In his memoir In Spite of Myself (2008), Christopher Plummer tells a set of very funny and wincing stories about the time he was trapped in the original 1956 Broadway production of Arch Oboler's Night of the Auk, a science fiction verse drama which garnered a flurry of bemused and sarcastic reviews for its unvarnished message and sententious medium before closing, like the fondest dreams of Max Bialystock, after eight performances. The conceit of the triumphantly returning crew of the first manned mission to the moon discovering as they lock in for splashdown that the earth beneath them has broken out in nuclear war had worked when staged for radio in the half-hour shock-topical form of "Rocket from Manhattan," first aired on Arch Oboler's Plays in September 1945. Expanded and rewritten for the post-war theater, however:
Perhaps the most accurate assessment of the work and the tidiest summation of the audience's general perplexity came in the form of an opening-night telegram sent to me by the actor Jack Warden. How he got it through the mail service, I'll never know, for it simply read, "What the fuck's an Auk?!"
Of the five members of the cast, Plummer writes that Claude Rains alone escaped unscathed—playing the scientist of the expedition, he was stuck with most of the philosophizing, but managed through sensitive reading and long experience "to make it all sound like Milton or Wordsworth." Plummer, on the other hand, bonded with Wendell Corey over their mutual inability to turn any kind of naturalistic effect out of their high-strung scenes without being yelled at by Oboler, who having ignored all suggestions from producer Kermit Bloomgarden to temper the obstructive dialogue had moved on to interfering with the direction by Sidney Lumet.
He had been one of radio's most prolific writers and among the first to make a feature film in 3-D, the film process introduced into cinemas for which you were forced to put on goggles of dark glass in order to view the images on the screen. Looking like an early motorist, you would watch the action in laser-sharp relief leap out at you in aggressive three-dimensional proximity. That was all very fine, but upon removing the offending spectacles you became strangely disoriented, a trifle dizzy and, in some cases, engulfed in nausea. After my first 3-D encounter (Bwana Devil), there was no other. I had, in fact, been quite seasick. I told this to Wendell who, every time an altercation arose with the stubborn little author, would whisper violently in my ear, "Go on! Quick! Tell him you puked at his film! Tell 'im now!"
All this is by way of explaining that the minute I saw the Film Forum announcing BWANA DEVIL in 3-D! I heard Wendell Corey and cracked up.
Perhaps the most accurate assessment of the work and the tidiest summation of the audience's general perplexity came in the form of an opening-night telegram sent to me by the actor Jack Warden. How he got it through the mail service, I'll never know, for it simply read, "What the fuck's an Auk?!"
Of the five members of the cast, Plummer writes that Claude Rains alone escaped unscathed—playing the scientist of the expedition, he was stuck with most of the philosophizing, but managed through sensitive reading and long experience "to make it all sound like Milton or Wordsworth." Plummer, on the other hand, bonded with Wendell Corey over their mutual inability to turn any kind of naturalistic effect out of their high-strung scenes without being yelled at by Oboler, who having ignored all suggestions from producer Kermit Bloomgarden to temper the obstructive dialogue had moved on to interfering with the direction by Sidney Lumet.
He had been one of radio's most prolific writers and among the first to make a feature film in 3-D, the film process introduced into cinemas for which you were forced to put on goggles of dark glass in order to view the images on the screen. Looking like an early motorist, you would watch the action in laser-sharp relief leap out at you in aggressive three-dimensional proximity. That was all very fine, but upon removing the offending spectacles you became strangely disoriented, a trifle dizzy and, in some cases, engulfed in nausea. After my first 3-D encounter (Bwana Devil), there was no other. I had, in fact, been quite seasick. I told this to Wendell who, every time an altercation arose with the stubborn little author, would whisper violently in my ear, "Go on! Quick! Tell him you puked at his film! Tell 'im now!"
All this is by way of explaining that the minute I saw the Film Forum announcing BWANA DEVIL in 3-D! I heard Wendell Corey and cracked up.
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