OUR FILMS BACK FRENCH VIEW OF UNRELIABLE U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01365R000300080001-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 22, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 26, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2004/11/0t - P8 013 5R 0 30008 001-8
q YORK APR 2 6 1964
T='
Mrs. Luce Says
U114 Fihns Back
enc View of
Unrellib le U. S.
"Dr. Strangelove" already is' a
steady diet for Americans.
"Fail Safe" is on the way.
Both are headed overseas.
The stories of "Fail Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove" are
remarkably similar. In each story U. S. nuclear bombers,
flying on the alert, receive false Instructions to destroy
Soviet Russia. In the Wheeler-Burdick story, the attack
is launched by the accidental breakdown of the "fail
safe" system. In "Dr. Strangelove," a kookie anti-Com-
munist Air Force general deliberately launches the at-
tack. And in both plots, when the President learns of
the attack, he makes frantic-and futile-efforts to re-
call all the U. S. planes. When this fails, he gets the
Russian leader on the "hot line"-revealing to him vital
U. S. military secrets (getting none in return) and this
enables the Soviets to destroy all but one of our own
planes and their crews as they cross the Russian border.
Another similarity is that when it becomes clear
that one U. S. bomber has eluded destruction and Is on
target, the President offers the Soviet ruler a death-
swap of cities. In "Dr. Strangelove," the successful U. S..
bomber hits a Russian defense complex housing the
Soviet Doomsday Machine. This is then detonated and
destroys the entire world. But in "Fail Safe" Moscow
alone Is destroyed by the U. S. plane. that gets through,
whereupon the President of the United States himself.
orders U. S. bombers to destroy New York City.
"Fail Safe" ends as the President "nobly" blows 14
million Americans to Kingdom Come, in order to cbn-
vince the Soviet leader that the Moscow attack was
purely accidental, whereupon the nuclear holocaust is
called off by mutual consent. The President refers to
this mass murder without warning of millions of his
arbitrarily chosen fellow citizens as the "sacrifice of
Abraham." (In both "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe"
the U. S. President warns Russians to seek safety, but
issues no similar warning to Americans. And In both
stories all the U. S. scientists, military, experts, and top
brass who seek to deter the President from this course
are shown as power and money-mad, mentally unstable,
Fascist-minded monsters.
EFFECT ON EUROPE
By Clare Boothe Luce
President Charles de Gaulle recently told the French
that they must build their own nuclear force at what-
ever the cost pr rely on "uncertain" United States pro-
tection. Pointing to the "ambition" of the U. S. S. R.,
which he said threatened the free world, he said that
while this lasts France Is "in danger of invasion and
destruction without having the certainty that her Arperi-
can allies, themselves exposed to death, would be able
to save France from invasion and destruction."
U. S. officials indignantly rejected the charge.
Is the French view of America as an unreliable ally
right or wrong?
The part American motion pictures released abroad
play in creating attitudes towards America is not sci-
entifically measurable-but certainly It is great.
Two motion pictures, "Dr. Strangelove", (released
1, 4
spring) and the picture based on the Wheeler-
._u.ck best seller, "Fail Safe" (to be released this fall),..
.:"c bound to fortify de Gaulle's view of the:unreliability
of America as-an ally in the minds of all Europeans who
"
see them.
Whatever the personal intents of the producers and
authors of "these two pictures, it was certainly not to
make propaganda for Gen. de Gaulle's nuclear force. But
by casting doubt on America's good faith as an ally, this
will certainly be the effect on European movie-goers.
"After all," they ask, ,"if the President of the U. S. A.----
is willing to knock his own bombers out of the sky and
massacre 14 million Americans without warning to call
off a Russo-American war, why should Americans--eve n
risk such a war to save Paris-or Rome-or West Berlin
from invasion?" ,
Free speech, a precious ideal of American democracy,
makes censorship abhorrent. But self-control and discre-
tion, especially In questions as important as national
security, are surely also an American ideal.
It is this Ideal that the producers and authors of
"Fail Safc,",arid "Dr. Strangelove" Nave betrayed for
the gold-riot of Moscow, but of their fellow citizens.
All the cynical, money-mad characters on the American
scene are not, it seems, in the government or the
Pentagon.
A 1964, New York Herald Tribune 'Inc.
Approved For Release 2004/11/01 : CIA-RDP88-01365R000300080001-8,