Actors - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

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	Actors - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a 1964 Stanley Kubrick film based loosely upon the straight-faced thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George. Refashioned as a black comedy from the source material by screenwriter Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove 's subject matter satirizes the fragile nature of the Cold War conflict and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The film opens at the fictional Burpelson Air Force Base, where the insane General Jack D. Ripper has just ordered a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The rest of Dr. Strangelove follows the American President and his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a RAF officer as they all scramble to recall Ripper's bomb-wing in order to prevent a nuclear Apocalypse.

Cast and crew

Dr. Strangelove stars British actor/comedian Peter Sellers, who actually improvised much of his dialogue during filming. Sellers plays three roles:

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake—the sane, well-meaning, "by-the-book" British exchange officer with an upper-class English accent. It is said that Sellers' experience mimicking his uptight superiors as an RAF airman during World War II aided him in creating this character. Mandrake's appearance and manner is not unlike that of actor Terry-Thomas
.

President Merkin Muffley—the Adlai Stevenson-esque American Commander in Chief—a decent, but flustered and spineless character. The President's first and last name each crudely imply that he is a pussy by nature ("merkin" and "muff" both refer to female pubic hair). This fundamental quality becomes evident during the famous Hotline scene, in which he seems overly cautious in dealing with Soviet Premier Dmitri Kisof. For the role, Sellers flattened his natural English accent to sound like an American Midwesterner (another reference to Stevenson, who was from Illinois), and faked cold symptoms to further add to the character's inherent weakness.

Dr. Strangelove—the sinister German title-character—an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, Nazi-turned-NASA rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, "father of the hydrogen bomb" Edward Teller, and JFK's Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. Henry Kissinger has also been cited as one of the Strangelove character's influences. However, this assertion is highly unlikely, as Kissinger was not a prominent figure in American politics at the time of the film's production. Dr. Strangelove serves as President Muffley's scientific advisor in the War Room, presumably making use of prior expertise as a Nazi physicist—upon becoming an American citizen, he has translated his German surname "Merkwurdichliebe" to the English equivalent "Strangelove".

:The accent used by Sellers is reportedly based on that of Weegee (pseudonymn of Austrian photographer Arthur Fellig), who was hired by Kubrick as a special effects consultant. Throughout the film, the speeches made by the character of Dr. Strangelove are interrupted by his erratic fits of alien hand syndrome. At one point, Strangelove's hand reaches out in an attempt to strangle his neck; at another it thrusts itself out in a Nazi salute. Strangelove's sinister black glove was actually Kubrick's; Sellers saw Kubrick using it to handle the hot lights on the set one day and thought it would be a good addition to his costume.

At the start of Dr. Strangelove 's production, Sellers was set to play a fourth role; that of Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber captain. However, Sellers fractured his leg during filming, and was prevented from playing the role because of a technical constraint that would have confined him to cramped space of the cockpit set. It has been suggested that Sellers, who was concerned about correctly reproducing the Texan accent required, contrived the injury—or at least exaggerated it to make it seem worse than it really was. As fate would have it, Slim Pickens, a real-life Texan, was quickly tapped to replace Sellers as Major Kong. It is no coincidence that his performance turned out so authentic; fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, "He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior." For the entire course of filming, Pickens was apparently unaware that Strangelove was to be a comedy, and instead played the role straight, thereby adding to the humor. Kubrick biographer John Baxter further explains in the documentary "Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove":

As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, "Gosh, he's arrived in costume!," not realizing that that's how he always dressed… With the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked.

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