consisted of, and, 2) if this list of items was really accurate in what a bomber crew would have been supplied with as a Bail Out Kit in those days.
 
I can handle #1:

From IMDB:

Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickins):

"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. "
 
Was the kit accurate? No.

Interesting trivia though, the line was "...a pretty good weekend in Dallas," but was dubbed over after Kennedy was shot because of the fear that it would be in bad taste.
 
Centaur... YOU ROCK!:thumbup: :D

Gotta love Dr. Strangelove. This movie was part of the 3 movie Slim Pickens fest that was a semi regular event for me and my roomies while in vet school. The other two? 1941 and Blazing Saddles. Made for a fine (and long) night of viewing.
 
Many theaters in the midwest wouldn't show the movie as they couldn't see any humour in a subject like the Cold War !!!
 
Geraldo said:
the line was "...a pretty good weekend in Dallas," but was dubbed over after Kennedy was shot because of the fear that it would be in bad taste.
Click to expand...
Interesting,
Even if the guy was a cowboy who was speaking it, the line still seems to me to work better as "Vegas"
 
I think they went overboard, Allan. You may or may not know that they filmed an absurd pie fight in the war room, in which the president was hit by a pie and someone excalimed something about "our young president being struck down." Given the level of satire and the dark subject matter in the film, it's hard to imagine that anyone had an expectation that this would be a highly popular film, which makes it harder to understand some of the edits.

I would place it on my top ten list. I laugh every time I watch the gun battle taking place in front of the "Peace is Our Profession" billboards. :D
 
It was pure satire and dark humor. Peter Sellers was a comic genius. Could anyone have done a better Kissinger than his Strangelove?

George C Scott and Sterling Hayden (no relation) were great too.
 
My favorite line: Colonel Bat Guano to Mandrake before Mandrake shoots open the coke machine to get coins to make the phone call that might head off nuclear annihilation:

"You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company."
 
Steve Hayden said:
It was pure satire and dark humor. Peter Sellers was a comic genius. Could anyone have done a better Kissinger than his Strangelove?

George C Scott and Sterling Hayden (no relation) were great too.
Click to expand...

Also, the future voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones, as a crew member of the B-52.
 
Also caught my eye..
During the attack on the military base, one of the attacking soldiers appears to be firing at the buildings with an MP40 submachine gun ?!?
 
Here is the dialog I found disturbing... after all, some people occassionallyexceed their authority...

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, about, uh, 35 minutes ago, General Jack Ripper, the commanding general of, uh, Burpelson Air Force Base, issued an order to the 34 B-52's of his Wing, which were airborne at the time as part of a special exercise we were holding called Operation Drop-Kick. Now, it appears that the order called for the planes to, uh, attack their targets inside Russia. The, uh, planes are fully armed with nuclear weapons with an average load of, um, 40 megatons each. Now, the central display of Russia will indicate the position of the planes. The triangles are their primary targets; the squares are their secondary targets. The aircraft will begin penetrating Russian radar cover within, uh, 25 minutes.
President Merkin Muffley: General Turgidson, I find this very difficult to understand. I was under the impression that I was the only one in authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.
General "Buck" Turgidson: That's right, sir, you are the only person authorized to do so. And although I, uh, hate to judge before all the facts are in, it's beginning to look like, uh, General Ripper exceeded his authority.
 
Oh, and this:

President Merkin Muffley: General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you *assured* me there was *no* possibility of such a thing *ever* occurring!
General "Buck" Turgidson: Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.
 
Steve Hayden said:
It was pure satire and dark humor. Peter Sellers was a comic genius. Could anyone have done a better Kissinger than his Strangelove?

George C Scott and Sterling Hayden (no relation) were great too.
Click to expand...

Funny thing is that Dr. Kissinger was U.S. Secretary of State from 1973-77, whereas the movie Dr. Strangelove was released in 1963! :eek:

Did Stanley Kubrick know something we didn't???
 
Is this part of that kit?



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Back in the Spring of 1991, my son was a Senior in High School and was taking an acting course along with his load of AP courses. He was assigned to perform one of the Wing Commander Mandrake's soliloquies as his final exam. I rented the film to give him some context for the soliloquy and we watched it along with his then best friend. I was rolling out of my chair laughing while the two kids sat there totally blown away until they started to run the credits over film clips of nuclear explosions while playing the song "We'll Meet Again." At that point, the utter ridiculousness of the whole thing dawned on my son and he bagan to roar with laughter. His poor friend never did get it.

This film was the first time anyone had ever pointedout the innate ridiculousness of the idea of nuclear holocaust and the whole concept of mutual annihilation upon which both US and Soviet nuclear strategy were based at the time. It was, of course, very black humor. It did lead to my son and me having some really interesting talks of what it was like for each of us growing in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. At St. Albans School, we did not have "Duck and Cover" exercises. We went over to the Washington National Cathederal and down into its crypts instead. My classmates and I figured that, if the Soviets hit DC with a nuke or nukes, at least we would have an expensive tombstone. My son never had that sort of fatalism as the threat of nuclear war was drastically lessened by the mid-1980s when he was coming of age.

One piece that I will share was that, somewhere about 1958 or so, my father asked what it was my generation wanted. Remember that he was a career Army officer retired for wounds received in combat and then a career CIA officer and that I am not a "baby-boomer" but a war baby, being born in 1942. I said that we wanted "security" and my Dad got very angry as he thought that I was talking about a guaranteed happy life-style. I tried to explain that this was not what I was talking about but I was never able to explain it to him adequately. It was not until those talks with my son that I realized that what I meant was that we wanted to have some assurance that there might actually be a tomorrow, that the world would might not cease to exist the next day in a nuclear fireball. Unfortunately, he had died some six years before I came that realization.
 
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