The Day the Earth Stood Still

• 1. Introduction

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  The Day the Earth Stood Still begins with a flying saucer touching down on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The United States Army surrounds it within moments, soldiers and tanks pressing in from every side. A humanoid figure in a spacesuit steps out and announces that he comes "in peace and with good will." A nervous soldier shoots him before he can finish speaking.

  The film was made in 1951, at the height of early Cold War anxiety. The nuclear arms race had just begun reshaping every assumption about human survival. Producer Julian Blaustein set out to make a picture about the fear and suspicion that was coming to define the age. He found in science fiction a genre suited to raising the gravest questions without triggering the censor's pen.

  What message does the alien Klaatu carry, and why must it be delivered to all the world's leaders at once? What is the robot Gort waiting for, silent beside the grounded saucer? Why has this film been discussed in rooms as far apart as a Hollywood studio and the United Nations? The answers involve a secret allegory, an unprecedented musical score, and a three-word phrase that a president once used at a summit meeting.

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• 2. Cold War in the Studio

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  Julian Blaustein reviewed more than two hundred science fiction stories and novels before choosing Harry Bates's 1940 short story as his foundation. His two working titles were "Farewell to the Master" and "Journey to the World." Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck approved the project, and Blaustein hired Edmund H. North to write the screenplay. The revised final screenplay was completed on the 21st of February 1951.

  Science fiction writer Raymond F. Jones worked as an uncredited adviser. Samuel Herrick, an astrophysicist at UCLA, developed the equations on Professor Barnhardt's blackboard. Herrick chose a celestial mechanics equation drawn from his own work on the three-body problem in astronavigation. The set was designed by Thomas Little and Claude Carpenter, who worked with architect Frank Lloyd Wright on the spacecraft's design.

  Director Robert Wise indicated in the DVD commentary that the United States Department of Defense refused to participate after reading the script. The military hardware that appears on screen came instead from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, then stationed at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. One tank bears the regiment's "Brave Rifles" insignia. Shooting ran from April 9 to the 23rd of May 1951, and the principal cast never traveled to Washington, D.C., to make it.

  Lock Martin, who played the robot Gort, worked as an usher at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and stood seven feet and seven inches tall. He wore two oversized foamed neoprene suits to create the illusion of a seamless metallic figure. Wise limited Martin's on-screen time to half-hour intervals because of Martin's generally weak constitution. Spencer Tracy and Claude Rains had both been considered for the role of Klaatu before Michael Rennie was cast.

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• 3. A Carpenter's Alias

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  Edmund North built something into the screenplay quietly, beyond what any executive at 20th Century Fox knew. "It was my private little joke," he later said of a set of parallels he had constructed between Klaatu and Jesus Christ. He told a documentary crew he had "originally hoped that the Christ comparison would be subliminal."

  When Klaatu escapes from Walter Reed Army Hospital, he takes the uniform of a "Maj. Carpenter." The name nods to carpentry as the trade the New Testament says Jesus learned from Joseph, his adoptive father. Klaatu then moves among ordinary people under a false identity, is misunderstood, killed by armed authority, and restored to life before ascending into the sky.

  Film censor Joseph Breen was installed at Twentieth Century Fox by the Motion Picture Association of America. He objected to the portrayal of Klaatu's resurrection and his apparent limitless power. A line was added to the script in response: Klaatu tells Helen that the power to restore life permanently "is reserved to the Almighty Spirit." Producer Julian Blaustein described the exchange in a 1995 interview. He confirmed that North had never discussed the Christ allegory openly with either him or Robert Wise during production. A later documentary, Decoding "Klaatu Barada Nikto": Science Fiction as Metaphor, gathered members of the original production to examine what North had actually intended.

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• 4. Herrmann's Unearthly Score

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  Bernard Herrmann composed the film's score in August 1951. It was the first score he wrote after leaving New York for Hollywood. He assembled it around an ensemble chosen deliberately for unusual sonic qualities. The electric instruments alone included violin, cello, and bass.

  Two theremin electronic instruments carried much of the eerie melodic material, played by Dr. Samuel Hoffman and Paul Shure. Two Hammond organs and the Fox studio's Wurlitzer organ added further layers. The percussion section included two glockenspiels, a marimba, a tam-tam, two bass drums, and three sets of timpani. Two pianos, a celesta, two harps, one horn, three trumpets, three trombones, and four tubas completed the ensemble.

  Herrmann's techniques included staggered tritone movement, glissando in the theremins, and unusual overdubbing and tape-reversal methods. In turning to the theremin, he explored electronic music one year before Karlheinz Stockhausen and three years before Edgard Varèse did the same. Composer Danny Elfman later credited the score as the work that made him a fan of Herrmann and sparked his own interest in film composing. 20th Century Fox reused Herrmann's title theme in the original pilot of Irwin Allen's 1965 television series Lost in Space.

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• 5. Klaatu Barada Nikto

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  By 1970, Frederick S. Clarke of Cinefantastique had declared "Klaatu barada nikto" the most famous phrase ever spoken by an extraterrestrial in fiction. The Robot Hall of Fame described it as one of the most famous commands in science fiction. Edmund North, who invented both the phrase and the alien language it belongs to, gave different explanations for its origin at different times.

  Florence Blaustein, widow of the producer, recalled that North passed a street called Baroda every day going to work. She believed that daily route was, in her words, "how that was born." Film historian Steven Jay Rubin remembered North explaining the phrase's meaning as "There's hope for Earth, if the scientists can be reached." The film itself provides no translation.

  A 1978 Fantastic Films article attempted a full rendering. Its alien linguistics editor, Tauna Le Marbe, offered two translations. The literal reading was "Stop Barbarism (I have) death, bind"; the free translation was "I die, repair me, do not retaliate." Philosophy professor Aeon J. Skoble proposed the phrase functions as a diplomatic fail-safe. It is a safe-word that deactivates Gort's defensive response when the robot is accidentally triggered.

  Patricia Neal, who spoke the phrase in the film, admitted she sometimes struggled to keep a straight face. She recalled that Rennie would watch her bite her lips to avoid giggling. With "true British reserve," he would ask: "Is that the way you intend to play it?" When Robert Wise accepted the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, he closed his speech with the phrase. In that context, he said, it meant "Thank you from the bottom of my heart."

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• 6. Into the Culture

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  In 1995, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Six years later, the American Film Institute placed it at number 82 on its list of America's most heart-pounding films. It also ranked number 67 on the Institute's list of America's most inspiring films.

  In June 2008, the American Film Institute polled more than 1,500 people from the creative community. The film was named the fifth best science fiction film ever made. Arthur C. Clarke placed it in his list of the twelve best science fiction films of all time. The film holds a 93% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, drawn from 110 reviews.

  Ringo Starr used a modified image of the ship and Klaatu for the cover of his 1974 album Goodnight Vienna. Lou Cannon and Colin Powell both believed the film inspired Ronald Reagan to raise the idea of uniting against an alien threat. Reagan raised that idea in his 1985 meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. Before the United Nations two years later, he said he sometimes wondered how quickly global divisions would dissolve if humanity faced a threat from beyond Earth.

  American rock musician Willie Nile released an album called The Day The Earth Stood Still in 2021. The album's title track was inspired by the deserted streets of New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its chorus includes the phrase "Klaatu barada nikto." In the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the film plays on screen while Captain Pike calls it a "classic."

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