American Cinematographer - January 1991 - 38

by time the script was ready to film the creature
became a giant, hairless, humanoid vegetable which
somewhat resembled Universal's Frankenstein mon¬
ster. The location was changed from an unidentified
research base in the frozen wastes of Antarctica to a
United States Air Force base on the frozen wastes north
of the Arctic Circle. The change from the South Pole to
the North Pole was less radical than the jettisoning of
the central concept of the novella: the ability of the alien
to take over the bodies and personalities of others.
The Hawks-Lederer creature is referred to

jokingly by the military personnel as a monster from
Mars. Stronger and swifter than a man, utterly devoid
of emotion, asexual, and completely merciless, the
alien is driven by a compulsion to colonize earth with
its

own

kind. It lives

animal blood; even its seed¬

lings sprout only from blood-soaked soil. The group of
airmen and

scientists, forced to defend themselves

against the lone alien, find him damnably hard to
handle.
Once the

scripting problems were worked
the reins to Christian Nyby, a topranking film editor with a yen to direct, as his first
directorial effort. Nyby's later films proved him to be
out, Hawks gave

Above: Airmen,
scientists and a

versatile director of theatrical features as well as
television drama and comedy.
That the picture is overtly in the style of
Hawks is hardly surprising, for Hawks was a strongwilled producer who was present at most first unit
a

journalist
examine the
dorsal fin of a

huge flying
saucer

buried in

the ice. Right:
Russell Harlan,

shooting as well as much of the location work. The
loose handling of dialogue, with realistic interruptions
and overlaps, is done in the best Hawks manner. The
pace is fast and smooth, punctuated with shocks and
leavened with well-spaced romantic and comic di¬
versions. A light touch is present at the very times it

ASC.

needs to be.
Hawks and Lasker planned to film much of
the picture on location in Fairbanks and Nome, Alaska,

to-earth

Heaven knows,

they've tried.
Curiously, Hawks never again showed any
professional interest in science fiction or macabre
themes despite the fact that The Thing was highly suc¬
cessful and his prediction of a "vast story market" did
indeed develop.
Hawks and his partner in Winchester, Ed¬
romance.

ward Lasker, made a deal with RKO Radio Pictures to

co-produce with RKO two large budget pictures, The
Thing and The Big Sky. The screenplay of the first was
assigned to the versatile Charles Lederer, who had
previously written such notable successes as Kiss of
Death, Ride the Pink Horse, Slightly Dangerous, and
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lederer and Hawks felt that
Campbell's story would be too complex to put over as
written, so they concocted a simpler plotline that
differed considerably from the published novella. A

making of pictures dealing with contemporary military
activities. Their hopes were dashed when the follow¬
ing reply from the Pentagon, dated September 14,
1950,

was

forwarded from RKO's New York head¬

quarters:
The script of Winchester Pictures' proposed pro¬
duction "The Thing" has been reviewed, and it is regretted
that we will not be able to extend cooperation as the story
revolves around flying saucers and their possible contents.
The Air Force has maintained the position for some
time that there are no such objects as flying saucers and does
not wish to be identified with any project that could be

interpreted as perpetuating the myth of the flying saucer.
Also, the Air Force seriously objects to any mention of Air
Force

personnel and equipment, or pictorial sequences rep¬
resenting Air Force personnel or equipment, being included

half-dozen rewrites consistently distanced the concept

in the film.

from the

Providing your company plans to proceed on the
production without Air Force cooperation, we request every

monster

where they counted on receiving government coop¬
eration - including use of personnel and equipment
at USAF bases. This was standard procedure in the

American

original concept. The first draft retained a
fairly similar to Campbell's description, but

Cinematographer

January 1991

American Cinematographer - January 1991

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