THE HOLLYWOOD IMAGINATION
Arnold, G.L.
M i s c e l l a n y The Hollywood killed, and that no eggs are left from which successors might be hatched. The danger is over. It has been a narrow escape for America and for the world:...
...Films such as these are meant Gr.-Ed...
...It has been a narrow escape for America and for the world: we have heard the professor tell a highhvel conference of generals and admirals ir...
...with machine-Piins and flame-throwen...
...To counter this charge the Republicans went In 1952, the Democrats campaigned on the “Republican Depression...
...If monstea are hlrkinz in the his daiiphter...
...their devotion to peace did not lead them to any idea so extreme as an objection to war production...
...and it is possible that in Government officials and scientists re- America they achieve this purpose, mlved to shield the public from the awful though elsewhere thev will be treated as truth...
...He was replying to a critic who implicitly assumed that our military apparatus is the answer to unemployment...
...I t almost justifies the assertion that our civilization shows signs 01 decadence...
...And the Nest in the sewers of Los Angeles...
...trust the FBI and watch out for deadly We think it an interesting com- monsters who infest America...
...M i s c e l l a n y The Hollywood killed, and that no eggs are left from which successors might be hatched...
...The Ants in fact are Reds...
...The seems well planned: there is a touch of Pearl Harbor about it...
...Last spring one learned that it air attack on the destroyer certainly had got under the skins of some luckless Japanese fishermen anchoring within range of the H-bomb experiment...
...destroyer on the high seas-they swarm over the American continent, spreadinR terror and destruction among to friahten...
...Led by their Qneen Antswinged monsters who successfullv attack a U.S...
...with all the chief monsters sitting in committee before the Army bursts in and wipes them out, might have come out of a spy thriller...
...Democrats did not even trouble to answer this charge, but instead based their major effort on the assertion that the Republicans by their military “economy” measures were jeopardizing both economic stability and national security...
...ready to murder FBI sleuth to the Nest, are able to pro- us in our beds, obviouslv we had best nounce that the last Queen has been throw restraint to the winds and call in 87 Winter 1955 DISSENT the Army...
...The story from Washington explained that the Defense Department had announced that the Army and Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics was placing a billion do1l;irs in contracts in October, and that the Air Force was preparing a similar announcement for release the...
...The danger is over...
...I t is infantile, loath~ o m e and sadistic...
...Now i: is shown to have seeped into the skulls of some enterprising Hollywood producers...
...As it happens...
...It is also clear that neither biage...
...I t need hardly be added that the monsters thrive on human blood-although they also show an incon,gruous penchant for sugar...
...ARMY NAVY LIST BILLION IN ORDERS...
...not far from the mav help to create a state of mind in film capital itself-and taken into custody whirh oolitical prnhlems are viewed exby A m v detachments equipped with clusively in crime-detectinn terns...
...The the flame-thrower as the only suitable Nest is destroved: the weat scientist and areument...
...It does not take long, in watching this The following item is reprinted, horror to end all horrors, to realize that, Imagination ment on an aspect of American G. 1. Arnold with perm+sion, from the English like other recent Hollywood offerings, it monthly Twentieth Century, where carries a Message...
...With few exceptions the stability...
...Pentagon Denies the Unusual Announcement for October is Linked to Elections...
...The a distant state, than being shot at in recent election made it clear that by now the army...
...Them, a film currently showing in London, is art’s latest tribute to the malign power of science...
...We are told by the life as seen by an English obsew- professor that they are highly organized, ariept at social co-operation, warlike and destructive, and quite capable of battling mankind for control of the earth...
...We are shown a stretrh of the New Mexican desert swarming with giant creatures who can, and do, crush human beings in their mandibles after descending upon them to the accompaniment of a shrill, ear-splitting whine curiously reminiscent of air-raid warnings...
...But now that the air has been cleared of campaign oratory, what emerges is that only one issue aroused wide-spread interest-prosperity, i.e., full better off looking for a job, even in production and full employment...
...The Message is: it appeared as a note by its editor...
...I t is in fact an extremely repulsive piece of science fiction, guaranteed to provide juvenile audiences with a crop of outsize nightmares...
...In both those years millions of people had been without jobs for long periods...
...At any moment one expects to hear the professor launch into a peroration ahout oiir threatened liberties...
...Did Anyone Say “War Prosperif y 3“ Helen Mearr OUR ELEcrioNs A R ~ : NOTABLE for verboth major parties accept the idea that the government is responsible for economic prosperity...
...They are Ants grown to monstrous size through a genetic mutation brought about bv the first atomic explosion in New Mexico nine years ago...
...Them is a plea for violence, ap well as a coldly calculated essay in box-office strategy...
...The Republicans claimed that they would bring both prosperity and peace...
...This assumption and its party has discovered any satisfactory corollary-that military procurement is method of assuring the American standaid of living except through high-level war preparations...
...The Republicans replied by accusing the Democrats of having achieved a “phony prosperity” based on war and war production...
...Finallv thev are cornered-in the mere curiosities...
...Washington that these Ants are capable, given a few more years in which to propagate their kind, of making life impossible for the human race...
...This into the final week of the campaign deline proved so salable that it helped put termined to persuade the voters that the Republicans in office...
...ATOMIC RADIATION CONTINUES to make history...
...Then workers 88 Winter 1955 DISSENT got jobs in uniform or in war plants...
...Americans tend to complain that British film critics take Hollywood too seriously...
...I t is not even one-third of the 1940 level...
...Its theme, if not its execution, is worthy of Jules Verne, grandfather of science fiction...
...No wonder, no wonder many had come to believe that America could prosper only when American blood was flowing on the field of battle . . . I am quite sure that Americans don’t want to pay for any pseudo or false prosperity in the blood of their sons and brothers on the battlefields...
...And they didn’t get jobs until the nation went to war...
...The danger is that they sewers of Los Aneeles...
...Them has not had a hostile reception: most reviewers seem to have shrugged it off as a rather infantile horror story relieved by a few touches of technical skill...
...But it3 real significance lies deeper...
...the This Republican charge-that Democrats achieved prosperity only by war production and jobs in the armed services-was dramatized by the “bird dog” episode of Secretary of Defense Wilson...
...On October 29, 1954 the N. Y. Times reported: In the recent election President Eisenhower presented the same line again, though in milder form: We have proved at last that Amerout ica can a terrifying go from war depression to peace with- . . . This Administration is working vigorously to bring about a lasting solution . . . Unemployment today stands much below the levels of 1950...
...His slip-which was taken to mean that he looked upon workers as dogs-should not lead us to overlook his point, which was that a young man was the road to high-level production and prosperity-has by now permeated the whole country...
...Whether people vote for Democrats or Republicans, they can Confronted by the Republican charge be quite sure that they are voting for a that Democratic Prosperity was War permanent war economy as the under- Prosperity, the Democrats were remarkpinning of our economic and social ably composed...
...who have led the watchful sewers of our hig cities...
Vol. 2 • January 1955 • No. 1
