One Minute to Zero
One Minute to Zero | |
---|---|
Directed by | Tay Garnett |
Written by | William Wister Haines Milton Krims |
Produced by | Edmund Grainger Howard Hughes |
Starring | Robert Mitchum Ann Blyth Charles McGraw William Talman |
Cinematography | William E. Snyder |
Edited by | Robert Belcher |
Music by | Victor Young |
Production company | |
Distributed by | RKO Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
Country | United States |
Budget | $2,181,000[2] |
Box office | $1.6 million (US rentals)[3] |
One Minute to Zero is a 1952 American
Plot
Just prior to the
Soon after, Janowski and
As part of a desperate situation, Janowski is confronted by a column of refugees which has been infiltrated by armed North Korean
Janowski leads a successful American counter offensive against the enemy. The contributions of the British Army and the Royal Australian Air Force are both featured in the film, and are both explicitly mentioned as evidence that "the whole world" is "in this together".
Cast
As appearing in One Minute to Zero (main roles and screen credits identified):[6]
- Robert Mitchum as Col. Steve Janowski
- Ann Blyth as Linda Day
- William Talman as Col. John Parker
- Charles McGraw as Sgt. Baker
- Margaret Sheridan as Mary Parker
- Richard Egan as Capt. Ralston
- Eduard Franz as Gustav Engstrand
- Robert Osterloh as Major Davis
- Robert Gist as Major Carter
- Stuart Whitman as Officer (uncredited)
- Kathleen O'Malley as Mrs. Norton
- Wallace Russell as Pilot Norton
- Eddie Firestone as Lt. Stevens (uncredited)[7]
- Peter Thompson as Lt. Cronin (uncredited)[7]
- Steve Flagg as Lt. Martin (uncredited)[7]
- Ted Ryan as Pvt. Noble (uncredited)[7]
- Larry Stewart as Pvt. Weiss (uncredited)[7]
- Lalo Ríos as Pvt. Chico Mendoza (uncredited)
- Hal Baylor as Pvt. Jones (uncredited)[7]
- Tom Carr as Pvt. Clark (uncredited)[7]
Production
The film's
The original actress chosen as leading lady was Claudette Colbert. She became ill with pneumonia, however, and although Grainger wanted Joan Crawford, the role had been rewritten for a younger person. Eventually, Ann Blyth became the replacement.[8]
Although RKO attempted to shoot second unit footage in South Korea,[8] One Minute to Zero was filmed at Fort Carson, Colorado, using troops of the 148th Field Artillery.[9] During a break, Mitchum, Egan, McGraw and other cast members showed up at a local hotel bar frequented by the soldiers in the nearby base. McGraw got into an argument with an army private escalating from a shoving match to a fistfight when Mitchum tried to break it up. The soldier ended up being stretchered out but news of the altercation resulted in Hughes having to intervene when U.S. Army officials threatened to pull their support for the film.[4][Note 1]
Howard Hughes, the owner of RKO, had received massive U.S. military cooperation in the making this film.[4] Nonetheless, he refused to delete the refugee massacre scene when requested to do so by the U.S. Army.[11]
Reception
Although considered standard fare for war films, even tinged with propaganda, One Minute to Zero received notice because of one controversial scene showing the U.S. shelling refugees being forced through U.N. lines by North Korean infiltrators.[13][Note 2] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times dismissed most of the action-based story in a review that noted, "Like a great many war pictures, this one is partly contrived with elements not only of romance but also of melodrama, comedy, and tears. There is the usual amount of jaw-jutting by angry and earnest G. I.'s who find themselves caught in situations from which salvation seems beyond hope. ... Plainly, "One Minute to Zero" is a ripely synthetic affair, arranged to arouse emotions with the easiest and obvious clichés. And, although some of the battle talk sounds faithful and the inter-cut news shots are sincere, neither the story nor the performances of the actors, including Miss Blyth and Mr. Mitchum, rings true. Here is another war picture that smells of greasepaint and studios."[16]
Along with Retreat, Hell! which premiered earlier in the same year, One Minute To Zero was heavily promoted in some locales where a number of drive-in theaters showed it as their only option for several consecutive months. This was the case at a series of locally owned drive-in theaters in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. As a result of this in the Wisconsin counties of Polk County, Barron County, Price County, Clark County, Marinette County, Oconto County, Shawano County, Waupaca County, Dodge County and Taylor County it was the only movie one could see in a drive-in for multiple consecutive months. This was also the case in the Indiana counties of Kosciusko County, Whitley County, Huntington County, Adams County, Morgan County, Jackson County and Greene County as well as in Ogle County, Illinois and Bureau County, Illinois. These same theaters had shown Retreat Hell! as their only feature for several months earlier in the same year until they switched over to showing One Minute to Zero as their only option for the following several months that July. These same drive-in theaters would only do this again on one more occasion, which would be for the movie Tarzan and the Lost Safari which was released in 1957[17]
The intercutting of stock footage of USAF Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star and Royal Australian Air Force North American P-51 Mustang fighter-bombers, along with other aerial sequences has made One Minute to Zero an aviation film buff's favorite.[4]
Notes
- ^ "The incident might have rated only a paragraph ..." biographer George Eells recounted in Robert Mitchum (1984), "... had Mitchum's adversary not turned out to be [a] former light heavyweight professional boxer with a record of twenty-six wins – nineteen of them knockouts – and two losses between 1946 and 1947."[10]
References
- ^ "One Minute to Zero: Detail View." American Film Institute. Retrieved: January 15, 2024.
- ^ Jewell and Harbin 1982, p. 262.
- ^ "Top Box-Office Hits of 1952." Variety, January 7, 1953.
- ^ a b c d e Steinberg, Jay S. "Articles: One Minute to Zero." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: January 15, 2024.
- ^ Appleman, Roy E. South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (June–November 1950). Archived 2014-02-07 at the Wayback Machine Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1961.
- ^ "Credits: One Minute to Zero." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: January 15, 2024.
- ^ Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c Rode 2007, pp. 95–96.
- ^ "Korean War 50th Anniversary." Archived 2010-06-17 at the Wayback Machine Pass in Review newsletter (Idaho Military History Museum), March 2002.
- ^ Eells 1984, p. 156.
- ^ Suid 2002, p. 137.
- ISBN 978-0-89820-003-4.
- ^ Evans 200, p. 144.
- ^ Hanley et al. 2001, pp. 110–114.
- S2CID 146914282.
... no documentary or other hard evidence emerged of infiltrators among the No Gun Ri civilians, or of gunfire from among them.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley. "One Minute to Zero (1952)' One Minute to Zero,' a Korean War Picture with Robert Mitchum, at Criterion." The New York Times, September 20, 1952.
- ^ Movies Under the Stars: A History of the Drive-in Theatre Industry, 1933-1983 by David Bruce Reddick, University Microfilms, 1989 pp. 27-28
Bibliography
- Eells, George. Robert Mitchum: A Biography. New York: Franklin Watts, 1984. ISBN 978-0-53109-836-3.
- Evans, Alun. Brassey's Guide to War Films. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57488-263-5.
- Hanley, Charles J., Sang-Hun Choe and Martha Mendoza. ISBN 0-8050-6658-6.
- Jewell, Richard and Vernon Harbin. The RKO Story. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1982. ISBN 978-0-70641-285-7.
- Rode, Alan K. Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2007. ISBN 978-0-78643-167-0.
- Suid, Lawrence. Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-81319-018-1.
External links
- One Minute to Zero at the TCM Movie Database
- One Minute to Zero at IMDb
- One Minute to Zero at AllMovie
- One Minute to Zero at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
- One Minute to Zero film trailer on YouTube