Forbidden Planet Lands at the Presidio for Free Outdoor Screening

The Film Society and the Presidio Trust present the third annual Film in the Fog outdoor film and music program, to be held on the lawn of the Main Post Theatre, 99 Moraga Avenue (see map), in the Presidio. The free, all-ages picnic, concert and movie screening on Saturday, October 2 will feature the timeless science fiction classic, Forbidden Planet. See event details.

The seminal science fiction film based on Shakespeare's The Tempest stars Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen, and introduced the amazing and amusing Robby the Robot. In the year 2200, space travelers visit a remote planet with green skies, Altair-4, inhabited by a world-weary scientist, his beautiful daughter, Robby and a mysterious terror. Forbidden Planet set a high standard for ambitious and intelligent sci-fi in the 1950s with an ingenious script, lavish use of CinemaScope and an eerie electronic score. The state-of-the-art special effects were nominated for an Academy Award, and you would have to look long and hard to find more exquisite art direction in all of science fiction.

A CinemaScope-size screen will be used this year, so you can see Forbidden Planet in all its wide-screen, Eastman Color glory. The film will be preceded by a vintage newsreel and the 1952 Tom and Jerry cartoon, Cruise Cat.

"All ages will enjoy the music, the film, the cartoon and a beautiful Indian summer evening in the park." said Roxanne Messina Captor, executive director of the Film Society. Fred McLeod Wilcox directed one of the most original adaptations of Shakespeare in cinema: Walter Pidgeon's Dr. Morbius is Prospero, Anne Francis's Altaira is Miranda, Robby is the sprite Ariel and Shakespeare's Caliban becomes the mysterious monster from the Id.

The influence of Forbidden Planet on subsequent science fiction is vast. Good-natured echoes of Robby the Robot are evident in C3PO and R2D2 of Star Wars. The creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, has admitted that this film was a major inpiration for his own science fiction TV series. And the voice of Robby seems strangely reminiscent of the talking computer, Hal, in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Walter Pidgeon was a major star at MGM, where he played leading man to Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell and Hedy Lamarr. Perhaps his most famous role was opposite Greer Garson in the Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver.

Before Forbidden Planet, Anne Francis had starring roles in big films like Bad Day at Black Rock and Blackboard Jungle. In 1965 she starred in the TV adventure series Honey West, in which she played a glamorous private detective. She is said to have named her pet dog Smidgeon after Walter Pidgeon.

Those who know Leslie Nielsen only from Airplane! and as Lieutenant Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun series will be surprised to see that he was once a romantic leading man. He later appeared opposite Debbie Reynolds in Tammy and the Bachelor.

Robby the Robot himself had a distinguished career, with a starring role in The Invisible Boy, and appearances in Gremlins and Earth Girls Are Easy. Robby also appeared in TV shows Lost in Space and The Twilight Zone.

Forbidden Planet also boasts the first entirely electronic musical film score. The music, composed by Louis and Bebe Barron, consists largely of bumps, clicks and whirs, very daring for its time. The Barrons were serious composers and pioneers of electronic music who have worked with such artists as John Cage, Anaïs Nin and others. They built their own instruments, modeling them on the human nervous system. When MGM called on the Barrons to provide the score for Forbidden Planet, the couple set to work in their Greenwich Village apartment studio and completed the whole thing in only three months. The instruments they invented preceeded even the Moog synthesizer. The music of the Barrons has found an echo in such diverse musicians as Les Baxter in the 1950s and Kraftwerk, a generation later.

"In scoring Forbidden Planet—as in all of our work—we created individual cybernetic circuits for particular themes and leitmotifs rather than using standard sound generators," wrote the Barrons. "There were no synthesizers or traditions of electronic music when we scored this film, and therefore, we were free to explore terra incognita with all its surprises and adventures."

Hear the music