Seven Days in May
Produced by Joel Productions and Seven Arts Productions for $2.2 million, released Feb. 19, 1964, by Paramount and Warner Bros., 35mm widescreen black and white, mono sound, 118 mins.
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Production:
- Directed by John Frankenheimer
- Written by Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II (who were Washington-based reporters for the Des Moines Register, from their 1962 best-selling novel)
- Screenplay by Rod Serling
- Produced by John Frankenheimer
- Original music by Jerry Goldsmith
- Cinematography by Ellsworth Fredericks
- Film Editing by Ferris Webster
- Production Design by Cary Odell
- Art Direction Cary Odell
- Set Decoration by Edward G. Boyle
- Sound mix by Joe Edmondson
Cast:
- Burt Lancaster as General James Mattoon Scott
- Kirk Douglas as Colonel Martin 'Jiggs' Casey
- Fredric March as President Jordan Lyman
- Ava Gardner as Eleanor 'Ellie' Holbrook
- Edmond O'Brien as Senator Raymond Clark
- Martin Balsam as Paul Girard
- Andrew Duggan as Colonel William 'Mutt' Henderson
- Hugh Marlowe as Harold McPherson
- Whit Bissell as Senator Frederick Prentice
- Helen Kleeb as Esther Townsend
- George Macready as Christopher Todd
- Richard Anderson as Colonel Murdock
- Bart Burns as White House Secret Service Chief
- John Houseman as Vice Admiral Farley C. Barnswell
Notes:
This film is a Cold War thriller about a fictional attempted military plot to take over the government of the U.S. from a liberal president who is seeking a disarmament treaty with the Russians, but who is opposed by a right-wing Joint Chiefs and television announcer and politicians. The book and film were inspired by the disarmament debate at the end of the Eisenhower years and start of the Kennedy years. Conservatives had been critical of Eisenhower's attempts at disarmament from "Open Skies" at Geneva in 1954 to the "Spirit of Camp David" in 1959. The Russians and Americans suspended nuclear testing in 1958 but failed to agree on a Test Ban Treaty. Kennedy favored such a treaty in 1961 but was diverted by the "missile gap" and Bay of Pigs invasion and the Berlin Wall crisis in August 1961. Russia resumed atmospheric nuclear testing in August 1961. The Joint Chiefs had been urging Kennedy to resume testing during 1961 but the President and Prime Minister Macmillan sought a treaty with the Russians. Finally, Kennedy gave in and resumed underground testing in September and atmospheric testing in March 1962. The growing Cold War tension in 1962 would produce the Cuban Missle crisis in October. President John F. Kennedy admired the novel so much that he allowed Frankenheimer to film outside the White House in late 1963, but the Department of Defense objected to the negative portrayal of the military and refused cooperation. Screenwriter Serling had expanded the antimilitary theme beyond the novel's emphasis on peaceful disarmament. After the confrontation between President Lyman and General Scott at the end of the film, Lyman says the enemy is not the general but the nuclear age: "It happens to have killed man's faith in his ability to influence what happens to him."
Sources:
- Credits from the IMDB for the title Seven Days in May
- Remade in 1994 as TV movie The Enemy Within with Forest Whitaker and Jason Robards
- Knebel, Fletcher & Charles W. Bailey. Seven Days in May. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
- Knebel, Fletcher. "Seven Days in May: the movie the military shunned." Look, Nov. 19, 1963, pp. 90-95.
- Thirteen Days to be released in December 2000 dramatizes the Cuban Missle crisis from the viewpoint of Presidential advisor Kenneth O'Donnell, played by Kevin Costner