It may surprise many to learn that, like many famous novelists, Ayn Rand had a period when she "went Hollywood." In 1943, Rand sold the rights for The Fountainhead to Warner Bros., and wrote the screenplay. She was then hired by top producer Hall Wallis as a writer, idea generator and script doctor. Her screenplays included the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along. Right after the war she became involved in the anti-Communist movement in Hollywood and appeared as a friendly witness before Congress in testifying about the Red influence there.
At the same time she also had a kind of love affair -- with the atomic bomb.
I learned this in my research at the Truman Library concerning an MGM movie titled The Beginning or The End. As I wrote in a recent article (and in my new book Atomic Cover-Up, which covers the US suppression of all film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), this was the first Hollywood epic about the Bomb. The idea for the film came from atomic scientists and the first scripts raised questions about the use of the new weapon against Japan and all uses of nuclear energy in the future. By the time the Pentagon and the White House got through with it, the movie took a 180-degree turn. President Truman even got the actor playing him in the movie fired.
But there's also this fascinating sidebar: while the MGM film was being planned in late 1945 and early 1946, a second film was being developed by Hal Wallis -- and Ayn Rand wrote the script.
The film was to be titled Top Secret. The Hollywood trades compared the race to make the first atomic film to the U.S. vs. Germany race to make The Bomb. At the Truman Library, I discovered a sixteen-page outline by Rand from January 19, 1946. We follow the lead character, named John, during the rise of Hitler, early work on the physics of the Bomb abroad, his service in the Army and then his assignment -- to guard J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called Father of the Bomb, at Los Alamos. Much like the key scene in The Beginning or the End (which the White House rewrote), it shows Truman deciding to use the bomb against Japan as a last resort and strictly "to save American lives."
Oppenheimer, after Hiroshima, tells John at Los Alamos that "the achievement was not an accident -- only free men in voluntary co-operation could have done it -- so long as they're free, men do not have to fear those who preach slavery and violence." It ends with a classic Randism, "Man can harness the universe -- but nobody can harness man!" It does raise dark warnings about future threat, showing a clock ticking and the claim, "It's later than you think!"
But a month later, a sixty-five-page section of a script (obviously sent to the White House for approval) has merged The Beginning or the End and Top Secret and included some of Rand's writings. MGM had made a deal with Wallis to make sure there was no rival project. Variety reported on March 20, 1946, that in a deal "without precedent" Wallis transferred all his materials, including Rand's work, to MGM, for share of the gross.
How did this all start? From Rand's own papers and journals, we learn that when she accepted the assignment from Wallis she said she'd only do it if she could express her own political and philosophical views, which might clash with the studio's. She then interviewed many of the leading figures in the Bomb's development, including Oppenheimer. Many years later she revealed that the character Robert Stadler in Atlas Shrugged was based on Oppenheimer. The papers also show that after MGM bought out Wallis, Rand was then free to work full-time on Atlas Shrugged.
She also wrote for Wallis an amazing and quite lengthy memo, An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb.
Rand's memo opens with the astounding claim that it was not the bomb itself, a mere "inanimate" object, but a bad movie about it that could turn out to be the "greatest moral crime in the history of civilization." After all, whether the Bomb is used again depends on the "thinking of men," and movies were now the most influential elements in all of society. So she aimed for an "immortal achievement" that would prevent the result of "millions of charred bodies -- those of our children."
The real danger was posed by the world's decline into "Statism" at the expense of "free enterprise." And "Statism leads to war." Now, with the atomic bomb in the world and Statisim on the march our days were literally numbered -- unless the "trend" to Statism was "reversed." Because: "An atomic bomb is safe only in a free society."
But does that mean Rand hated the Bomb? Hardly. In fact, she extols its creation as "an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise." As evidence she cites the fact that despite its massive state power, Germany could not create the weapon but the United States did.
But doesn't the United States have its own form of Statism? "Our government seems to have acted properly in regard to the atomic bomb," but don't give the White House and Washington too much credit -- it was the individual scientists who pulled it off, as if with the help of God. In fact, she argued, the film "must show clearly" that it was the scientists and the military who ran the bomb project, "not the government." And it was the industrialists who supplied the materials. If the film showed President Roosevelt in a "favorable" light, it must do the same for DuPont.
If the studio followed her script, "the general tone of our pivcture will be that of a tribute to America -- an epic of the American spirit."
Greg Mitchell's latest book and e-book is Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and the Greatest Movie Never Made. Among other things, it probes the suppression of all film footage shot in the atomic cities for decades.
Follow Greg Mitchell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GregMitch
Rand may be deserving of criticism for bad PR and a lousy haircut, but her ideas extol the primacy of the sublime and noble nature of man. Re-read, or read for the first time her books! Fox News? Rand would have slammed the hell out of them.
From Rand:
"Today’s “conservatives” are futile, impotent and, culturally, dead. They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country’s uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship."
"Sensing their need of a moral base, many “conservatives” decided to choose religion as their moral justification; they claim that America and capitalism are based on faith in God. Politically, such a claim contradicts the fundamental principles of the United States: in America, religion is a private matter which cannot and must not be brought into political issues."
I wonder where Rand thought the money to support research - any kind of research - was going to come from. The private sector has shown time and again that the only research it will underwrite is that which supports an already-decided-upon conclusion, and will, cheat, lie, steal and murder (if only by neglect or disinformation/discreditation) to obtain it.
Pure research can only come from government-supported, arm's-length and independent work. Look how, for so many years after research proved unequivocally the dangers involved, big tobacco tried to fight a rearguard action to influence, control and minimize medical research to paint tobacco as ''no big deal'' medically.
-Paul Krugman
and yet...a free society is the only society to ever drop an atomic bomb.
the more you know about rand, the more wrong she becomes.
never mind that we had already killed 3X as many people when we firebombed all of Japan's major cities as we killed with the those two nukes.
never mind that Japan didn't surrender (and probably wasn't going to) after we dropped those bombs. they only surrendered after Russia declared war and invaded them.
"The specific danger is that the bomb constitutes a weapon of total destruction and if it exists at
a time when men and nations are bent on a course of destruction, it will wipe out mankind.
Therefore we cannot permit ourselves to preach anything that will push men further along that course."
- Ayn Rand, An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb.
got it.
the light around ayn rand and her ideas continues to fade.
problem is, it just wasn't true.
Here's the question: How is it fundamentalists in the tea party can embrace this woman's "virtue of selfishness" ethic and her atheism? It gives impetus to my theory that the post-modern world will see the end of all kinds of fundamentalism and archaism; but not before a crazy last hurrah.
cross” ~ Sinclair Lewis
Now if you follow history you know that the Russians quickly developed the A Bomb and followed it up with the H Bomb. Some might say that they stole the "secret" of the bomb from the US, but this is foolish. Any second year physics student, in the US or Russia, at the time of the building of the bomb would understand how it is done once they know it is feasible
Now there is a lot of tortuous grunt work in developing the ingredients, but once you have them the actual bomb making is easy.
Now the "free men' in North Korea have developed the bomb, as well as those in Pakistan and India. Of course Israel has the bomb as well. Soon the free men in Iran will have it as well.
Rand would be a forgotten novelist today given the quality of her writing, but the Libertarians have needed a literary icon for some time, and Rand was the best they could do. Which is to say, not very much.
Ideology FAIL on Ms. Rand's part.
Having knowledge of things you insult FAIL on your part.
maybe you should read what she actually said.
she said the making of the bomb was a victory for free enterprise.
It's odd that the people who are doing the most damage to our individual rights like to wave the "Don't Tread on Me" flag when they're the ones doing the treading.
Witness the current Tea Party Rx for getting the economy moving again and their take on the debt ceiling.
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Every week, new slander pieces filled with misrepresentations, twists, falsehoods, etc. are put out about Ayn Rand in the hopes of diminishing her current influence. In fact, the best way to discredit Rand (if that was your goal) would be to use her own words in the sense that she meant them. Many people hate Rand for what she actually stood for, without the need for further obfuscation.
Certainly, Rand would not glorify an inanimate object (as your title suggests and your commentary refutes). Rather, Rand would highlight that it was Freedom, Individualism, Reason and Capitalism that allowed the USA to create the Bomb, and end the war.
As I mentioned, the title of this little essay is contradicted by the content. In addition, the irony is that without knowing it, Mitchell demonstrated one key position of Rand's. Oppenheimer was the model for Stadler? Rand could not have had much of a high opinion of him (or his motives). Stadler is one of the villains in Atlas, a man of mixed premises and a confused, self-deceiving mess of a human being.
That's bascially what all the "projects" sponsored under the New Deal were about. And I would go so far as to classify The Manhattan Project as a New Deal enterprise. If it hadn't been for the overarching respect FDR and the government were held in some of the key folks involved may not have gotten involved. Something conveniently ignored in 2011 - the force of FDR's personality and charm. What motivated the expatriate scientists was not "free enterprise" or "capiatlism" but rather LIBERAL DEMOCRACY.
But you miss the point that she thought it (the bomb) was a product of free enterprise, when it is certainly a product of a government program taken on for the good of the nation. That is inescapable, and undercuts her position, as it demonstrates her blindness to how it came about.
Rand saw what she wanted to and twisted it to her own self-serving purposes.
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The atomic bomb was a joint effort by the military industrial complex, DoD and some in Congress.
It's a perfect example of the pursuit of greed and power to the detriment of all. These test essentially nuked the entire planet. The test were also used to experiment on 10's of thousands of military personnel. They experimented on us with the bombs and or with every mode of exposure to almost every type of radiation. The one I was involved in, we were all kids, 18 to 20 yrs, and they put it in our food for 2 weeks.
We used the bomb on Japan because of the fascists in Germany and their connection to the US by way of American and I G Farben. Fascism controlled Germany and many here in the USA. We knew them then as industrialist and today as corporatists. Same mindset and total lack of morality.
Free enterprise is a joke at best here in the US.
We detonated over one thousand bombs at the atomic level and possibly 10's of thousands at the subatomic level. This amounted to contaminating the entire planet with many types of radiation.
Rand and many in the scientific community were delusional fools. The rest were murderers.
F&F