The Race to the Moon

By Romana Annette  09/24/2008

This essay is not about the famous race to the Moon between the United States and Russia in the 1960’s; rather, it is about the other race to the moon by Hollywood motion picture and television studios in the 1950’s.  This was the Golden Age of cinematic science fiction.

I will now document this forgotten race, which was between Eagle Lion Pictures (Destination Moon,) Lippert Productions (Rocketship X-M,) and Galaxy Pictures (Project Moonbase.)  None of these were major studios, and Project Moonbase had initially been targeted for television.

These three features have just recently become available on DVD.  Project Moonbase was totally forgotten for decades, not even appearing in any movie searches.  All three of these features can be hard to watch because they are so dated.  When I watched them, I started seeing dead people and a lot of smoking, which may go together.

The year was 1950.  Destination Moon had been in production for a while; then this upstart competitor came: Rocketship X-M (Rocketship Expedition Moon.)  There were bitter feelings between the two studios.  At a science fiction convention, I tried to ask George Pal, who produced Destination Moon, about this, before George died in 1980.  He grimaced and refused to say any more.

Due to a variety of problems, Project Moonbase did not even make it to the starting gate in 1950.  It would take another three years for its release, which was shaky at best.

Even though Rocketship X-M had a late start, it was the first to be released in June 1950.  Destination Moon followed later in August, which was probably why George Pal harbored so much anger for the rest of his life.  There was a great deal of similarity between the ships: the RXM and the Luna.  This probably served to fuel a lot of the resentment too.  Both ships had a classical vertically-oriented design, and both ships had a hatch in the center of their control decks.  Fantastically, both ships had more room than has ever been possible.  This was explained, in part, that the RXM had an advanced chemical engine, while the Luna had a thermo-nuclear engine.
It was amazing what the studio managed with RXM with virtually no budget.  When they approached the famous American composer, Ferde Grofe (i.e. Grand Canyon Suite,) he was taken aback by the $3,000 budget.  He only gave them some single melodies, which someone else had to orchestrate.

The RXM was first off the launch pad.  Despite the low budget, the feature had a surprisingly good cast: the designer-physicist (John Emery,) the chemist (Osa Massen,) the pilot (Lloyd Bridges,) the astronomer-navigator (Hugh O’Brien,) and the engineer (Noah Beery Jr.)  This was Hugh O’Brien’s first role, and Osa Massen pioneered the role of the beautiful woman scientist, that would become so prevalent in later science fiction features.  As in any good science fiction, none of these characters had any relationships outside the plot.
Strangely, the movie opened during an 18-minute countdown.  They had a press conference during this time.  This is the first indication attention to scientific details was not a strong point of this feature.  However, of the three features, the RXM was the only vehicle that had a first stage that needed to be jettisoned.

All three features had the characters screaming during take-off.  All these people were wimps when it came to extra G’s.  Once in space, there was no budget for weightlessness on the RXM.  The characters did not get weightless, but objects like straps and tools did get weightless, but it was phony, since they are obviously being moved by hard-to-see wires.  Then the engine went dead, and everyone, including mission control, described the RXM as having stopped.  The laws of inertia were totally ignored.  There was so much bad science in this feature that I do not have the space to list it all.
The engines had to be restarted.  Osa Massen calculated the new fuel mixture; while Noah Beery Jr. and Hugh O’Brien went down through the hatch to make the changes.  There was also the famous scene where meteors whizzed by, complete with sound-effects.
When they restarted the engines, they accidentally made an impossible jump to Mars.  It was called a miracle, but God was not listed in the credits.  However, this meant that they could never win the race to the moon!  As a special note, many of the special effects look good because they were improved decades after the original release.

Once they reached Mars, all scenes were shot using sepia-tinting.  This was lost for many years, but it was easy to recreate digitally.  Once they landed, there was enough atmospheric pressure for them to get by wearing only war surplus gas masks.  Then they found the remains of a former Martian civilization wiped out by nuclear war.

There was no attempt to show that its gravity was 38% that of Earth.  Where did they get all that equipment and guns?  Exactly what were they going to do with it on the Moon?  Then they were attacked by surviving Martians, who strangely were not intimidated by gunfire.  Noah Beery Jr. and John Emory became unlikely casualties.  The survivors decided it was time to go home.

Sadly, the survivors miscalculated the amount of fuel in the budget.  They ran out fuel just as they reached home.  Lloyd Bridges and Osa Massen were finally getting a romance going, when the RXM crashed in Nova Scotia, without even heating up in the atmosphere.  The moral of this adventure was that bad science can kill!
However, the movie did end on an upbeat note: the mission director proclaimed that there would be an RXM-2, and that they would be able to overcome all the bad science and eventually reach the Moon.

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In contrast to Rocketship X-M, Destination Moon sported top-notch writing and special effects, as well as detailed attention to scientific principles, and it was in color.  Robert A. Heinlein was even a principle writer.  Still, Destination Moon was not technically flawless, since there were unwanted reflections in space helmets, wires showing, and no time delay between the Moon and the Earth.

Destination Moon opened with a phony V2 rocket crash at White Sands, New Mexico.  But they could not give up, since even in 1950, it was imperative to beat the Russians to the Moon.  No comparable Russian space program was shown.  Still, the military would have nothing to do with the project, so it was necessary to enlist the aid of a tycoon industrialist (John Archer) to come up with all the funding.  Also on the project was a prominent scientist (Warner Anderson) and a retired general (Tom Powers.)  The only women in the script were wives and secretaries.
After getting funding, it was decided to build the Luna in place on the launch pad at White Sands.  This probably made sense in 1950, but now almost anyone could figure out why it was so wrong.   The Luna was controversial, since it would have a thermo-nuclear engine, which the public feared to be excessively dangerous.

The time for launch arrived.  Tom Powers and Warner Anderson actually kissed their wives goodbye.  A lawyer arrived with a restraining order to stop the launch. At the same time, Dick Wesson had to replace their radio man, who had suffered an attack of appendicitis.  Wesson would serve as comic relief, in addition to being a foil to which everything could be explained, so that the audience could understand what was happening.
The crew pretended not to hear about the restraining order.  The Luna launched immediately.  This was where the production saved money, since there were really no take-off sequences at all.  The crew all had color-coordinated pressure suits so that they could tell each other apart, but these suits all looked too flimsy to be real.  After launch, they had to suit up to repair an antenna in space.  Unlike in Rocketship X-M, there was actually an attempt to simulate weightless through the use of magnetic boots.

They successfully landed on the Moon; the Luna won the race!  The floor of the crater looked like a dried lake bed.  They stumbled over what to say...they claimed the Moon for the people of Earth.  It all sounded adlibbed; and there was no American flag.  They also had a nice large telescope and a lot of gear.

Now the bad news came: new calculations showed they did not have enough fuel to reach home.  It was the curse of Rocketship X-M.  They had to start stripping the ship of all unnecessary weight.  Also like Rocketship X-M, they had a ton of stuff that did not make any sense for a trip to the Moon.  I think a kitchen sink was in the pile somewhere.

They stripped the ship, but it was not enough, so they started to remove instruments and metal structure.  Dick Wesson was sure he had to stay behind, but they saved his weight by rigging the airlock to drop the radio and his pressure suit to the lunar surface.

At last, they were ready.  There was no countdown, just a push of the ignition button, instead.  This was where they saved money, since the movie ended at this point.  No reentry or parachute landing was shown.  Like for Rocketship X-M, there had been only so much money in the budget.

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Project Moonbase had a rough start, considering that it initially had the support of Robert A. Heinlein.  It was supposed to be very futuristic too, taking place in the year 1970.  It also expected to break ground by having a female lead, but that impact was lost when they inadvertently, or purposely, mocked strong women characters.

Colonel Briteis (Donna Martell,) mockingly referred to as Bright Eyes, was a pioneering astronaut in the Unites States Space Force.  It was she who made the first orbital flight in 1966.  There was inferred jealously from the male characters that she got all the breaks because of her light weight.

The feature opened with enemy agents plotted to gain access to the very secure USSF space station.  I suppose they were supposed to be working for Russia , but none of them had accents.  They all dressed as in 1953, and we were supposed to think that the dial telephones were all wireless.  Their plot was to substitute a look-alike for the scientist Dr. Wernher, who was going to take part in the first moon landing.  The fake Dr. Wernher, an early suicide bomber, was to use the moon lander to destroy the space station.

The general (Hayden Rorke) wanted to send Major Moore (Ross Ford) along as chief pilot, but he was superseded by a memo from the (woman) president.  Neither Briteis nor Moore wanted to work together.  The general threatened them both to obey; he even threatened to spank Colonel Briteis.  These scenes seem so infantile.

The fake Dr, Wernher arrived at the spaceport, while the general gave a departure briefing.

Next they left for the space station.  Surprise, it all looked exactly like the models.  There was budget savings there.  The inside of the station was quaint, with warnings not to walk on the walls, because everyone used magnetic boots.

Major Moore saw through the fake Dr. Wernher’s impersonation of a New Yorker.  There was a fight, and the major was injured subduing the fake doctor, while the moon lander went out of control, just like in Rocketship X-M.  Finally, they miraculously had enough fuel to successfully land on the Moon.

They ended up in a radio shadow on the Moon.  In order to establish contact, it was necessary to set up relays on a nearby peak.  The fake Dr, Wernher was enlisted to help, but he conveniently fell to his death.  Major Moore and Colonel Briteis were ordered to hold their position, in order to officially take possession of the Moon, awaiting the arrival of larger forces, but who else was going to land there? A supply rocket was sent to replenish their supplies.

Even though the fictional time was 1970, 1950 mores still held.  Public opinion would not stand for the two of them being alone together on the Moon.  It was simple: they had to get married or live in sin.  These scenes are so laughable now.  They even got congratulated by the president.

This whole affair seemed so contrived.  To add insult to injury, Major Moore even got promoted to general, so that he would not be outranked by Briteis.  Fortunately, such rules have been eliminated from the modern military.  Wives can now outrank husbands.

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The 1950’s came to an end with the television series Men into Space, which was entirely about going to the moon.  Men into Space is now more of a historical footnote, than an interesting series, even though it eerily predicted some problems that would be faced later by NASA astronauts.  It even tried to work women officers into some of the plots.  It starred the handsome William Lundigan as Colonel Ed McCauley.  The very similarity to real NASA missions has destroyed any interest in this black and white series today, and there are no good images on the web.  While everyone did wear real high-altitude suits, technical details were often totally omitted, including detailed rocket take-offs and landings.  The Aires space station did, however, have the classical wheel design.  The complete DVD set is available, but I did not want to spend any money on this series.

There were other science fiction series on television in the 1950’s; however, most of them were live, with the exception of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.  The only way of preserving live television was to use a kinescope machine, which recorded everything seen live on film, including all the commercials.  Except for one episode of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, none of these series had episodes about going to the Moon; instead, they went to fictional planets.  Simulating the airless surface of the Moon was too complex, and it allowed for very little of the kind of action-adventure that viewers expected.

Tom Corbett was one of the very first television science fiction series.  It starred Frankie Thomas, who died in 2004.  It premiered in 1949.  Even though it was popular, it constantly shuffled around the four networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, and Dumont.  For a while, it featured the popular Dr. Dale, complete with her sexy fishnet hose.  Their spaceship, the Polaris, went to many places, including Alpha Centauri, because they were not constrained by real physics.

There was a brief series called Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers, which starred Cliff Robertson.  It featured action plots, such as fighting pirates, or the dealing with the exotic stick men from Neptune.  There are no known surviving kinescopes, which is likely because of a lawsuit brought by the Tom Corbett people against this series as a copycat program.  This is unfortunate, since I am still waiting to see the Strongman of Mayron, which was announced but never shown.

Lastly, there is Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.  Scientifically, this was one of the worst series, since it always featured fictional locations and impossible plots, though the spaceships actually used some proper acceleration and deceleration sequencing.  This is also one of the most watched now, since it was syndicated on film, so it had a lot better special effects.  The series starred Richard Crane, Scotty Beckett of Our Gang fame, and Sally Mansfield.  Rocky had a fantastic device on his ship, the Orbit Jet, called a visiagraph, which not only performed station-to-station communications, but also was able to eavesdrop on people and conversations without the need for any remote cameras.
As a point of interest, Donna Martell starred in the Rocky Jones episode titled Blast Off, about finding an ancient flying saucer on a primitive planet, as well as one episode of Men into Space.

The Golden Age of science fiction is now old, by half a century or more.  What seemed so advanced and exciting then, pales in comparison to modern CGI (Computer Generated Imaging.)
Very few of the pioneering stars are left.  In fact, the list is quite short: Donna Martell (born 1927,) Hugh O’Brien (born 1923,) Cliff Robertson (born 1923,) maybe Margaret Garland, Dr. Dale in Tom Corbett (born 1921,) and maybe Robert Lyden, Bobby in Rocky Jones (born 1943.)

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Special Acknowledgement: Road to the Stars

Road to the Stars, released in 1958, was a far superior trip to the Moon than anything else previously discussed here.  So why was it not included in the above, because it was not done by Hollywood, and it is exceedingly rare or non-existent in the United States .
This movie was done by Pavel Klushantsev in Leningrad, Russia .  It set a production standard that was closely copied by Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey.