“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 34

Science Sunday!

Let’s pick up where we left off with the Bell System Science Series.

The third and fourth films in the series were co-written by Frank Capra and Jonathan Latimer. Mr. Latimer was fairly famous as a crime novelist as well as a screenwriter. (He also wrote the screenplays for “The Glass Key” and “The Big Clock”, among other credits.) I haven’t read any of Latimer’s work, but I have heard the name come up before. According to Wikipedia, he wrote a book called Solomon’s Vineyard in 1941: it was so racy that it wasn’t published in the US until 1950, and was heavily censored at that time.

The third film in the series was “The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays”.

The film’s screenplay works from the premise that the nature of cosmic rays is a mystery comparable to the great detective stories. A committee of marionettes representing Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe is called upon to decide the question.

The fourth film in the series: “The Unchained Goddess”, about weather. Capra produced this one, and wrote the screenplay with Latimer, but did not direct: Richard Carlson did that job.

Apparently, the television ratings for these next two films were disappointing. Capra wasn’t happy either: I gather that he felt the Bell System was interfering too much with his creative vision. He was replaced after “The Unchained Goddess” and went back to directing Hollywood films. His first one after “The Unchained Goddess” was “A Hole In the Head”, with Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson. You may remember that as the movie that introduced “High Hopes”.

But what happened with the Bell System Science Series? Next week: “Produced under the personal supervision of Jack L. Warner”.

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