The Beginning or the End

The Beginning or the End (1947)

Behind a forbidden door is a terrifying secret!

The research, development, and deployment of the first atomic bomb, as well as the bombing of Hiroshima, are detailed in this docudrama.

Date of release
1947-02-19
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (13)
Runtime
1h 52m
Genres
Drama, Documentary, History, War
Director
Norman Taurog

Casting

Interesting facts

The Beginning or the End is a 1947 American docudrama film about the development of the atomic bomb in World War II, directed by Norman Taurog, starring Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, and Tom Drake, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film dramatizes the creation of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project and the bombing of Hiroshima.

Production

The idea for The Beginning or the End originated in October 1945 with actress Donna Reed, and her high school science teacher, Edward R. Tompkins, a chemist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. According to The Hollywood Reporter issues of December 1945 and January 1946, MGM, Paramount and 20th Century-Fox were all interested in making a film about the Manhattan Project. Paramount's Hal B.

The Beginning or the End had a number of working titles, including Atom Bomb, The Manhattan Project and Top Secret. Writer Bob Considine was hired to produce a treatment, which was submitted to MGM writers. The script underwent a number of revisions, with contributions

from Robert Smith, Frank "Spig" Wead, Norman Krasna, David Hawkins, John Lee Mahin, Glenn Tryon, and Ayn Rand, who provided the montage of Hitler's conquests, a sequence in which a dying informant sends a message to Albert Einstein, and the scene in which President Franklin Roosevelt authorizes the Manhattan Project. Producer Samuel Marx wrote the opening narration.

Marx and Donna Reed's husband Tony Owen met with President Harry S. Truman to secure his approval. At their meeting, Truman is reported to have said: "Gentlemen, make a motion picture. Tell the people of this nation that for them it is the beginning or the end," his last four words supplying the movie with its title.

H. T. Wensel from the National Bureau of Standards, Tompkins, and W. Bradford Shank from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, acted as technical advisers. Relations between MGM and the scientists soon soured, as the scientists began asking for more accuracy, which required multiple script changes, and Tompkins eventually resigned.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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