Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, physicist George Sanders discovers his wife has been
impregnated by an alien whose plan is to overthrow the earth with demonic children in Village
of the Damned.
Then on our silent Sunday night, veteran director Raoul Walsh leads Rockliffe fellows through
the regeneration, and Australian reporter Mel Gibson becomes swept up in an Indonesian
political uprising in the year of living dangerously.
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You've got to hold on and listen, that money I gave you, I didn't borrow what I stole.
Oh, Jill.
I like Anthony Mann.
I love working with him very much.
He was a good man.
We came to New York to do locations and it was one of the first times that they were
doing, you know, location rather than on the back lot.
So we shot all over the city, you know, in the film and we ended up shooting on Sunday
morning down Wall Street.
It was a big chase.
He was a wonderful man, you know, good director.
Take to the streets of New York in Side Street, Friday at 6.30 p.m. Eastern, only on Turner
Classic Movies.
So there's a lot there.
Looking back to the final days of World War II, it seems inconceivable that the Allies
might have lost the war, but the fact is that at the very time the greatest assault force
in history was successfully launching the invasion of Normandy, German scientists were
on the terrifying threshold of a one-sided push-button war.
War and Nazi Germany, poisoned and protected from retaliation under 90 feet of steel, reinforced
concrete and solid rock, Vengeance 10, a rocket capable of destroying whole cities, was in
the final stages of testing.
How did it happen?
How was it possible for German scientists to make such fantastic progress with rocket
research and development?
For the answer to this question, we must go back 14 years to the New Mexico desert in
1930.
Working with just a small staff and grants of less than $200,000 from the Daniel and
Florence Guggenheim Foundation, one man, American scientist Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard, represented
the entire United States rocket research program.
Dr. Goddard, whose life work was devoted to rocket development, was not only a brilliant
scientist but was also a man of vision who foresaw the many uses to which his discoveries
would one day be put.
However, as we see in these early films, Dr. Goddard's initial experiments met with something
less than success, but with each effort came new knowledge to apply to the next attempt.
From these early experiments came many pioneering achievements which have hardly been improved
upon even to this day.
Here Dr. Goddard demonstrates gyroscopic control.
Other Goddard innovations include the use of movable vanes for steering, a removable
nose cone for the storage of instruments for recording information, and most important
of all, the development and practical application of a liquid fuel system.
The rapid recovery of rockets was still another Goddard innovation.
In years to come, every single one of these developments is destined to become a critical
part of the German rocket program.
Goddard's work captured the attention of the American press and the American public, but
unfortunately interest was focused on the romantic rather than the scientific implications.
And although the United States government took Goddard's work somewhat more seriously
than either the press or the public, they did, however, reject his proposals for a more
far-reaching rocket development program.
But if the United States would not buy Goddard's dream, another nation would.
For 10 cents each, the cost of handling, charged by the United States Patent Office, German
scientists were able to purchase copies of all of Dr. Goddard's patents.
It was one of history's greatest bargains and strangest ironies.
It is now the early 40s.
Robert Goddard has been summoned to Annapolis, Maryland to work on the JATO program.
JATO, the utilization of rockets for jet-assisted takeoff of propeller-driven aircraft, is considered
by the United States to be the only practical military application of rockets.
At this same time, at Peenemunde, Germany, the Nazi rocket development program has come
to this.
All the knowledge acquired by Dr. Goddard and other rocket scientists throughout the
world is suddenly in the possession of German scientists and has become the basis for Hitler's
most closely guarded secret, the V for Vengeance rocket weapons project.
Here in captured film footage, we see that early German efforts, like Goddard's, encountered
many problems.
But in spite of these early failures, German rocketry in the early 40s was clearly years
ahead of any other nations.
Hitler had lavished over $125 million on the Peenemunde guided missile establishment.
But prior to the development of the V-2 rocket came the notorious V-1, the buzz bomb.
A major breakthrough in the development of the V-1 rocket is recreated here in this dramatic
scene from the MGM film Operation Crossbow.
Hannah Reich, the famous German aviatrix, flies aboard a V-1 to try to discover the
cause of its erratic behavior in the air.
Before her, many others had been killed attempting the same feat.
Ms. Reich is still alive today.
In 1942, another woman plays an equally important role in the history of rocketry.
Constance Babington Smith, a British intelligence photographic interpreter, calls attention
to an unidentifiable object on a reconnaissance photo taken over Peenemunde, Germany.
This, together with mounting rumors of a massive German rocketry program, is enough to prompt
Prime Minister Winston Churchill to launch a full-scale investigation.
Operation Crossbow is born.
August 17, 1943.
Winston Churchill authorizes over 600 heavy bombers, almost the entire striking force
of the RAF Bomber Command, to head out over the North Sea for Peenemunde, Germany.
He knows that mass retaliation by the German Luftwaffe and ground anti-aircraft installations
could possibly destroy British air power in a single action.
But the gamble pays off fantastically.
The German rocket program is now delayed a year, just long enough so that it cannot impede
the projected Allied invasion of Normandy.
But the threat is hardly ended, and phase two of Operation Crossbow swings into action.
A specially trained group of Allied espionage experts is parachuted into German-held territory
to infiltrate the rocket research and development centers.
What they see leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that the Germans are, in fact, producing
the most colossal weapons arsenal in the history of mankind, and a projected quota of sufficient
size to annihilate the city of London.
But the V-2 rocket is not Hitler's ultimate weapon, for in the closing days of World War
II, the Nazis are dangerously close to the completion of the V-10 rocket, known as the
New York Model.
This then was the challenge that the men and women of Operation Crossbow faced, and as it
is brought to the screen in full color by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it assumes the significance it deserves.
Operation Crossbow stars Sophia Loren and George Papart in a suspenseful and dramatic
reenactment of this unique story of wartime espionage and intrigue.
Because of Operation Crossbow, what began here, with the first experiments of rocket pioneer
Robert Goddard, can continue here in the limitless search of a boundless universe by free and
dauntless men.
This is director Joshua Logan, probably best remembered as creator of such motion pictures
as South Pacific and Sayonara.
Now he's come to this Pacific Island resort to make a new motion picture.
It's called Ensign Pulver.
Finding just the right young man to play the lead took a long time.
But now Robert Walker will be catapulted to stardom as Ensign Pulver, and he's got very
definite opinions about the role.
You know what an ensign is?
Well, the book will tell you he's an officer and a gentleman.
But if you want the real truth from one particular Ensign Pulver, I can tell you that an ensign
is the lowest form of life in the fleet.
He's a man at the bottom of the table in officer's mess, a guy squashed between the brass on
top and the enlisted men below.
Of course, there are occasional compensations.
Then what were you going to do?
Well, stop watching the movie, Frank.
I can't do it just like that.
I've got to work myself up into a lather.
Well, get it going.
I'm beginning to lather, Doc.
Okay, Pops.
Put this up here, big fat butox, and smoke it.
And you'll learn.
Is Doc on?
Right here, Frank.
We're just about all set here.
How are you feeling, Doc?
In all honesty, Frank, not so good.
How is he taking the anesthetic?
Just a minute.
Could it be you and me go someplace quiet?
You are absolutely pagan.
And there's another young man bound for a new kind of stardom in Henson-Pulver, singing
star Tommy Sands in a great role.
We're all killing back that car.
Don't worry, Captain.
It's not loaded.
I told you, Doc.