LIFE Discovered on Moon!

[beamjockey]

Rummaging again through the Google archive of Life, whl and I have found over two hundred photos depicting the filming of Destination Moon, the 1950 film for which Robert Heinlein collaborated on the screenplay, and served as technical advisor.

You may recall the expository cartoon, explaining the principles of spaceflight, embedded within the film. In it, Woody Woodpecker encounters an issue of Life covering the movie he is in. In reality, the April 24, 1950 issue carried a Destination Moon feature, though the cover showed a girl, not a Moon rocket.




Life sent Allan Grant to shoot the production. A few of the photos have captions (I presume these are the ones which appeared in the magazine story) but most of them do not. Fortunately-- though these were the days before DVD extras and "making-of" documentaries were commonplace-- Heinlein wrote a magazine article about the production, which helps in understanding some of Grant's photos. The full text of "Shooting Destination Moon" is not online, but you can find it in the book Requiem, among other places.

Checking the callsheets in the UC Santa Cruz archive of Heinlein's papers, I believe Grant shot these during the first two weeks of December 1949.

A few gag shots crept in. Some are just bizarre.



I'm afraid I can't tell you who these people are. They don't appear in the movie.



Rigging a crewman for a spacewalk scene.


Life:"Actors in space suits outside rocket ship as they use Geiger Counter to look for radioactive material while midget actors in space suits work in bkgrd. because their smaller size gives illusion of distance."


Life:"MIDGET ACTORS  are helped by stagehands over rough terrain.  Actor in front was hung by wire so he could make high leaps as he ran on moon's surface where power of gravity is less.  This picture was taken at same spot as one on previous page, but small-scale rocket was put in rear to create a different view."


Nice view of the overhead cranes, piano wires, and netting used to keep stuntmen aloft for the spacewalk rescue scenes.


I really don't understand what's going on here. Write your own caption!


If you're wondering about some of the sets, special effects, props, and costumes shown in these photos, William Max Miller has a good discussion on "The Filming of Destination Moon."

A few more behind-the-scenes photos illustrate an article on Moon rockets in Popular Mechanics, May 1950.


Full-page ad in PopMech for the movie, September 1950.

Comments

[jennlk]

I wonder what else was filming on the backlot. Those dancers look like they wandered over from Rodeo or Oklahoma! or one of that ilk.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting problem for you: Figure out what other movies were in production, at whatever studio Eagle-Lion was shooting in, during the weeks in 1949 when Destination Moon was shooting.

[jennlk]

Never let it be said that I ask the easy questions. :)

I just can't come up with any other plausible reason for them to be there. Not that there needs to be a plausible reason, of course....

[min0taur.livejournal.com]

Diana Gallagher (who wrote "Dancing on the Moon") really needs to see that photo.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

The dancers look like a photo montage. Were they really on the set?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are shots showing one of the dancers lying on the lunar surface, and another one of her standing there with two guys in (business) suits. So it's clear that they were really present.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Three generations of photo equipment there; a "press" camera, probably a Speed Graphic, on the floor, two TLRs hanging around his neck, and a 35mm camera (presumably a Leica) hanging over his shoulder.

Is it possible that's the photographer Life sent, Allan Grant? It'd make sense to want to get himself on the weird set.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

From Odds & Ends

Here's a photo of Allan Grant. You decide.

Also, here's a similar shot:

[phuphuphnik.livejournal.com]

Hairline, brow, and nose seem to match.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have never yet seen this movie. More interesting, I haven't read the book either, though I have it. I've saved it as the one Heinlein I haven't read (to which I guess should be added the expanded "Stranger"). I just didn't want to have no new Heinlein to look forward to in the years when I was reading them all for the first time.

This sounds silly to me, now that I write it down.

But thanks for the pix, Bills. I lurve those old finned rocket ships. The shape has been parodied so often, but here it looks so cool and futuristic and right.

K.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Can somebody who has watched the movie recently tell us whether the photographer is a character? Obviously *this scene* isn't from the movie, since the movie was avoiding grossly nonsensical stuff (for a change); but that tells me nothing about the people or the props. Also, is the desk or one like it in the film? That might make more sense out of the photo. Or maybe it's just weird, people do play around.

Some people I consulted have confirmed that the camera on the ground is a Speed Graphic -- one guy is fairly sure it's the "Anniversary" model built 1940-1946. The TLRs around his neck are being identified as different Rolleiflex models (possibly even the brand-new 2.8a type 1 for the one with the chrome). And the rangefinder around the back hasn't been identified yet -- could be various Leica, Canon, or Nikon models suitable to the period.

[phuphuphnik.livejournal.com]

Leica 3f. http://www.cosmonet.org/camera/leic3f_e.htm
It is a speed graphic anniv. model. In fact it looks to be the military model as there is no chrome. it has a rangefinder focus on it too, look just behind the flash. I have one like it, but with a different lens.
Those range finders are cool. There is a light in them and it sends out two beams of light. Converge the dots and you have focus.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The 3f is just *barely* possible -- introduced in 1950, the reference I found says. I do think I might see a raised section on the top deck, which rules out the Nikon S (and the S2 is ruled out by date). I can't see anything that rules out a Canon II series, for example, though.

Wait, an active rangefinder? Projecting dots out into the world, rather than just into my eye? (On the Graphic). I've used a Graphic with a more conventional superimposed image (non-coupled) rangefinder I believe, but never owned one.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The photographer, Allan Grant, just died last year. There's still a web site up at http://www.allangrant.com/. Nothing from Destination Moon on it that I've found yet; but there are pictures of Grant.

I'm bad at faces, but it looks like that could well be Grant in the photo. Other opinions?

[phuphuphnik.livejournal.com]

Oh yes Hi, I'm Chris. I work with Bill.
I popped over to your web page. Hmmm, we need to meet, several overlapping hobbies.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hi! If you get to Minneapolis feel free to poke me. I'm in financial uncertainty+constraint mode and am not anticipating getting to Chicago-area conventions in the next year or two, unfortunately, so I don't think it's likely I'll be there (assuming "with Bill" means physically near).

[phuphuphnik.livejournal.com]

Thanks!
With Bill means I make what he keeps us safe from. (Accelerator Operator)

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Or in other words, a beam jockey. I myself am an ex-beam jockey.

And who are these people?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Re: And who are these people?

[jennlk]

She's the female dancer in the first picture, and that is probably the same dress. The man on her right may be the male of the pair, but it's a little hard to tell because he's got that silly look on his face -- the suit is badly-enough fitting that he may be wearing the dance outfit underneath it.

OH. You wanted names, or maybe a reason for them to be there? sorry, can't help with that.

Re: And who are these people?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I thought it was the same woman also, that's useful confirmation.

What I'm really wondering is if they're in some way notable, and if so why? And I'm not very good on even current notability, let along 1950 notability. So, so far nobody is figuring it out, I guess.

Re: And who are these people?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking the guy on the right is George Pal, the producer, but I've been wrong before.

Re: And who are these people?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, the man on the right is indeed George Pal. I don't know who the others are.

[charlie-meadows.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I saw this movie sometime in the mid-'60s at a 50-cent Saturday matinee. I think a good part of my '50s SF B-movie education came out of that time...

The lunar dancers are great! (I'm hearing a newsreel announcer telling me, "Here on the moon, a jete can take over a second to complete. A performance of 'Swan Lake' requires over *three hours*!")

The fellow on the phone at the desk is likely busy selling the Moon...

I remember those "cracked mud" landscapes in any number of depictions of the surface from those days, when we weren't hearing about dust you'd sink into like quicksand. It's hard to recall just how much our experiences in the following 25 years changed our thinking about moons and planets. ("I've seen regolith you people wouldn't believe...")

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The designer, Ernst Fegte, knew darn well that cracked mud was not an accurate appearance for the floor of crater Harpalus. But he overruled Chesley Bonestell, because the cracks were vital in creating the forced-perspective illusion of a much larger set.

Browse the Life shots and you can get a pretty good idea of the layout of this wonderful set.

Here are Bonestell and Fegte in a TV interview conducted on the set.


Here's Heinlein.

[charlie-meadows.livejournal.com]

On riffling through the images on Google for space art from the Fifties, I am beginning to suspect that the "cracked mud" surfaces I recall seeing as a young'un were either images that came from this film or from artwork (evidently not Bonestell's) where the artist used this set as a reference (though I haven't located anything of that sort posted presently).

I can quite understand Fegte's concerns for taking artistic license with likely scientific fact (since no one really knew then what the lunar surface is like). I imagine a lot of readers here are familiar with the problems that arise in judging distances on Luna...

I *did* find this pic while rooting around -- a friend will help you move your furniture*, but a *real* friend will go a bit out of their way to help with it: http://www.plan59.com/decor/decor036.htm


* I've also heard a useful variation on this sentiment, but it's not space-related