Just Imagine is a humorous science-fiction movie musical presented by Fox Film Corporation in 1930, directed by David Butler, to console audiences distressed by the Great Depression.
Cast (in credits order)
Plot
The film starts with a preamble showing life in 1880, where the people believed themselves the "last word in speed". It switches to 1930, with the streets crowded with automobiles and lined with electric lights and telephone wires. It then switches to 1980, where the tenement houses have morphed into 250-story buildings, connected by suspension bridges and multi-lane elevated roads. J-21 sets his airplane on "hover" mode and converses with the beautiful LN-18. He describes how the marriage tribunal had refused to consider J-21's marital filing and applications, and LN-18 is going to be forced to marry the conceited and mean MT-3. J-21 plans to have LN-18 visit him that night.
RT-42 tries to cheer him up by taking him to see a horde of surgeons experimentally revive a man from 1930, who was struck by lightning while playing golf, and was killed. The man is taken in hand by RT-42 and J-21, where it is revealed that airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food and liquor, and the only legal babies come from vending machines. That night, LN-18 feigns a headache, and her father and the atrocious MT-3 decide to go to "the show" without her. The second they are gone, RT-42 and J-21 appear and woo B-27 and LN-18 respectively. MT-3 and LN-18's father return quite early, as MT-3 was highly suspicious, and RT-42 and J-21 hide. However, the game is foiled by the moronic Single O, the man from 1930, becoming addicted to pill-highballs, getting drunk, and trying to get some more pill-highballs off of J-21.
J-21 is depressed, but is contacted by Z-4, the scientist. He is told that Z-4 has built a "rocket plane" that can carry three men to Mars. After a farewell party on the "air-liner" (dirigible) Pegasus, which J-21 works at, the rocket blasts off, carrying J-21, RT-42, and Single O, who has stowed away for the synthetic rum. Landing on Mars, they are received by the Queen, Looloo ("I'll say she is!") and the King, Loko ("She is not the Queen---he is!") That night, Looloo and Loko take them to see a "show", which is like a Martian opera, where a horde of trained Martian ourang-outangs dance about. They are suddenly attacked by Booboo and Boko, the evil twins of the King and Queen (everyone on Mars is a twin.) They escape in a highly farcical scene, and return to Earth. As one of the first men on another planet, J-21 is permitted to mary LN-18. The film ends with Single O reunited with his aged son, Axel.
Historic overview
The film is clearly a product of its own time. The man from 1930 is played by El Brendel, an ethnic vaudeville comedian of a forgotten type: the Swedish immigrant. The airliners are dirigibles. Prohibition still lingers. Henry Ford's notorious anti-semitism is smiled at through a recitation of the names of the passenger vehicle manufacturers of the age, which are all Jewish.
Instead of having names, the citizens of 1980 are now identified only by an alphanumeric code (the hero is "J21," and the El Brendel character is quickly dubbed "Single Zero," pronounced "Single Oh."). Instead of a sexual revolution, there is rigid government control of relationships between the sexes; marriage partners are chosen or approved by judges of an official marriage tribunal, while the only legal babies come from vending machines. (Quips Brendel's character in disbelief, as he sees a baby delivered, without sex, via a coin operated chute: "Give me the good old days!") J21's trip to Mars is motivated by the fact that he needs to make a spectacular contribution to society in order to be allowed to wed the high-status female of his choice, LN18. One detail interesting to modern viewers is the huge change depicted in the style of men's suits. There is also a running gag concerning homosexuality, a reminder that this film predates the infamous Production Code.
Music
The many musical production numbers invariably stop the action rather than supporting it. Of the DeSylva, Brown and Henderson songs introduced in the film, only "Never Swat a Fly" is remembered today, primarily through a 1967 revival by Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band. In addition to Brendel, the film stars John Garrick as J21, Maureen O'Sullivan as his would-be wife LN18, Frank Albertson as J21's friend RT42, and Marjorie White as RT42's nurse-girlfriend.
Art/cinematography
Clips of the cityscape from this movie were later used in the Universal serials Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers; the mock-up Mars spaceship was reused in the former, as Dr. Zarkov's spaceship. Also seen in the first Flash Gordon serial are the strange hand-weapons carried by J21 and RT42 on Mars, which are held under rather than over the fist, and re-used footage of dancing girls cavorting about and on a Martian idol with moving arms.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by Stephen Goosson and Ralph Hammeras.[1]
Special effects
The sequence in which the El Brendel character is revived from the dead features the first screen appearance of the spectacular electrical equipment assembled by Kenneth Strickfaden, seen again and more famously in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931). In the history of screen special effects, the film is also important for its use of the first practical, very-large-scale rear-screen projection. Indeed, almost all shots of the large futuristic city model seen in the film are rear-screen-projections behind live action.
Box office response
Contrary to some accounts, this expensive film was not a box-office flop. However, it was clearly a one-time-only novelty stunt, bolstered by the short-lived popularity of El Brendel. By the time it was released, movie musicals had greatly declined in popularity; nor was there a perceived audience for science fiction, especially at the onset of the Great Depression. As a result[citation needed] major American studios would not back another big budget science fiction film until 1951. There was to be only one other American science-fiction musical in that period, It's Great to Be Alive (1933), which failed at the box-office. Film serials were an exception to this general trend, however. The first Flash Gordon serial from 1936 had an unusually large budget for a serial of the time, and Gene Autry's The Phantom Empire from 1935 can loosely be considered a science fiction musical serial.
Production credits
- Art Direction - Stephen Goosson and Ralph Hammeras
- Set Decoration - Stephen Goosson and Ralph Hammeras
- Assistant Director - Ad Schaumer
- Sound Department - Joseph E. Aiken
- Stager - Seymour Felix
- Musical director - Arthur Kay
- Costumes - Alice O'Neil and Dolly Tree
- Graphics - Post Amazers
References
External links
