Years ago, Arthur Schlesinger was asked by David Wallechinsky to list his favorite political movies for Wallechinsky’s 1977 edition of The Book of Lists. Schlesinger had some interesting titles on his list, including Robert Altman’s Nashville, but the one at the top was Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It had only been thirteen years since its release at that point but the movie was already regarded as one of the greatest comedy satires ever made. It certainly deserves its placement in the pantheon of great political comedies and there’s little more I could say about it that hasn’t already been said (in fact, the best article I have ever read on the movie and its source material is here – it’s a fantastic piece) so in this space I’d like to focus on one thing only: the acting and how damned blasted wonderful it is from every single participant.
Dr. Strangelove is one of those movies that you hear about for years before you finally see it. There are plenty of movies from yesteryear that you hear almost nothing about until you discover them. Others, like Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, and, in this case, Dr. Strangelove, everyone has heard of long before they see them and probably has some idea about them one way or another. My idea of Strangelove before seeing it was that of a big, broadly played farce and when I saw it I was immediately impressed by the broad comedy played with straight, deadpan precision by almost everyone involved.
Let’s start at the top. Peter Sellers doesn’t play President Merkin Muffley in a way that one might expect from a Sid Caesar type skit on Your Show of Shows. He’s hilarious as the president in his conversations with General Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the Soviet premier precisely because he delivers each line as seriously and naturally as possible. In fact, his president Muffley is so preternaturally restrained, rarely ever raising his voice except to stop a fight in the war room (if you don’t know the joke there, it’s one of the best ever delivered), that his utter exasperation in the face of imminent annihilation is even funnier. His patterns of speech move through very limited territory. His firm patterns with the general, about not wanting to go down as the biggest mass murderer in history, vary only slightly in volume from those trying to assuage the Soviet Premier. It’s all in the tone, of course, as he speaks in authoritative parental tones to the general and comforting and nurturing parental tones to the Premier. Regardless of who he speaks to, Sellers does so as a parent, one way or another. Even at the end, speaking to the title character himself (played by himself), he does so as a parent interested in finding out what is best for his children. It’s a solid performance decision and one that he pulls off flawlessly.
His other two characters meet with the same success, especially his Group Captain Mandrake, one that Bill Ryan, in the piece linked to above, describes as heroic and he certainly is. He does his best to convince the unhinged General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) that he is on his side in the fight against the universal assault on the General’s, and America’s, purity of essence. Mandrake does so to stop the bombers and save the world. And, again, he’s funny because he never plays the role broadly but realistically, as if he was in a flat out drama.
The character of Dr.Strangelove himself is the only one played broadly, exactly how you might think of Sid Caesar doing it. It succeeds because it comes at the tail end of the story, when everything is falling apart. At that point, in a movie that almost ended in a pie fight, the broadness is welcome to provide a big bang finish.
Then there’s Sterling Hayden who, in a career of extraordinary work, does perhaps his best work here. Again, as with everyone else, he plays the role completely straight. There are no darting eyes, no slapstick moments, no double take reactions, and no big setups for even bigger punchlines. There’s just a man, sincerely convinced that by bombing the Soviet Union he is saving the world. He is mad and we believe he is mad because Hayden does not play him as comedically mad, but seriously mad. Which, oddly, makes it successfully comedic.
As for George C. Scott, he also gives a tremendous performance in which nothing he says would be out of place in his performance six years later as General George Patton. In that later movie, Patton remarks near the end, to the press when they question him about utilizing ex-Nazis, that maybe we fought the wrong enemy and maybe we should just finish the job now that we were already in Europe and defeat Russia. That’s exactly what Turgidson would have recommended too. With the exception of a few moments, notably the general’s excitement describing how the bombers fly low to avoid radar, Scott keeps his performance as serious and deadpan as everyone else.
As for the rest of the cast, the same applies. Slim Pickens gets big only at the end, when riding the bomb down to its target. Peter Bull would be utterly believable as a Soviet ambassador in any drama of the day. And Keenan Wynn, an actor who knew how to play it broadly, gives maybe the best deadpan delivery of the movie, when he intones solemnly that he can’t break into a Coke machine because it’s private property. Forget that the safety of the world depends on it.
Dr. Strangelove plays this weekend on the big screen thanks to Fathom Events and TCM. I can’t recommend the movie highly enough nor encourage you enough to see it on the big screen. It’s a great film, a great comedy, and a great political thriller all rolled into one. And it’s got some of the best straight comedy acting in the history of cinema.