The Beginning or the End

A wholly fictional prologue, as the ceremony covered in this fake newsreel never took place, and all the identified historical figures are portrayed by actors (Brian Donlevy, Hume Cronyn prominent), in MGM’s government-approved story of the atom bomb, The Beginning Or The End, 1947.

Jonathan Hale resembles Vannevar Bush, whom he plays, consulting FDR (Godfrey Tearle) about the need for atomic research, whose call across the pond causes fictional Brits Chisolm (Richard Haydn) and Wyatt (Hurd Hatfield) to proceed to Chicago, in The Beginning Or The End, 1947.

Joining narration by Hume Cronyn in the voice of J. Robert Oppenheimer, introducing Tom Drake as fictional student Matt, with Joseph Calleia and Victor Francen as scientists Fermi and Marre, for a big moment at Columbia’s Pupin Hall, in the A-Bomb docudrama The Beginning Or The End, 1947.

We’ve just met Robert Walker as U.S. Army liaison Col. Nixon, arrived at Stagg Field where the real “Chicago Pile-1” reactor was developed, getting a detailed briefing from Tom Drake as scientist Cochran, in the dramatization of the Manhattan Project, The Beginning Or The End, 1947.

Two years after the events, MGM recounts how the United States developed and dropped the atomic bomb in The Beginning or the End (1947).