A pretty good 'Threshold'


I finally had the opportunity to see On the Threshold of Space, in what I believe to have been its first broadcast in many years, and it turns out to be a better film than I was expecting. Reviews I'd read said it was all right and gave it 2 1/2 stars (or the verbal equivalent), but I found it somewhat better than that.

The film is a basically straightforward story of the efforts of Air Force personnel to explore the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere and test men and the equipment they will need as man ventures farther and farther into high altitude flight and, ultimately, space itself. As the narrator says (rather unnecessarily) at the end, the equipment and scenes depicted in the film are not science fiction, but real. This in fact is perhaps the film's strongest point: virtually all of it was shot on location at real USAF test bases in New Mexico and Florida (principally the former). The depictions of the various types of high altitude testing being conducted in the mid-1950s, and what problems and hazards the men doing the testing faced, are in themselves quite gripping and well presented, both factually and dramatically.

I was expecting the "personal" side of the story -- the focus on the lead character and his girl, and some of the other relationships -- to be a drag on the proceedings and mire the film in the usual, unoriginal soap opera stuff so many similar films get caught in. To my surprise, this aspect is handled pretty well. The relationship between the male and female leads (Guy Madison and Virginia Leith) is believably told; they start out engaged to one another and wed soon (not the usual development of such story lines), and their relationship is made more believable by the fact that the wife is a member of the base's research team (though the married angle does outshine the professional one as the film goes on). As might be expected, her worries over her husband's tests become a focal point of the film over time, but their relationship is still kept relatively free of the usual cliched 'angry/worried wife berates dedicated hubby over his insistence on taking risks' approach seen in so many similar films (notably June Allyson's cloying/annoying wife to James Stewart in Strategic Air Command, made the year before this film, 1955).

As for the technical aspects, they are handled well -- very believably and accurately, and with little "artificial" drama designed to juice things up: the dangers (and wonders) of these early, groping experiments are dramatic enough for real without the need to "Hollywoodize" them, and the writers and director were careful to let this work speak for itself. Several experiments are depicted -- from testing ejector seats, to high altitude jumps (at 55,000 feet or more), to rocket sled experiments on the human body at speeds of up to 1000 MPH, to a balloon ascent to a height of over 100,000 feet -- quite literally, the threshold of space. Each of these is mesmerizing and naturally tense, and the film quite admirably eschews phony Hollywood heroics and events and shows things in a realistic light. For once, truth is permitted to demonstrate that it really is more compelling than fiction.

The cast isn't required to do very much in the way of great acting -- this is a very down-to-Earth script, if you'll excuse the expression -- but they are more than competent and convincing in their roles. Guy Madison (1922-1994) was never much of an actor but, as a doctor who puts himself into the experiments being conducted in order to further research and development, he's better here than in most of his films. His inherent naturalism and good humor were always his best assets before the cameras and he's well served by director Robert Webb. Virginia Leith was a milky-voiced actress who was a contract player at Fox for a couple of years, appearing in such films as Black Widow (1954) and Violent Saturday (1955) before co-starring here. She soon also appeared to good advantage opposite three other Fox contractees (Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter and newcomer Joanne Woodward) in the non-Fox film A Kiss Before Dying, made just after this film, and after that co-starred opposite William Holden in another Air Force drama not dissimilar to Threshold called Toward the Unknown, both 1956. But despite her looks and sultry talents Fox dropped her soon after this movie was released, and she quickly fell into scattered TV roles and a handful of less-than-stellar films, including, for some reason, the notorious sci-fi/horror clunker The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1963). I would like to know Miss Leith's whereabouts today: she'll turn 77 this October, and according to her bio was married only once (1960-68), and has no children of her own. She was not a great actress, but a good and attractive one, and it's a shame her career faded so quickly.

Best performer of the bunch is, unsurprisingly, the veteran (and Academy Award-winning, for 1949's Twelve O'Clock High) Dean Jagger, who is as always entirely natural and excellent as a doctor with the research program. Others in the cast include Martin Milner, already in films for nearly a decade, and most famous for his two 60s TV shows, Route 66 and Adam-12, and Warren Stevens, another Fox contract player who has appeared in dozens of films and scores of TV shows, most recently in 2007; he's best remembered for playing Doc Ostrow in the legendary Forbidden Planet this same year (1956). Dean Jagger died in 1991, but both Milner (78 this year) and Stevens (who turns 90 this November) are still very much with us at this writing, happy to say.

One reason I always wanted to see this movie is because it was the last screen role of actor John Hodiak, who died of a heart attack at only 41 in October 1955, before this film wrapped. (He reportedly died while shaving before going to the studio.) It's unclear whether the script had to be changed in any way to work around Mr. Hodiak's sudden and tragic death -- if so, it doesn't show -- but it's slightly ironic that his final film role should be one dealing with the future, a future he himself would never live to see; in real life, he lived just long enough to catch a glimpse of that "threshold" of space travel that's a part (but not the totality) of this film's concern. John Hodiak had come to films in the absence of major leading men during World War II (he was excused from service due to hypertension), mostly at MGM, though he became something of a star during a year's stay at Fox in 1944-45, when he starred in such top quality films as Hitchcock's Lifeboat as well as Sunday Dinner for a Soldier and A Bell for Adano. After that he returned to Metro and made some good films for a few years -- The Harvey Girls, Command Decision, Battleground -- but quickly slipped from top star to third or fourth in the cast, a reliable player who seldom got the girl. He worked continually in films up to his death but by the early-to-mid 50s those films were increasingly minor (and some on loan to other studios). He co-starred, to good reviews, as Lt. Maryk in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial on Broadway (the role played in the film The Caine Mutiny by his fellow MGM alum Van Johnson), but it was clear his career was settling into character roles and second- or third-leads. His last film at MGM (released about a week before he died) was actually one of his best, Trial, about a naive law professor (Glenn Ford) manipulated by a Communist lawyer (Arthur Kennedy, in an Oscar-nominated performance) into defending a Mexican boy accused of murder. Trial was considered MGM's "prestige film" of 1955, but even here, Hodiak -- billed fourth, also after Dorothy McGuire -- had the rather colorless and even dull role as the D.A.; he did what he could with it, but while the film was good that particular part just wasn't written to be all the interesting. I'm unclear whether Metro had terminated Hodiak's contract (or didn't renew it) after Trial, and he was free-lancing when he got Threshold, or whether he was again on loan-out, now to his old stomping grounds at Fox. In Threshold he plays a Major whose unimaginative ways for a time threaten to stymie some of the important work of the program, but who soon comes around to the Madison-Jagger way of thinking. Oddly, he's shown wearing wire-rim spectacles throughout the movie, an odd affectation that makes him look more staid and a bit older. There's also a scene that in retrospect assumes a slightly melancholy air, when the two doctors are checking him out before he himself tests the rocket sled. His blood pressure is called normal (it wasn't) and no mention of his heart is made, but the notion that a man in the ill health he actually was -- though unrealized at the time -- being capable of withstanding such a strenuous test is sadly at variance with the truth about John Hodiak, who was dead within weeks of that moment -- maybe even days. Still, as a final role, while it offers him little opportunity to make a great acting mark, Hodiak acquits himself well and in an understated manner. He might have done more and better things had he had even a few more years.

This movie was one of several directed by Robert D. Webb, a former camerman who had just turned director with the adventure film Seven Cities of Gold (1955). Both that film and this were co-produced by his wife, Barbara MacLean, Fox's chief editor for 20 years and a favorite of studio head Darryl Zanuck, who trusted her judgment on matters well beyond film editing and entrusted to her the cutting of many of the studio's most prestigeous films. She received several AA nominations and won the Oscar for editing Zanuck's massive biopic Wilson in 1944. Webb was a decent if unexceptional director whose strongest talent, unsurprisingly, was for the well-placed camera shot. The fact that almost all the scenes of air and land experiments involved filming the real thing helps this film mightily (only one sequence at the end uses a model, not very convincingly), and Webb handles the action, the actors and above all his camera well.

A quibble, not about the film itself, but about its broadcast on August 20, 2009, by Fox Movie Channel, where I first saw it. As indicated in the listings, the print shown was not in the film's original, widescreen, CinemaScope format, but a pan-and-scan version. (The opening credits were letterboxed, but only at an aspect ratio of about 2.20:1, not 'Scope's 2.35:1; the closing credit shot was at the proper ratio.) Unfortunately, p&s not only cuts out around 50% of the picture but because we're looking at an up-close reproduction of the movie, the grain of the film is all too visible. Accordingly, the print was anything but sharp -- quite aside from the loss of half the picture. Also, in many portions the sound levels seemed off, so that the dialogue track was almost overcome by the sound effects track, and it was hard at times to hear what the characters were saying. Whether this was a problem with the film itself, or only of this print, I cannot say, though I would suspect the latter. In any case, it would be nice if Fox were to rerun this before too long in its full, pristine widescreen glory, with a clean soundtrack as well.

Anyway, I can strongly recommend this film to anyone interested in those pioneers of America's first steps into high altitudes and then beyond, men who risked their lives to acquire knowledge that would save others in the years to come and at the same time provide valuable knowledge of the unknown realm where mankind was soon to voyage. On the Threshold of Space is a well-made, realistic and consistently compelling look at the realities of those early research and exploration efforts, and the passage of over half a century has not lessened the importance of what these people went through, nor diminished the drama -- the real-life drama, not movie theatrics -- that accompanied them at every step. This film is rarely shown, but keep an eye out. A DVD would be nice too, but we could no more expect that than we could expect one day to walk on the moon....

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Here is an item: according to the IMDb, The Pre-Astronauts (more than likely based on Craig Ryan's book, "The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space") is in developement for 2010 release.

Here is hoping that the powers that be will give a proper release to On the Threshold of Space to ride in on the wave of interest this new title may generate.

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That would be a cool, and commercially logical, development. Fox isn't issuing any further classic films in 2009, and nothing even hinted at for 2010. A disappointing, indeed ominous, development for a studio that had been in the forefront of releasing its library...though they've still left many, many good movies unavailable.

Lofting away for the weekend now.....

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Three.. Two.. One.. Loft-off!

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Out of the way, Hodiak!!

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To the zodiac with Hodiak!!

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