Conquest of Space (1955) Part 1 of 4

The special visual effects in Conquest of Space were lavish and complicated to achieve, rivaled in quality at the time almost entirely by the expensive widescreen spectaculars of the era and the occasional one-off effort by other studios such as MGM's Forbidden Planet and Universal's This Island Earth. But, of course, this was exactly George Pal's trademark—his movies were always grand and filled with IMPOSSIBLE visuals. In 1955, it was IMPOSSIBLE to see with one's own eyes a sight such as this. ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE.  Yet through the craft and magic of the Paramount's special effects technicians, I was placed in orbit right along with these two astronauts...and what is it that am I viewing?  The scintillating black of space, a veritable matrix highlighted by blue and purple gasses and nebulae, upon which are scattered the countless stars of our galaxy; a perfectly blue realistic earth 1,000 miles straight down; the magnificent, circular realistic space station that before this moment existed only in the imaginations of a handful of space pioneers/engineers/scientists/artists; and lastly, two space-suited astronauts floating effortlessly toward their home "Wheel" even as it slowly turned, creating artificial gravity for the Wheel's personnel. This shot and others like it in Conquest of Space simply affected me for life (sixty years and counting since I first saw the movie), literally defining my concepts of certain sorts of beauty and awe.

The longest chapter in my book Mars in the Movies: A History (McFarland, 2016) is about George Pal's Conquest of Space. That chapter is FULL of detail (much seldom considered), and I've struggled to decide what to include in this blog post about the movie.

Well, first things first.  

 

It was CONQUEST OF SPACE that sparked my lifelong love affair with outer space and evcentually led me to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where I worked in the Documentation Section for a number of years. 

 

The title of this movie (dropping the The from the book title) is nominally taken from the popular nonfiction Viking Press coffee table book of 1949 by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell, The Conquest of Space. 

Here is the reason that that particular title was chosen for the movie:  George Pal had the idea that he wanted to follow up his 1950 hit Destination Moon (his independently produced film that jump-started the 1950s science fiction movie boom, and which has its own chapter in my book) with an epic three-part exploration of the solar system to be called Trio in Space. Gail Morgan Hickman, in his book The Films of George Pal, apprises us that the proposed film “focused on a revolving space station in orbit around the earth, from which voyages to Mars, Venus, and Jupiter would be launched.... [However] inspired by [artist and author] Chesley Bonestell, Pal decided to change the title of the picture to Conquest of Space, and bought the rights to the Bonestell/Ley book, a factual treatment of the practicality of space travel.” The fact, though, is that the movie is not derived from the book.

Quickly, Pal's original concept was rejected and the executives who controlled the money offered alternatives. Several writers got involved, and when the dust settled, here is the story that got made into the movie:

General Samuel Merritt is the genius who conceived of, designed, and managed the construction of earth’s first space station, called “The Wheel.” His son Barney is on The Wheel but agitates to go home since he hasn’t seen his wife for 18 months. His father won’t allow this. Their next big objective is to visit the moon. However, the spaceship they built for that purpose includes wings, which are useless on an airless moon. The General is surprised to receive new orders to journey to Mars instead of the moon. Barney changes his mind and volunteers for the mission. The five-member, blue-collar crew is unexpectedly joined by a stowaway, Sgt. Mahoney, who has always been at the General’s side. One of the crew is killed by asteroid debris and is “buried in space,” an inspired visual and aural moment. As telegraphed earlier in the film, the General becomes consumed with “space-sickness,” which causes him to suddenly turn into a religious maniac and decide to destroy the mission. (“This voyage is a curse and abomination! ... Man’s greatest sacrilege.”) After his failed attempt to crash the ship upon landing, he dumps most of the ship’s water supply, and in the subsequent scuffle, Barney accidentally shoots his father dead. Relations with Sgt. Mohoney are strained for the several months needed to wait for Earth and Mars to align properly so they can takeoff. It snows at Christmastime, which solves their water problem. At the very moment they are ready to takeoff, a Marsquake causes the ground below the ship to collapse. The ship is canted at an angle, and they dare not liftoff until it is perfectly vertical. This seems impossible until Barney realizes that he can use the ship’s engines to blast away more rock, which, theoretically, would cause the ship to straighten out. His plan works, and they begin the long voyage home. As far as Mahoney is concerned, all is forgiven.

But a movie of this scope is far more than a plot. The spirit of exploration and the visual style that are inherent in Conquest of Space are derived not from the book of the same title but far more from its companion volume Across the Space Frontier (1952) also from Viking Press. Across the Space Frontier was conceived by Collier’s magazine managing editor Gordon Manning and edited by Cornelius Ryan (two further books were added to this series, Conquest of the Moon [1953] and The Exploration of Mars [1956]). Across the Space Frontier was the first of the three books that were based on several pioneering articles that would be published in Collier’s magazine 1952– 54 written by rocket and space authorities Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun and many others and illustrated with photographically realistic color paintings by Bonestell. Due to the serious intent of these articles, they were considered as a group to be a “symposium.” Across the Space Frontier is filled with unbelievably real paintings of a round space station and its attending rockets—images that are so like the designs used in Pal’s Conquest of Space that they could almost be photo stills from the movie.

In fact, it was this exact series of Collier's articles (see six covers below) that also inspired Walt Disney's three "Man in Space" Tomorrowland episodes of his Disneyland TV show on ABC. See my earlier posts:

"Man in Space"      "Man and the Moon"       "Mars and Beyond" 

A good case can be made that these Collier's articles written by Willy Ley, Werhner von Braun, and others and illustrated by Chesley Bonestell single-handedly jumped-started, or at least energized, the pre-Sputnik American space program. In which case, they and the series creator, Gordon Manning. and editor, Cornelius Ryan, deserve some sort of retroactive most-critical-journalism-of-the-century award. 

To be continued in Part 2

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