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“Town of the Times” is the name of this 1963 color film from the Office of Civil Defense, starring Hollywood actors Ralph Meeker as George McCardle and Larry Gates as William Groves - two school board members who clash over the implementation of a public fallout shelter system. The film, from Wilding Productions, opens in a typical 1960s American town, “the one with the good Chinese restaurant and the movie theater that smells of popcorn,” as the camera pans along average citizens going about their lives as we catch glimpses of local stores and the town movie theater showing “The Day the Earth Caught Fire” and a newsstand with a furious Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on the cover of the September 8, 1961 issue of TIME magazine … with a nuclear fireball behind him. And standing sentinel over the town: a Civil Defense siren. “No one thinks about it much any more; too many crises, too many scares. So we push it to the back of our minds, where it waits.”
As the scene cuts at mark 01:30 to carefree teens dancing to the 1961 pop song “Fallout Shelter,” we’re told that while the number of family fallout shelters in this Anytown USA numbers nearly 200, only five have been completed. So we learn about the possibility of building community fallout shelters, as opposed to ones for individual families, starting at mark 02:00. In a meeting scene, town officials discuss the positives and negatives of such public shelters, whether they be in a bank, school, or store basement, an the inevitable debate begins over who will pay for the construction and upkeep of the shelters, especially in public schools.
“I deny the issue is survival, because for the first time in human affairs, to kill is to be killed, and to let live is to live, An uneasy balance to be sure, but the beginnings of peace…,” says Gates’ character at mark 05:50 as he argues against their construction. “What will be left for those people when they come up out of their holes?”
As the film continues, there is talk of the strength of walls to protect against radiation, the implementation of a ventilation system, and storage facilities for water and other supplies. The smiling, innocent faces of young students are shown at mark 08:00, as Meeker’s character explains how the classroom’s brick walls would also offer protection against radiation, even though it’s above ground. Less than a minute later, the film takes us to a tour of a school in Paducah, Kentucky, that had already implemented such protocols.
Although the town in the film rejects the premise of community shelters, the storyline continues as Meeker’s character visits a neighboring town to visit a shelter that doubles as a meeting room. The two men go on to compare travel insurance to a Civil Defense shelter - as both offer protection to survivors of tragedy.
“If they want to build shelters in their homes that’s fine with me. But why a school?” Gates’ character laments at mark 14:25. “Why should a place for enlightenment suddenly become a center for war preparations?”
At mark 15:30, a presentation to an auditorium filled with parents discusses the danger of post-apocalyptic fallout for the benefit of the audience in the film … and this film’s audience. The speakers also field questions about what steps can be taken to survive a blast from a hydrogen bomb, including taking some sort of cover upon seeing the blinding flash of light and seeking a fallout shelter within 30 minutes, where one will likely have to stay for two weeks. But when an irate audience member questions what good would a shelter be if their town takes a direct hit, Gates’ character approaches the microphone at mark 21:25 and explains that he shares the sense of futility and doom - but that leads to inaction. “I had faced two possibilities: world peace and world destruction. I was notably reluctant to face the third: the possibility of a nuclear war in which some will survive. The most difficult of all to face because it requires intense preparation … for a day we hope will never come.”
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