FANTASIA OBSCURA: Are You There, World? It’s Me… God
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though, you may find yourself with a detailed master plan, but Lord only knows what comes up after that’s finished…
The Next Voice You Hear… (1950)
(Dist.: MGM; Dir: William A. “Wild Bill” Wellman)
Nineteen fifty was a strange year to find yourself producing movies, especially if you were part of the old studio system. With television starting to compete for your audience on one side of you, and your business model struck down thanks to United Sates v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. going against you at the Supreme Court on the other side, there was an air of unease that permeated the business that cable company executives today would understand all too well.
For Dore Schary, chief of production at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, there were additional pains in the tuchas to put up with as well. Having broken into the business as a writer and risen through the ranks at MGM from the ‘B’ picture side, Schary believed that the way forward for the studio was with “message” pictures, films with solid ideas that tried to say something, films like Gentleman’s Agreement and Battleground, which were loaded with driven characters and pathos a’plenty, as well as being cheaper to produce than the spectacles that MGM was better known for. Spectacles that the head of the studio, Louis B. Mayer, had been famous for and continued to champion, which put the two men at loggerheads frequently.
This made Schary’s purchase for MGM of George Sumner Albee’s short story “The Next Voice You Hear…” from the August 1948 issue of Cosmopolitan such an odd choice at first glance. The story as originally written called for effects shots that would have given even Mayer pause, with the Almighty talking to everyone via radio followed up by the sinking of Australia under the sea and the granting of wings to every proclaimed atheist.
But the underlying premise that God would speak unto us over the radio was to people who make “message” pictures like bringing people who like hamburgers to a three-star steakhouse and putting their meal on an expense account; there was no way this would just sit in development hell.
And in fact, the resulting picture was so heavy on message, so to speak, that there’s not a lot of room for anything else, fanciful scenes from the original story or otherwise.
The film takes place in contemporary Southern California, where we find Joe Smith (James Whitmore), an American (yes, that’s how he’s listed in the opening credits, as “an American”, which in the days of Red Channels was probably expected in a movie that evokes the Almighty), who works in an aircraft assembly factory. He’s married to his wife Mary (Nancy Davis), who is expecting within the week, and has a son Johnny (Gary Gray). Typical middle class, with frustrations that buzz about him from an annoying boss (Art Smith) and a relative he’s not that fond of (Lillian Bronson).
We watch Joe react intently with wide swings to these struggles in his life, veering between having his experiences being acted out by Jackie Gleason or written up by Robert Bloch. There’s no middle, nothing placid in Joe’s routine until the first signs manifest on the first night when our regularly scheduled programming on the radio gets interrupted…
From there, we watch as Joe and everyone he knows listen to God on the radio hear about what God said after His voice bumped everything else off the airwaves. Which is a little problematic the more you take a second to think about it; the broadcasts are supposed to be happening around the world simultaneously, with the radio giving over to God at 8:30 PM Pacific time. There’s no discussion of how many people in New York would be listening at 11:30 PM, or who in London would have their radios tuned it at 4:30 AM during these sermons, unless this is some form of miracle.
Beyond possible time dilation and other than receiving the big broadcast, the only actual miracle we see is a sudden rainstorm that suggests a repeat of past actions that makes the family freak. Considering that Schary was going more for story than tactile spectacle, this shouldn’t be a surprise.
If anything, there’s very little that could evoke a sense of wonder if you weren’t already invested in the premise. Between budget constraints that scaled down the original story and an effort to avoid any presumption of profanity, the film relies on melodrama as it expects the audience to be pre-sold on the idea that what the characters are experiencing is indeed divine intervention. Which was probably a safe assumption to make with an audience that felt religion was proof against the Communist appeal, though one that never assumed that the environment would change that much years later.
What is a surprise is that the film has an accompanying book written by Schary, Case History of a Movie. In the intro Schary, in addition to acknowledging his “ghost writer” for the book, Charles Palmer, discusses how he’d always wanted to go into detail as to how a film is made, and felt inspired by the making of The Next Voice You Hear… to execute his project with this film.
The inherent irony is that the resulting work is one of the most detailed accounts of a film most everyone by now has forgotten; there are films from this time and later that are better remembered by the public at large that do not have a history of their production with as many details as this book provides.
The fact that this account of the film’s production, highlighting Dore Schary’s experiences in assembling the film alongside the work of the rest of crew, came out soon before MGM’s owners, the Loews Corporation, booted Mayer and elevated Schary to his boss’ job, certainly makes the existence of the book seem suspect in hindsight. For all the good it did him, in the end, as MGM’s failure to enter into television partnerships during his tenure at the studio ultimately cost him his position.
As an aside, not everyone on the film was slow to transition onto other things when the production wrapped. Davis, for whom The Next Voice You Hear… was her first starring role as a contract player for MGM, would soon after the picture premiere go on to marry fellow actor Ronald Reagan, and from there transition into another sphere entirely.
As noted, the film relied on giving viewers a message that it had problems delivering. While part of it was out of concern for the budget, there was also this sense that there was no way to depict God among us that would have been embraced by an audience, whether then or ever.
Well-l-l-l-l-l, actually-y-y-y…
NEXT TIME: Remember those ads for X-Ray specs? Yeah, not as cool as you might think…
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Elizabeth Shorten
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mr bradley