Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 79: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a department here at Paramount Stu- dio. It is my great sorrow that my good friend, Gordon Jennings, Paramount Special-Effects Director for more than two decades, a multiple Academy Award winner and the recognized leader in his field, died of a heart attack shortly after we finished work on the picture and before it was shown publicly. If for one moment you think the challenge of modernizing Wells’ story was child’s play, just take a scrap of paper and list the commonplace in- ventions and scientific discoveries which we utilize in our daily living that were utterly nonexistent when Wells wrote his story. There were no airplanes, atom bombs or tanks with which to fight the Martian machines at the time he wrote his tale. His readers followed his story on a flight of imagination. Our audience comes to the theatre today conversant with the terms: nuclear physics, atomic fission, gravi- tational fields and space platforms. Even the children play with space helmets and ray guns and are even more familiar with such expressions as “blast off” than their elders. It was exciting to take Wells’ im- aginative work and couple it with a film that would be entertaining, credible and believable to an audience geared to scientific awareness. One of our first decisions was to move the setting from London and environs to Southern California. It was more practical to shoot in an easily accessible area. Also influencing our decision were the many stories of flying saucers in the last few years which have emanated from the west- ern part of the United States. Our audiences might well believe that such a Martian invasion could take place in such a locale. FILMING “WAR OF THE WORLDS” 77 Los Angeles as the metropolis in- vaded by the Martians was a logical choice, too, because it was possible for us to arrange to actually clear a portion of the city streets of the popu- lace for several of our scenes. Pll wager that if I could climb into the Time Machine which Wells wrote about in another story and flash back fifty-six years for a conference with the gentleman, he’d have approved the changes. Now how he would have taken our addition of a romantic interest I won’t hazard a guess. But in the film busi- ness you have to be practical. No one is less interested in doing routine boy meets girl stories than I. But a boy- and-girl theme is necessary even in a science-fiction film of the scope of “War of the Worlds.” Audiences want it. So we introduced a young college scientist played by a talented new- comer named Gene Barry. As _ his companion we cast Ann Robinson, another bright new talent. In one respect we hewed right to the Wells original. That was in his conception of a Martian being. He dreamed up an octopuslike crea- ture. We made ours a huge crablike being with one giant Cyclops eye with three separate lenses, a big head to hold its oversize brain, and long spindly tentacles with suckers on the end for arms. The Martian was the handiwork of our talented young unit art director, Albert Nozaki, who worked through- out with us from start to finish under Paramount supervising art director Hal Pereira. After Nozaki finished his design I called in a sculptor, make-up man and artist named Charles Gemora, who became famous as the gorilla in the film “‘Ingagi’’ years ago. I asked him to build his monster. He built it out of papier-maché and Comichooksnco im