Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by	Stanley Kubrick Terry Southern Peter George
Based on	Red Alert by Peter George
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Peter Sellers George C. Scott Sterling Hayden Keenan Wynn Slim Pickens Tracy Reed
Cinematography	Gilbert Taylor
Edited by	Anthony Harvey
Music by	Laurie Johnson
Production company	Hawk Films
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	January 29, 1964 (1964-01-29)
Running time	94 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.8 million
Box office	$9.4 million (North America)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (better known as only Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 British-American black comedy movie directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick, and starring Peter Sellers.

The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general, Sterling Hayden as Jack D. Ripper. He orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President, his advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. It separately follows the crew of one B-52 bomber as they try to deliver their payload.

The key to the film is the acting of Peter Sellers, who played three main roles:

Peter Sellers's roles

Group Captain Mandrake sitting at an IBM 7090 console

President Merkin Muffley

Dr. Strangelove

1. Dr. Strangelove, the President's Scientific Adviser in the War Room. This role is the key to the film's success. Strangelove, a wheelchair-using former Nazi scientist, has become a naturalized U.S. citizen. His former role slips into the film via his right arm, with its black-gloved hand. The arm persists in giving the Nazi salute, and Strangelove occasionally refers to the President as Mein Fuhrer. The accent is a brilliant copy of such German-origin Americans as Edward Teller, the "father of the H-bomb".
2. President Merkin Muffley, played as a decent midwesterner, such as Adlai Stevenson.
3. Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the RAF.

Sellers was due to play Maj. Kong as well but exhaustion made him feign injury to get out of the role. The role of Maj. Kong went to Slim Pickens instead.

During the movie's ending, the world is blown up by a Soviet deterrence weapon, the Cobalt-Thorium G "doomsday machine", whose existence had not been announced. Vera Lynn's recording of "We'll Meet Again" is played as the world meets its end (it was a famous song of World War II).

This is sometimes said to be a movie of the book Peter George's thriller novel Red Alert (1958). But in this book Strangelove's character does not appear. It seems the director Stanley Kubrick had intended to use ideas from the book, but as the movie developed the influence of tragic-comedy and the genius of Peter Sellers changed its direction.

In 1989, the United States Library of Congress chose this movie to be kept in the National Film Registry. This means the movie will be protected from damage that happens to older film that was used to make movies.

Other websites

• Quotations related to Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb at Wikiquote
• Dr. Strangelove on IMDb
• Happy Birthday, Dr. Strangelove! April 3, 2014 Issue of The New York Review of Books