The first four films of the series were produced and written by
Frank Capra from 1952 to 1956. As described by biographer
Joseph McBride, Capra had retired from feature filmmaking by 1952, due in part to the turmoil of the
Hollywood Blacklist era. McBride writes that Capra "undoubtedly realized that the AT&T job was a way of going back to work quietly and rehabilitating his image". The religious elements in the screenplays occasioned much discussion and some acrimony with the scientific advisory board and consultants, such as
Donald Menzel, but many were finally incorporated. James Gilbert has written, "When finally produced,
Our Mr. Sun included a mixture of science, documentary footage, low-key advertising, and animation contained within a religious-magical framework. ... Most striking,
Our Mr. Sun began and ended with inescapable religious allusions." Matthew Gunter writes, "in these films, Capra tries to create a common ground between science and religion—both are ways for the optimistic and the curious to think about the world and our place in it." Keller worked with Capra at the beginning of his career; he subsequently became a prominent feature film editor, and won the
Academy Award for Best Film Editing for
Bullitt (1968).
Our Mr. Sun (1956) Our Mr. Sun examines the
Sun and how it works, the Sun's profound influence on life on Earth, and the possibilities for harnessing sunlight for solar electricity; solar cells had been demonstrated at Bell Laboratories in 1954 during the development of the film. For the screenplay, Capra first contracted for treatments by two prominent authors,
Aldous Huxley and
Willy Ley. Ultimately, Capra wrote the screenplay himself, subject to approval by a scientific advisory board put together by N. W. Ayer. The principal scientific source used for the screenplay was the book
Our Sun (1949) by
Donald Menzel, who also consulted with Capra about the screenplay. Menzel opposed most of the religious elements of Capra's screenplay, but many were included in the version that was produced. The film starred
Eddie Albert and
Lionel Barrymore, as the Fiction Writer and as the voice of
Father Time, respectively. The film was Barrymore's last screen role, and was broadcast two years after the actor's death. It introduced
Frank C. Baxter as Dr. Research; Baxter played this role in the next seven films in the series.
Marvin Miller voiced the
Sun.
Sterling Holloway had a smaller part (uncredited) voicing
Chloro Phyll. The film was first broadcast on November 19, 1956, at 10:00 p.m. to an audience estimated at 24 million viewers in the US and Canada, which was considered very successful at the time. Critical reaction was also favorable, and production of the next three films was authorized by AT&T and N. W. Ayer.
Our Mr. Sun was broadcast on
CBS (a rare "colorcast" for that network at the time); all other films in the series were shown on
NBC.
Hemo the Magnificent (1957) Hemo the Magnificent is an examination of what the
circulatory system is and how it works. It was written and directed by Frank Capra, and starred Frank C. Baxter as Dr. Research,
Richard Carlson as the Fiction Writer, Sterling Holloway as the lab assistant,
Mel Blanc as the squirrel,
June Foray as the deer, and
Marvin Miller as
Hemo. This film was first broadcast on March 20, 1957, at 9:00 p.m. This was a better hour for a family program than used for
Our Mr. Sun, and the program had more viewers than those being broadcast on the two other major television networks.
The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays is an examination of what
cosmic rays are and how they work. It was written by Capra with
Jonathan Latimer, a crime fiction novelist and screenwriter. As Gilbert describes it, the third and fourth films "repeated the formulas of his earlier work while ever searching for new contrivances for popularization as well as the best language to express his soft religious message" and that the script was essentially a reworking of ideas Capra had developed for a possible documentary about
Robert A. Millikan. The film's screenplay works from the premise that the nature of cosmic rays is a mystery comparable to the great detective stories. A committee of marionettes representing Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe is called upon to decide the question. The film was broadcast on October 25, 1957, apparently with a smaller television audience share and with more unfavorable reviews than for the first two specials.
The Unchained Goddess (1958) The Unchained Goddess examines what
weather is and how it works. It was the fourth and last film in the series that was produced by Frank Capra, who wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Latimer. Unlike the first three of the films, this film was directed by
Richard Carlson, who also appears in the film. Recent commentators have noted that this film exhibits an early concern with
climate change caused by human activities. ==The Warner films==