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Even in this movie, Heinlein foresaw some things

posted 16 years ago by hobnob53
10 replies | jump to latest

I remember watching PROJECT MOONBASE as a kid and even then thought it was silly, and a bit tedious even at only 64 minutes (of course, in those days it seemed longer, with commercials). Still, consider some of the eerily accurate projections seen in this film....

-- The spacecraft that lands on the moon looks amazingly like the real LEM that did make the landings -- and a far cry from the rocketships seen in even the better '50s sci-fi movies.

-- The film takes place in 1970 -- only one year off from the date of the actual first moon landing. Not a bad guesstimate for 17 years earlier.

-- There's a woman president. Which there might well be in 2009; at any rate, it's no longer just a sexist fantasy (as seems to be the underlying case in the film). (Update 1/3/09: Okay, so there'll be no female president in 2009. But not even Robert Heinlein could've imagined a black president [and I'm not sure he would have been too happy at the prospect]. Given the way blacks were still being portrayed in films as late as 1953, the very idea would have been as ridiculous as...well, as a black astronaut!)

-- Heinlein even posits a primitive sort of cell phone -- admittedly a very klunky kind of thing, an old-fashioned (pre-1949 style) receiver with a big, flat, circular antenna inconveniently situated at the end of the phone, where you could cut your hand or your mouth if you're not careful. But still, it's a wireless technology, nearly forty years before such things became reality.

The movie might have been reasonably good if they'd invested a litle more effort in it -- money of course, but getting better actors (I hear Olivier was free that week), better script and director, you know, the incidentals. The possibility of an interesting little film was there. Too bad they played it cheap and dumb - no wonder Heinlein hated it. But even so, some of his ideas and forecasts have proven remarkably prescient, a tribute to a great writer and thinker (even if he was obsessed with Commie spies). For all these reasons -- its solid predictions, and its utter hokiness -- I have a bit of a soft spot for PROJECT MOONBASE.

[–] doliver698 16 years ago

I was impressed that they did not use stock footage of a V-2 like many movies of this period. I agree with the comments about the lunar lander. The moon does not look too bad either. (and it is not shot out in the desert...)

[–] hobnob53 16 years ago

You're right, the producers deserve credit for at least doing all their own effects, no stock footage or desert stand-in -- not bad considering the budget.

[–] Pope130 16 years ago

I'd add to the list of foreseen items the uniforms worn on the moon-ship. The shorts, t-shirt and tennis shoes uniform is essentially the same as worn by the Shuttle Astronauts. They're light and comfortable, and easy to store in bulk, obviating the need for washing facilities. NASA has also used something similar to the skull caps to keep hair from drifting around in zero-G.

For the film I'm sure the skull caps were used to avoid the necessity for simulating zero-G hair effects. Smart move. Some people have suggested that the shorts were used as an excuse to show off Donna Martels' legs. If so I can't argue with that either.

[–] hobnob53 16 years ago

Very good observations. If all this was deliberate it was certainly Heinlein's doing; I doubt anybody else would have thought of such things, or that anyone in the audience would have noticed the absence of flying hair on uncapped heads. But as to the shorts, I strongly suspect the prospect of showing off Donna's legs was indeed the primary motivator in the costume's design!

[–] jjamele 16 years ago

This film is viciously sexist, even for it's time--

There's a news reporter named "Polly Prattles" who asks Important, Serious questions like "how much would I weigh in space?"

There's a female colonel, but it's made clear to us that her advancement is more a media creation than anything else. Her name is Col. Briteis, but everyone calls her "Bright Eyes"- when she objects to the nickname to a General, he repeats the nickname loudly and threatens to spank her. When she says she'll scream, he tells her that the room is soundproof. Lovely.

A male character has to be ordered to serve under Col. Briteis- he likes her, but gosh- take orders from a WOMAN?

At the end of the film, Col. Briteis and her love interest-subordinate are trapped on the moon together. It's strongly suggested that the American public would prefer that they marry. To get the guy to agree to marry her, the Colonel requests that she be broken in rank, so the guy is in his natural place- above her. Then they get married. I'm sure that when they do get back to Earth, she happily resigns her commission and starts pumping out babies immeadiately. Ugh.

[–] hobnob53 16 years ago

Ugh, indeed. In the 90s they ran this film on MST3K and in the book from that show (published about 10 years ago), they made exactly your points, especially the pair's "having to" get married and the Colonel's request that her new husband be elevated in rank above her, "so," as the MST3K book said, "he can boss her around."

That's why even the notion of having a woman president (as I wrote in the first post), while outwardly progressive, was I think at best condescending. Same with Col. Briteis: outwardly, the movie shows a liberal, unbiased attitude toward gender -- she made the first Earth orbit, etc. -- but at its heart it declaims that space is really no place for a woman, unless it's maybe in a moon kitchen or something.

I don't know whether these characterizations were specifically Heinlein's work (he was an extremely conservative man politically), but it does make the movie pretty schizophrenic, one foot in a future of equal opportunity, the other firmly in the sexist past...and the latter seems to win out in the end. Too bad.

I can't understand how women put up with us men today, let alone how they abided the kind of discrimination and put-downs of earlier eras.

[–] stazza 13 years ago

sure, this is sexist, but so what? That is half the fun of these old gems: being able to see how things actually were back then, not some watered down, politically corrected edited version. But how they did stuff back then (almost real anyway) you can read between the lines and get a feel for the environment of 1953. What an awesome time machine!

[–] davidemartin 13 years ago

Jjamale-- you're missing a few things in your righteous anger.
Consider that the inconsequential reporter is named "Polly Prattles." How much more of a clue do you need that the writer disliked this kind of "reporter"?

Heinlein was well aware of the women pilots serving in WW2 and how in many cases they were BETTER than their male US Air Corps counterparts.
Heinlein was also well aware that pilots have a maximum height limit. While Briteis' detractors scream she's a media creation, the truth is in the "reality" of PROJECT MOONBASE her assignment is logical and fitting.

The marriage thing was a sop to 1950s mentality. Heinlein was an early proponent of Free Love and he would have had no problem with an unmarried couple cohabiting their Lunar Love Nest. But the film censors in the Hayes office and the Catholic Legion of Decency would have given this film a lot more publicity than the producers would have wanted to handle.

And as we saw, it was a WOMAN U.S. President who married them. Hardly "viciously sexist"!

[–] babettegillette 14 years ago

I guess the short shorts Donna Martel was wearing were already in vogue, at least at the beach.

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

Or in Vogue.