On the Beach (1959) Opening Scene: Ernest Gold’s Adaptation of “Waltzing Matilda”

 


 

The fallout from a nuclear holocaust has killed off the entire world, save for Australia, and the clock is running out Down Under. An American submarine arrives in Australia.

Thanks so much to for posting this, and to Bones McNally for the following introduction.

On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. It was published in 1957.

The novel was adapted for the screenplay of a 1959 film featuring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, and Fred Astaire, and a 2000 television film starring Bryan Brown, Armand Assante and Rachel Ward.

The submarine used in the 1959 movie - H.M.S. Andrew representing the American nuclear submarine U.S.S. Sawfish, was in actual fact a WW2 designed/vintage diesel/electric powered British submarine - the Amphion class submarine (also known as the "A" class and Acheron class) was launched on April 6 in 1946.

By the time of the movie, this submarine had been greatly modified from its original appearance - especially in respects to its conning tower which was made considerably larger. The producer/director Stanley Kramer was forced to use this stand-in submarine when the U.S. Navy refused to participate in the making of the film due to its controversial nuclear apocalyptic storyline. This 1959 movie has one of the best instrumental versions of Waltzing Matilda composed in its impressive opening credits scene.

* * *N.S.: I saw this movie only once, over 40 years ago, when I was about 13, and yet I remember (or think I do) many of the scenes as if it were yesterday.

(Spoiler alert!)

People waiting in line to get cyanide. Heroic racing champion Fred Astaire committing suicide in his garage, via carbon monoxide poisoning. The American captain (Gregory Peck) calling the States, thinking that a phone that was knocked off the hook during the bombing is busy, and that his wife may still be alive. The prim, proper, pretty young assistant raising a last glass with the much older admiral with whom she has long been secretly in love, remaining prim and proper to the end. Peck and Ava Gardner making love in a room at an inn, while the Aussies below drink ale and sing “Waltzing Matilda.”

And most powerfully, Peck horsing around with Gardner on the beach, momentarily forgetting himself, throwing her down on the sand in front of their friends… and accidentally calling her by the name of his dead wife. And the embarrassed silence that follows.

I’d never before heard the song, “Waltzing Matilda,” and immediately fell in love with it and the gallant Aussie people.

The picture was shown on The Early Show, the ABC New York movie feature that played relatively recent movies every day from 4:30-6 p.m. Many of the pictures were modern classics (e.g., Spartacus) that had to be shown over the course of two days, but still were butchered to fit in the time and commercials. And yet, On the Beach still packed a wallop.

The picture was made by Hollywood’s most wearing-his-politics-on-his-sleeve, humorless “liberal,” Stanley Kramer, so I don’t know how I’ll react when I see it again, but I remember it as a masterpiece.

The entire movie has been posted to Youtube; watch it, while you can!

Part I;

Part II.