Edward R. Tompkins was a brilliant and well-regarded science teacher from Winterset, Iowa, who had a habit of keeping in touch with some of his favorite students. That was until 1942, after leaving teaching to pursue advanced degrees, when he was recruited to join the Manhattan Project as a chemist in what was then known as the Clinton Engineer Works in Anderson County. Secrecy was everything in the development of the bombs that effectively ended World War II 80 years ago this week.
One of those former students, Donna Belle Mullenberger, had wondered why she stopped receiving responses to the letters she still occasionally sent to him. By the time the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the world knew her as Donna Reed. But not long after those world changing events, Tompkins reached out to her. He thought there was a movie to be made about what went on in Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Hanford.
Tompkins pitched the idea to Reed, and she ran with it to the higher ups at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio under which she was contracted. And a race to produce a movie about the dawning of the atomic age began.
MGM camera crew at K-25 in Oak Ridge, 1946 (Photo: MGM).
Contrary to early press, Reed was never slated to star in the movie The Beginning or The End, though she did grease the wheels to get it made. Her 1946 was busy playing Mary Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Tompkins was a technical adviser on the film, as were several other key players in the Manhattan Project, including Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. Tompkins and others became disillusioned with the direction of the movie when their legitimate concerns about the future misuse of atomic energy butted up against MGM’s need for cooperation from the U.S. government and military for location shooting, military apparatus, etc. General Leslie Groves and President Harry Truman both weighed in on the film, and the script was heavily scrutinized to make sure secrecy wasn’t sacrificed for accuracy.
A good portion of the docu-drama-styled movie was actually filmed in Oak Ridge, and one of the narrated sections illustrated explosive growth and influx of people and industry that created and supported Y-12, X-10 and K-25:
From a stick in the dust, a secret city rose. Forests were felled for homes, schools and hospitals … Security wherever they were, security at home, security abroad … A stick in the dust became the fifth largest city in the state.
The local papers ran many stories leading up to its wide release in March of 1947. Officials in Oak Ridge got a sneak peek that January with premieres scheduled on February 20 for Washington, D.C., New York, London, Ottowa and Sydney. President Truman and company had a private viewing on February 19. The movie was heading this way just as Sunday theatre going was legalized in Tennessee. It opened at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville and the Grove Theatre in Oak Ridge on March 17.
Crowd outside the Grove Theatre, Oak Ridge (Photo: Ed Westcott, DoD).
Early reviews were, by and large, unenthusiastic. Commercially, it was a box office bomb. After watching it, I would call it B actors in a B movie with a side of propaganda. The only actor I’d heard of in the cast was Hume Cronyn playing Oppenheimer. But it is interesting as a piece of nostalgia, a part of East Tennessee and its importance to history that made onto Hollywood celluloid. You can find the movie on YouTube.
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Sources: The Knoxville Journal digital archives, The Library of Congress, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Greg Mitchell
Follow KnoxTNToday on Facebook and Instagram. Get all KnoxTNToday articles in one place with our Free Newsletter
A few years ago,I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and viewed the Atomic Bomb Dome. I applaud the way the Japanese people have taken the high road to urge world leaders to find peaceful solutions to conflict, as nuclear aggression must never again be an option. It’s horrific that modern warfare creates endless civilian casualties.
I was seven years old when VJ Day caused the adults in my family to laugh, cry, and hug one another. This was an extremely sharp contrast to the sadness and gloom they had exhibited most of my early childhood. After that the “boys” started coming home, I quickly learned from my adoring, jokester uncles that the grown-up world could be a happy one.