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The Griffith Observatory in Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955): mystical temple and scientific monument

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602365.2011.570102

1466-4410

Merrill Schleier,

History of Science and Medicine

Abstract Los Angeles's Griffith Observatory (1935) is the centrepiece and terminus for Nicholas Ray's film Rebel Without a Cause where its philosophical truths are housed and disseminated.Footnote1 Situated atop the Hollywood Hills, the classically styled, domed edifice serves as the site of some of the film's most important scenes, including the planetarium lecture (foreshadowing its pendant, the pivotal ‘chickie-run’ sequence), the knife fight between Jim and Buzz, and the Christ-like martyrdom of Plato. This article considers the manner in which the Observatory is invested with the task of structuring time while simulating the traumas of war, natural catastrophe, thermonuclear conflict and familial dysfunction. Its exterior and interior spaces are further enlisted by the director, Nicholas Ray, and the screenwriters, Irving Shulman and Stewart Stern, to foreshadow events and underscore thematic intent. The Observatory serves three major functions in Rebel. Its planetarium show creates a parallel between celestial and terrestrial events, especially its ‘end of the world’ lecture, which parallel the rebellious teenagers and their chaotic familial relationships. It is the setting for Plato's isolation and finally, at the film's conclusion, the existential loneliness of all humans. Lastly, its architectural properties—temple-like appearance and domical structure—serve as a microcosm of the universe and ultimately as an image of stability, underscored formally by the grandiose spectacle and elongated horizontal expanse of CinemaScope. Acknowledgement Appreciation is extended to Sandra Lee of the Warner Brother Archives, Cinema and Television Library, University of Southern California for facilitating my research. Thanks also to Mark Shiel and J. David Slocum for their helpful suggestions. Notes Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray, 1955 (Warner Brothers Pictures, DVD, Two-Disc Special Edition, 2005). The Griffith Observatory before and after Rebel served as a cinematic location: it was seen in several of the thirteen Flash Gordon episodes of 1936 and in ‘Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe’ (1940), The Phantom Empire (1935), The Dark City (1950), War of the Colossal Beast (1958), The Terminator (1984) and The Rocketeer (1991), and in Wim Wenders' The End of Violence (1997). David Weisbart to Eric Stacey, nd, box 1, file 2202, Warner Brothers Archives, Cinema and Television Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (hereafter CTL-USC). Irving Shulman was the second screenwriter for Rebel without a Cause, replaced by Stewart Stern late in 1954. Shulman developed the use of the Observatory in the story. Stern borrowed many of his ideas, hence my references to Shulman and Stern throughout the text. Nicholas Ray, ‘Story into Script’, Sight and Sound, 26 (Autumn, 1956), p. 74. Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause (New York, Touchstone, 2005), p. 128. While the authors mention this briefly, they do not elaborate on this point. The End of Violence, directed by Wim Wenders, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (DVD, 1997). Steven Jacobs, The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (Rotterdam, 010 Publishers, 2007); John Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 2nd edition (London, Sage Publications, 2002); Frascella and Weisel, Live Fast, Die Young, op. cit., pp. 118, 128–32. Nina C. Leibman, ‘Leave Mother Out: The Fifties Family in American Television’, Wide Angle, 10 (1988), pp. 24–41; Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray An American Journey, trs., Tom Milne (London, Faber & Faber, 1996); Scott Paulin, ‘Unheard Sexualities?: Queer Theory and the Soundtrack’, Spectator, 17 (Spring/Summer, 1997), pp. 36–49; Douglas Rathgeb, The Making of Rebel Without a Cause (Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland and Co., 2004), p. 133; J. David Slocum, Rebel Without a Cause: Approaches to a Maverick Masterwork (New York, State University of New York Press, 2005), pp. 151–55; Frascella and Weisel, Live Fast, Die Young, op. cit.; David Baker, ‘Rock Rebels and Delinquents: the Emergence of the Rock Rebel in the 1950s “Youth Problem” Films’, Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 19 (March, 2005), pp. 39–54. See Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trs., Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass. and London, Belnap Press of Harvard University, 1999) for a discussion of the embedded character of architecture. Eugene Archer, ‘Generation without a Cause’, Film Culture, 7 (1956), p. 20: ‘An early scene showing a lecture in a planetarium, with a planet's destruction as a climax, sharply suggests the problems of man in the Atomic Age.’ The first contemporary scholar to offer this view was Peter Biskind, ‘Ray Without a Cause’, Film Quarterly, 28 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 32–38. Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York, Horizon Press, 1932); Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright The Masterworks (New York, Rizzoli, 1993); Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, ed., with an introduction by Kenneth Frampton, Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings (New York, Rizzoli, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1992–95). There are five volumes of the collected writings: vol. 1, 1894–1930; vol. 2, 1930–32; vol. 3, 1931–39; vol. 4, 1939–49; vol. 5, 1949–59. Charles Bitsch, ‘Entretiens avec Nicholas Ray’, Cahiers du Cinema, 15 (November, 1958), p. 7 (translation by the Author). Bosley Crowther, ‘They Live By Night’, New York Times (4th November, 1949), http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review (accessed 20.10.10.). Bitsch, ‘Entretiens avec Nicholas Ray’, op. cit., p. 8. John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 140. See also Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology History and Analysis (London, Starword, 1992). Ray, ‘Story into Script’, op. cit., p. 72. Although Ray may have hatched the idea for a scene in a planetarium, it was Stern who developed the entire ‘end of the world’ sequence. Ibid., p. 74. Frascella and Weisel, Live Fast, Die Young, op. cit.; Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray An American Journey, op. cit., p. 232. Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) wrote the poem ‘Heaventown’ in 1917. The origin of the story's title is explained by the planetarium lecturer: ‘The stars we see are the galaxy to which our Solar System belongs. We usually call it the Milky Way. But the poet, Joyce Kilmer, had another name for it that I like. He called it Main Street, Heaventown.’ See Silvia Richards and Esther McCoy, ‘Main Street, Heaventown’, nd, p. 39, an original story for the screen: undated material 1929–1943, box 7, Esther McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C. (referred to hereafter as AAA). Despite the undated designation of Richards' and McCoy's treatment for the cinema, it was written after 1948 since that is the year the ‘Trip to the Moon’ show at the Griffith planetarium was initiated. Subsequently, the couple watches a popular ‘A Trip to the Moon’ show in the planetarium theatre, which is employed as a symbol for their ability to dream and to escape their ‘caged’ lives, a strategy borrowed in Rebel for the ‘end of the world’. Anne Nocenti, interviewer, ‘Writing Rebel Without a Cause, A Talk with Stewart Stern’, Scenario: The Magazine of Screenwriting Art, 5 (1999), p. 59. See the following by Tom Gunning: ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, Wide Angle, 8 (1986), pp. 63–70; ‘The Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator’, Art & Text, 34 (Spring, 1989), pp. 31–45; ‘“Now You See It, Now You Don't”: The Temporality of the Cinema of Attractions’, The Velvet Light Trap, 32 (1993), pp. 3–12. John Belton, ‘Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope, Stereophonic Sound’, in Tino Balio, Hollywood in the Age of Television (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1990), p. 189. Irving Shulman was the originator of the idea of linking the ‘chickie run’ to the planetarium show: ‘The car flies through the black night, rocket flames behind it, under a canopy of stars where the constellations are outlined as figures, as in the planetarium.’ See ‘Juvenile Story’, December 3rd, 1954, p. 39: Irving Shulman Papers, Robert E. and Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Ohio University. M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its History, Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1994), p. 152. Stewart Stern, ‘Rebel Without a Cause: Defiant Innocents’, in, Rebel Without a Cause (DVD, Two-Disc Special Edition, 2005). The Story of the Griffith Observatory and Planetarium (Los Angeles, Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners, 1955), pp. 11–12. Griffith Observatory and Planetarium, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Southland Publishing, 1935), np. For example, the lecturer's description of the astrological sign for Cancer prompts Buzz to declare himself a crab, reinforced by his reaching over to pinch gang member Goon's (Dennis Hopper) nose; while Jim responds to the description of Taurus by mooing like a cow. E. Baldwin Smith, The Dome: A Study in the History of Ideas (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 5. See also Frederic Jameson's brief discussion of the Library of Congress' dome in Alan J. Pakula's film All the President's Men (1976) in The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 78. Ibid., p. 3. Stern, script, Rebel Without a Cause, op. cit., p. 53. Stern in ‘Rebel Without a Cause: Defiant Innocents’, op. cit. (DVD, 2005). See ‘Griffith Observatory and Planetarium Nearly Ready at Los Angeles’, Museum News, 70 (1st September, 1934), p. 1; ‘The Griffith Planetarium’, Architectural Forum, 62 (February, 1935), pp. 156–61; ‘The Griffith Planetarium’, Architecture, 71 (March, 1935), p. 10; ‘The Griffith Planetarium, Los Angeles’, Architectural Digest, 9 (April, 1935), p. 21. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (New York, Harper and Row, 1971), p. 169. Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (New York, Random House, 1965), pp. 28–29. Stern, script, op. cit. The word ‘plummet’ is purposely employed by Stern to describe the scene in the planetarium lecture and at the time of Plato's death in order to link the two: ‘FULL SHOT —THE DOME seen past Plato's head as the star plummets’, p. 23 and ‘FULL SHOT— DOME as several shots ring out, Plato drops like a stone and plummets down the dome to Jim's feet’, p. 54. Stern, Rebel Without a Cause, script, p. 43; Rathgeb, The Making of Rebel Without a Cause, op. cit., p. 133. Stern, partial script, 21st January, 1955: box 3, file A-5, p. 28, WBA, CTL-USC. This 73-page document appears to be Stern's first partial screenplay for Rebel. The indistinguishable character's identity is corroborated in one of Stern's preliminary scripts, 8 February 1955: box 3, file 7, p. 132, WBA, CTL-USC. ‘Planetaria’, Architectural Forum, 60 (March, 1934), p. 28; ‘An Observatory for the Public’, Literary Digest, 119 (April 30th, 1935), p. 28. The planetarium craze began in the early twentieth century in Jena, Germany, on the grounds of the Carl Zeiss Optical Works: see Glenna Dunning, Planetariums: A Bibliography on their Architecture, Construction, and Development (Monticello, Illinois, Vance Bibliographies, 1985), p. 1. Jordan D. Marché, Theaters of Time and Space: American Planeteria: 1930–1970 (New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2005) p. 27. Griffith Observatory and Planetarium, np, op. cit. Ibid. Philip Fox, Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum (Chicago, Lakeside Press, 1933), p. 62. Fox's verse was borrowed from the British poet John Keats' ‘On First Looking into Chapman's Homer’ and should read: ‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies …’. Marché, Theaters of Time and Space, op. cit., p. 34. ‘Griffith Observatory and Hall of Science’, California Arts & Architecture, 47 (March, 1935), p. 13. Ronald A. Ortiri, ‘Astronomical Anecdotes, Curiosities and Quotations’, Griffith Observer, 39 (December, 1975), p. 17; Eberts, Griffith Park: A Centennial History, op. cit., p. 240. Mick Broderick in ‘Armageddon Without a Cause’, in Slocum, Rebel Without a Cause, op. cit., pp. 151–55. Broderick links Rebel's ‘end of the world’ lecture to the Atomic Energy Commission's rhetoric and the process of nuclear fusion. Marché, Theaters of Time and Space, op. cit., p. 75; Henry Norris Russell, ‘A Catastrophe that Did’, Scientific American, 154 (May, 1936), pp. 248–49. ‘Planetarian’ [sic], Time, 33 (24th April, 1939), p. 61. Gaylord Johnson, ‘How Will the World End?’, Popular Science Monthly, 129 (October, 1936), pp. 52–53, 123. Ibid., p. 52. Harry Samuels, ‘Machines that “Destroy” the Earth’, Popular Science, 149 (November, 1946), p. 132. ‘The End of the World!’, Science Illustrated, 1 (October, 1946), p. 6; Dinsmore Alter, ‘The Sun as a “Hydrogen Bomb”’, Griffith Observer, 14 (May, 1950), p. 5. Broderick, ‘Armageddon Without a Cause’, op. cit., pp. 153–54. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trs., Keith Tribe (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1985), p. 6. Ibid., pp. 7–8.