When Walter Lippman Helped Truman 'Censor' Hollywood's First 'Atomic Bomb' Movie

By: Greg Mitchell Since August 1945, hundreds if not thousands of "nuclear" movies have appeared. Americans have been exposed to several foreign films on the subject, most notably Akira Kurosawa's "Rhapsody in August," Shohei Imamura's "Black Rain" and, of course, Alain Resnais's classic 1959 drama "Hiroshima, Mon Amour." But more often the fear of nuclear war in Hollywood spawned survivalist fantasies, irradiated-monster films and post-apocalypse thrillers.

What is striking is that few of these films say anything directly about Hiroshima. Almost all of them are works of pure fiction, imagining nuclear attacks in the near or distant future while ignoring the two instances when atomic weapons have already been used: Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Only a handful of Hollywood movies have emerged about the making or use of the first atomic bombs 64 years ago this month. Ambivalence or guilt is certain to be evoked by any cinematic treatment of Hiroshima. Perhaps that is why the films all grapple with the notion of American decency. The making of the first film by MGM in 1947, in addition, was severely "edited" or censored -- by scientists, the military and, most crucially, by President Truman and others in the White House. A famous journalist, Walter Lippman, helped produce some of these changes, particularly a key deletion and re-writing eventually ordered by the White House.

"The Beginning or the End," that controversial MGM film emerged, after many revisions -- some demanded by the White House -- as a Hollywood version of the official Hiroshima narrative: the bomb was necessary to end the war and save American lives.

Early scripts raised doubts about the Hiroshima decision and portrayed the effects of the atomic bombing in a way that would have shocked many viewers, with Hiroshima pictured as ghostlike ruins and a baby with a burned face. The overall political message was alarmist and aligned with pro-disarmament scientists: It would have been better to lose half a million American lives "than release atomic energy in the world."

Then something happened, and the sensibility of "The Beginning or the End" shifted radically. (A co-author of the script was well-known columnist Bob Considine.) The decision to use the bomb, in revised scripts, was viewed as justifiable, even admirable. Now, after the bombings, no victims appeared -- just a burning landscape observed from the air. Amazingly, Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, had secured the right of script approval and played a vital part in reshaping the film.

MGM hired Norman Taurog to direct the film and Hume Cronyn to star as Robert Oppenheimer. Nearly all of the scientists impersonated in the film signed releases, even Albert Einstein. Oppenheimer visited the set after being assured that his character, the film's narrator, would display "humility" and "a love of mankind." The Hollywoodization of the bomb had begun.

Even in minor details, the film justified the bombing. General Groves makes light of nuclear fallout. The B-29's flying over Hiroshima are pelted with heavy flak, a fabrication that makes the attack more courageous. Nagasaki is not mentioned at all.

Yet it was in the script's central melodrama that the true message of the film was conveyed. Matt Cochran, a young scientist arming the bomb, prevents a chain reaction from blowing up 40,000 people on a Pacific island -- and thereby exposes himself to a fatal dose of radiation. But just before he dies, Matt concludes that "God has not shown us a new way to destroy ourselves. Atomic energy is the hand he has extended to lift us from the ruins of war and lighten the burdens of peace."

After screening the finished, watered-down, film, famed columnist Walter Lippmann communicated to Truman insiders that he found one scene "shocking" and should be axed. (He felt it would "libel" the president and "disgrace" America.) It pictured Truman making the decision to use the bomb -- or rather, ratifying the late FDR's perceived wishes. The president and his aides objected to his deciding, after seemingly little reflection, that the United States would use the weapon against Japan because "I think more of our American boys than I do of all our enemies."

This was actually not far from the historical truth, but Lippmann communicated to the film-makers that this would put the decision, and U.S. decision-making in general, in a very poor light in this tense postwar period.

The MGM screenwriter James K. McGuinness deleted the offending scene and wrote a new one in which Truman explained that in his many discussions on the matter the "consensus of opinion is that the bomb will shorten the war by approximately a year." In the revised scene, Truman revealed that the United States would drop leaflets warning the populace of "what is coming" as a means to "save lives." He said there was a "consensus" that dropping the bomb by a year (there was no such thing) and he predicted that a "year less of war will mean life for . . . from 300,000 to half a million of America's finest youth."

And he advised that the targets had been picked for their prime military value, rather than the truth: They were picked because they had not been bombed previously and so would demonstrate the pure power of this new weapon. In any case, the aiming points for release of the bombs would be the center of the cities, not over any military bases.

McGuinness informed Lippmann about the changes, noting that he was "deeply impressed by your feeling tha twe were showing our country's Chief Executive deciding a monumental matter in what was a much-too-hasty fashion."

Lippmann, in turn, assured one of the key men behind the bomb, James Conant, that the crisis had passed, observing whimsically that "sufficiently drastic criticism does have its effect upon the producers."

Still, the White House demanded further changes; among them, deleting a reference to morally concerned scientists who favored demonstrating the bomb for Japanese leaders in a remote area before dropping it on a city.

Truman even wrote a letter objecting to the actor who had portrayed him in the original scene, and the actor, Roman Bohnen was replaced. Bohnen would write a sarcastic letter to Truman, informing him that people would be debating the decision to drop the bomb for 100 years "and posterity is quite apt to be a little rough." Truman, who normally ignored critical letters, took the trouble to reply and defend the decision, revealing, "I have no qualms about it whatever."

"The Beginning or the End," which billed itself as "basically a true story," opened across the country in March 1947 to mixed reviews. Time laughed at the film's "cheery imbecility," but Variety praised its "aura of authenticity and special historical significance."

Harrison Brown, who had worked on the bomb, exposed some of the film's factual errors in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: he called the showering of warning leaflets over Hiroshima the "most horrible falsification of history." But in the far more influential New York Times, Bosley Crowther called the picture a fair and "creditable" reenactment and observed that MGM had "taken no obvious sides in the current atomic contentions."

The MGM movie was seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans. Because of its quasi-documentary form, its depiction of history is probably accepted by most viewers.