Steven Spielberg and Arnold Leibovit will produce remake of The Time Machine for Warner Brothers
5/26/2000
Flying Saucers over Hollywood! by filmmaker Paul Davids offers a rare glimpse into the great Hollywood UFO films.
In a recent AlienZoo column about Richard Hoagland's Scottsdale presentation (and its reference to a particular Tom Corbett Space Cadet story involving a sphinx-like object on Mars), Wiggz stated: "Interestingly enough, German rocket scientist Willy Ley was the scientific consultant for the Tom Corbett TV series. Ley, a former German Rocket Society director who worked with Werner von Braun, was also a consultant to Disney and sci-fi filmmaker George Pal. Presumably, Ley had an inside connection to Hollywood and the U.S.'s finest space engineers."
We'll have much more to say about George Pal's connection to German rocket scientists in a moment. But first I'd like to alert all AlienZoo fans of a rare opportunity to see George Pal's THE TIME MACHINE on the big screen at the Orpheum theater in Los Angeles on June 7th, expected to sell out. The late George Pal will be honored at the event, which will feature a panel discussion that will include director Arnold Leibovit, the extraordinarily dedicated filmmaker who made THE FANTASY FILM WORLDS OF GEORGE PAL, plus Forrest J. Ackerman (who is "Dr. Acula," the subject of last week's FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD), and Alan Young (who played Rod Taylor's sidekick Philby in THE TIME MACHINE). Furthermore, the original prop of the time machine will be there for all to see. Tickets are $15.
Today, FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD! takes a close look at the cinematic giant named George Pal, and how he changed the world. Whenever we hold up a luminary of the past to the light of the present, we have to take account for the level of technical proficiency available at the time the luminary lived. Of course the special effects of a George Pal film cannot compete with the level of sophistication computer technology has brought to the art. But in his heyday, from the late 1940s into the early 1960s, George Pal not only advanced the field of movie effects, he picked a series of mind-expanding stories and themes. The screenplays were not always works of art, but the topics were generally a prodigious challenge and leap. More than anything, we remember George Pal today for the topics he chose to conquer. Those include four extraordinary space stories plus one that involves time travel -- DESTINATION MOON, THE CONQUEST OF SPACE, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, WAR OF THE WORLDS, and THE TIME MACHINE.
I met George Pal while I was still a young producing/writing/directing student at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies (then located in George Pal's home town: Beverly Hills). I admired him from early childhood, and I eagerly sought him out. One of my fondest dreams -- getting to make a film with him (THE HOBBIT) - was ALMOST realized but unfortunately, like so often occurs in Hollywood, proved to be a near miss.
George Pal was born into a Hungarian theatrical family and he had an interest in film and animation at a young age. As Nazism spread, Pal departed Hungary for Holland, where he made a revolutionary short film with puppets (his 3-D "Puppetoon" technique), but he and his wife, Zsoka Pal, soon left Hungary for the United States as World War II was about to erupt.
For most people, to know George was to love him. He had a smile that never wavered until his later years, when the frustrations of being treated as something of a "has-been" in Hollywood began to take their toll on him. He also had a twinkle in his eye that was like one of the elves in the Cinerama fantasy (the first Cinerama drama) THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, starring Russ Tamblyn. To the extent that people actually have "auras," George's "aura" radiated with light and energy that seemed to come from a bountiful future time. He had charisma, charm, wit, humor, and an enviable state of childlike delight. For most of his life in Hollywood, George lived in a home on Laurel Way in Beverly Hills, a few blocks behind the pink Beverly Hills Hotel. His home was a testament to his love of all things futuristic -- but it also featured modern, imaginative furniture that George designed himself.
Though he always loved fantasy and had great achievements in that genre (TOM THUMB, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, THE SEVEN FACES OF DR. LAO) one never would guess that his greatest reach would extend to science-fiction films, where he would leave an indelible mark. Walt Disney became his rival, as the two men competed to be the first to make Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. George lost that one, and deferred to Walt.
But early on, George met German rocket scientist Willy Ley, a German Jew who helped the U.S. government identify the German scientists who served Hitler but were not devoted Nazis. As Project Paperclip unfolded (see FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD on U-571), Willy Ley went to bat for Werner von Braun, to help him come to the United States. Eventually, George Pal became involved with both men, probably through his association with Chesley Bonestell, a visionary artist who illustrated LIFE magazine's stunning portfolios of Saturn and a hypothetical moon landing in the 1940s. Bonestell (pronounced BONN-i-stell) teamed up with Werner von Braun to flesh out von Braun's sketches of moon rockets, satellites, and interplanetary spacecraft. Many of these illustrations were published in Colliers, a popular 1950s weekly magazine. Bonestell later illustrated Beyond Jupiter with Arthur C. Clarke (and died in 1986 at the age of 98).
From the visionary work of these three men, George Pal began to understand that humankind's ultimate destiny could only be fulfilled by people freeing themselves from planet Earth and venturing into space, to the planets. In the late 1940s, Pal undertook the black-and-white film DESTINATION MOON. Though the film was made about 20 years before humans first reached the moon, at that time, most people doubted that we would reach the moon for another 100 years, if ever. However, George's connections to the German rocket scientists, who spearheaded the U.S. rocket and missile programs, helped him to understand that our future in space was much closer than society could imagine.
Though DESTINATION MOON is extraordinarily dated by today's standards, and its meticulous step-by-step voyage to the moon might even seem boring in parts, it was the first to tackle the theme in a feature film. The short silent film A TRIP TO THE MOON by French filmmaker George Melies lasted only a few minutes. George Pal fulfilled the greater challenge. He consulted with the scientific experts on how the trip could be accomplished, and he showed it in detail about two decades before the first Apollo mission. Though absolutely primitive in filmic terms, compared to a film such as APOLLO 13, in its day DESTINATION MOON seemed to declare boldly that humans WOULD get to the moon, as forcefully as John Kennedy stated it when he became President.
In recent years, we've seen two major Hollywood spectacular films about the perils of an asteroid hitting the earth. Both DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON (which owes much to Robert Roy Pool's storytelling gifts) dramatized the dread and anticipation of a cataclysmic cosmic collision. Today we know that a comet's impact with the earth is the likely explanation for the demise of the dinosaurs. However, well before we had that scientific knowledge, and even before we knew that huge comet impacts are likely events, George Pal explored the theme in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
Once again, George found himself burdened with a somewhat klunky screenplay, which slightly exaggerated the human drama. In the tale, a wealthy businessman was intent on building a huge rocket that could escape the earth, to assure his own survival of the coming impact. One of the most visionary scenes involved the building of a huge ramp, like a roller coaster track ascending a hillside, by which the rocket would blast off into space with a smooth ascent. Once again, George Pal found himself plugged into the advanced thinking of men such as Willy Ley and Werner von Braun, who gave thought to the possibility of such calamities, and what would be required to insure the survival of humanity. A final scene showed the rocket arriving at another planet that was like a Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, the budget ran out before George could complete the special effects, and the film was released with an obviously painted mural that greeted the space travelers when they exited their spaceship. The mural by Chesley Bonestell showed the new world where humans would flourish since Earth had been destroyed.
These were gigantic, new concepts in the early 1950s when George Pal's space films premiered and flourished. But the concepts in THE CONQUEST OF SPACE were equally bold and perhaps more relevant to our immediate future. In that film, George Pal had the benefit of Willy Ley and Werner von Braun's vision of a space station that orbited the earth. It was the first the American public had ever seen of an orbiting space platform, where people worked, experimented, and prepared to journey to the planets. The space station was envisioned as a huge wheel. In the days before Mir, and before the U.S. effort for an orbiting space station, the worldwide public saw the future, thanks to Pal's vision. (Later, a more detailed version of essentially the same-shaped craft was shown in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY). In the story of THE CONQUEST OF SPACE, at first, the space station is to be used as a platform for a journey to the moon. But the instructions change and the rocket that departs the space station heads for Mars instead.
Unlike the Tom Corbett Space Cadet story that Richard Hoagland so appreciated, the Mars that George Pal's voyagers encountered had no ancient artifacts. There was no evidence of any past life or civilizations -- somewhat surprising, given Pal's reputation for precisely that kind of leap. The climax of THE CONQUEST OF SPACE shows seedlings that the astronauts brought with them beginning to grow on Mars. The soil can support life. Once again, Pal's vision is with the preservation of human life, which he shows us is ever frail in this vast cosmos.
To his science-fiction films, Pal brought a certain religious vision. Always a religious man, Pal tackled the same theme of the survival of human life in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. The film ends with humankind thanking God for His wisdom in creating the littlest creatures that inhabit the earth, the bacteria, which end up infecting and destroying the invading, heartless Martians. It is probably his most famous and lasting film -- the film that stands up best to the ravages of time. It begins with Chesley Bonestell's unforgettable artwork of a "tour" of the planets of our solar system.
Orson Wells began the process of updating H. G. Wells.s classic story by setting the invasion in New Jersey, in the famous 1938 radio broadcast. George Pal decided to keep the British tale in the United States, but to move the central location to the West Coast. In my very first installment of FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD! last January, I analyzed WAR OF THE WORLDS in some detail as I recounted my chance meeting with the film's star, Gene Barry, at the Palm Springs International Film Festival this year. In FSOH of February 18th, I called particular attention tothe fact that the film shows a saucer crashing into a farmhouse that we are told twice is located SOUTHWEST OF CORONA. Though the film meant Corona California, not Corona New Mexico, nevertheless, southwest of Corona, New Mexico is the location where the Roswell UFO crash occurred. Was George Pal getting his inside information from Willy Ley and Werner von Braun, two men who were likely to have known whether the Roswell Incident was actually a crash of an alien spaceship? In retrospect, it seems highly likely. Unfortunately, in the days that I knew George Pal, I knew nothing about the Roswell Incident, and so never had the opportunity to ask prying questions. I don.t know if he believed that humankind already made contact with ETs or not.
The final great visionary work of George Pal is, THE TIME MACHINE, which will be shown at the Orpheum in Los Angeles on June 7th. This was another adaptation of an H. G. Wells story that gave a great lesson in the concept of time travel, one of the other scientific frontiers that has always titillated people's minds. The recent TV series, SEVEN DAYS, postulated that humankind discovered a time travel device amidst the debris of the Roswell crash, thereby marrying the themes of extraterrestrial invasion and time travel. That popular TV series is like a reverberation many decades later of two of the themes Pal so devotedly explored.
Like, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE TIME MACHINE holds up rather well to viewing today, unlike some of Pal's other films, which sometimes invite laughs over awkward scenes and dialogue. Examples of this are pictures such as ATLANTIS: THE LOST CONTINENT (written by non-pro's during a writer's strike), DOC SAVAGE, MAN OF BRONZE (his final film), THE NAKED JUNGLE (in which Charlton Heston fights off an army of ten billion red ants in South America) and THE POWER. Those rank among Pal's few mis-fires, although each has its fans, especially THE NAKED JUNGLE. (Pal also made HOUDINI with Tony Curtis).
Arnold Leibovit, a filmmaker I knew well during his incarnations in both Hollywood and Sedona, Arizona (he now lives in Las Vegas), will executive produce a spectacular remake of THE TIME MACHINE with Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks, for Warner Brothers. Leibovit produced two wonderful films, both available on video, that portray George Pal and his achievements. DVDs of the director's cut of each film (with two hours of added footage to each project) will be available soon through Image Entertainment. (GP street date 8/29/00). Leibovit worked closely with George Pal and his many friends and associates in making the feature documentary, THE FANTASY FILM WORLDS OF GEORGE PAL, which also includes an interview with Ray Harryhausen who began his stop-motion work on Pal's Puppetoons. This superb, award-winning documentary was followed soon afterwards by Leibovit's video film about George Pal's Puppetoons -- a film that includes several Puppetoon shorts while educating us about Pal's process. I recommend both films highly and look forward to acquiring the DVDs. Make a conscious effort to find them, if they don't find their way to you.
George Pal's death in 1980 came far too soon and was a shock and great loss to his many admirers. Many films he wished to make remain unmade, including: THE HOBBIT, THE DISAPPEARANCE, H.G. Wells.s IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET, HIERONYMOUS BOSCH, and TIME MACHINE II.
Physicians warned George Pal of possibly needing a heart bypass operation. However, he was reluctant to get the operation. In those days (late 1970s) the operation was much riskier than it is today. George was also very fond of deep-sea fishing, a strenuous activity not appropriate for a man with his heart condition. Those who knew him well felt, ultimately, that Hollywood had "broken George's heart." The last decade of his life was filled with frustration, and he only got one film off the ground in those ten years (DOC SAVAGE). Back then, special effects seemed to fall out of fashion, and when they came back, films such as STAR WARS seemed to leave George Pal behind. It was a new cinematic world, and he was no longer the "King". the mantle passed to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. But George Pal will always be a cornerstone of science-fiction film history.
I attended George Pal's funeral, and my car was directly behind the hearse during the funeral procession. It was like a transition moment in my life, saying farewell forever to that great man whose work inspired me so much when I was a child. At the funeral service, science-fiction editor/collector Forrest J. Ackerman ("Dr. Acula") gave a tremendously moving eulogy and tribute, and he informed us that arrangements were underway to have a star in the heavens named in George Pal's honor. He gave the number and location of the star.
For the sake of that heavenly star I only hope it burns as brightly as did George Pal's gift of creative achievement and visionary thinking. He was a man ahead of his time, like the literary genius whose works he sometimes adapted -- H. G. Wells.
And so ends another installment of FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD! Log on to AlienZoo and join me back here next Friday, as we continue our search for THE TRUTH in the land of cinematic dreams.