Nuclear War Movie: Fail Safe
Henry Fonda & Larry Hagman Star in 1964 Cold War Thriller
When six Vindicator bombers armed with nuclear warheads are accidentally ordered to destroy Moscow, the President (Henry Fonda) frantically tries to recall them.
The flashing code CAP-411 may spell full-scale thermonuclear war for President Henry Fonda, Larry Hagman, Walter Matthau, et al., in director Sidney Lumet's 1964 nightmare thriller, Fail Safe.
Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler Novel
Fail Safe was based on the 1962 best-selling novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. "This book is both a novel and an essay on the end of man..." noted Norman Cousins in his critique for Saturday Review (10/20/62). "As a novel, it is a swiftly paced, ingeniously constructed suspense story -- in many ways the most unusual suspense story ever written."
Even before its publication by McGraw-Hill, Fail Safe had caught the attention of Hollywood. Eventually winning the film rights were producer Max E. Youngstein and director Sidney Lumet. Brought in to write the screenplay was Walter Bernstein, a World War II veteran and formerly blacklisted writer from the McCarthy era.
The Matador Dream
Fail Safe opens with a recurring dream on the part of Brigadier General Warren A. Black (Dan O'Herlihy), a trusted confidant of the President of the United States. The setting of the dream is New York City, where a shrouded matador is flaying a wounded bull. In a cold sweat, "Blackie" awakens and discovers, to his great relief, that he and his family are safe. But the haunting memory of the dream lingers...
At Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, General Bogan (Frank Overton) and Colonel Cascio (Fritz Weaver) are giving visiting Congressman Raskob (Sorrell Booke) a tour of the facilities. Following an encounter with an off-course BOAC 707 commercial airliner, Bogan and the others watch as the scrambled American fighters return to base -- with the cryptic exception of Group Six, which has gone beyond its fail-safe point and is headed to the Soviet Union.
Informed of this development, the President (Fonda) desperately tries to recall Group Six, headed by Lt. Colonel Jack Grady (Edward Binns), whose onboard fail-safe box has malfunctioned. Now ominously flashing the code CAP-411 (in the book it's CAP-811), Grady has unsealed his orders. The target, he reads, is Moscow, where he and his six Vindicators are to deliver their nuclear payload.
With Russian translator Peter Buck (Larry Hagman) at his side and a group of experts advising him from the Pentagon and SAC, the President ponders his options. A Professor Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) argues the extreme view, that an all-out, preemptive strike be ordered against the Soviet Union, thus ending the threat of worldwide communism forever.
The Sacrifice of Abraham
Unable to communicate with Group Six because of Soviet jamming, the President calls the Russian Premier on the "hot line." With the Americans and the Soviets working together, the President hopes to shoot down Colonel Grady and Group Six before they can reach their target.
Meanwhile, General Black, at the President's orders, is orbiting New York City at 46,000 feet in a nuclear-armed Vindicator. The President has advised his old friend to remember the biblical story of the Sacrifice of Abraham.
Release
Filmed in stark black and white, Fail Safe opened in selected movie theaters on October 7, 1964. Catching a sneak preview was Bosley Crowther of The New York Times (9/16/64), who noted, "It packs a melodramatic wallop that will rattle a lot of chattering teeth..."
Fail Safe Remake
On April 9, 2000, George Clooney, an unabashed fan of the original film, staged a live remake of Fail Safe over CBS-TV. Introduced by Walter Cronkite, this $5.5 million effort starred Clooney as Colonel Jack Grady, Richard Dreyfuss as the President, Noah Wyle as Peter Buck, Brian Dennehy as General Bogan, Sam Elliott as Congressman Raskob and Harvey Keitel as General Black.
"I can hear the sound of explosions from the northeast. The sky is very bright. All lit up..." So relates Jay, the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, before the line goes dead in a whining shrill.
Fail Safe...still not for the faint of heart.
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