George Pal Turns from Puppets to People (1950) 🇺🇸

The creator of “Destination Moon” is expected to top his own records with his new endeavor

by Paul Manning

All moviegoers from seven to 70 have had good reason to become acquainted with the name of George Pal, not only the name but the talents of this remarkably prolific young man. Pal was the first to create the idea of using puppets for cartoons instead of animated drawings, thus endowing cartoons with a third dimensional quality for the first time in the history of motion pictures. His painstaking and effective technique gained for him world-wide fame, and his cartoons were immediately international movie favorites.

It seems logical to conclude that within the mind of a man who could dream up this out-of-the-ordinary method of creating cartoons there dwell equally exciting ideas. With Destination Moon, Pal gave ample proof of this expectancy.

Frankly, after being awed and stimulated through the screening of this screen masterpiece, I decided that nothing would satisfy me but to meet the man responsible for it. For more than a year before completion. I had been hearing interesting rumbles from behind the high walls of secrecy built around the pre-shooting preparations. It all sounded too, too fantastic, and there were many trade observers who were more than a bit pessimistic about the finished product. Okeh for a cartoon, they said, but impossible with real sets and real people.

But, as the sensational picture has already so well demonstrated, these dour critics had sold short the ability of the dynamic George Pal. The sales potential of this out-of-this-world entertainment was established overnight when the national grosses rocketed to almost the stratospheric heights that Pal had aimed his screen rocket toward. Meeting George Pal was another surprise. I had expected a booming, energetic, and altogether dynamic personality. Instead, I found myself looking at a quietly pleasant and most ingratiating young man. It was not until we had had a little time together that I probed deeper, and realized that behind those steady smiling eyes was the secret of his amazing ability.

Have you ever met someone who at first presented a calm outward appearance, only to realize a little later that it is the subtle power within, that driving enthusiasm which must be released through creative activity, that is really the true power of the doers of the world?

This is George Pal. Suddenly he reaches you with his virile and completely uninhibited imagination. All his past successes become a mere nothing in the light of immediate and future projects. Past glory is just so much dead weight.

Paramount has signed Pal to produce When Worlds Collide, a most spectacular story of the prediction and realization of the destruction of this planet by collision with another whirling world. The Paramount picture makers for some time have been scratching their heads for some light on just how to get it on the screen. They all realized that it would be sure box office dynamite. The original novel in 1932 by Edwin Palmer and Philip Wylie had captured the high intensity interest of millions of readers, and, with the giant strides made in stellar research since then, this seemed a most propitious time for the picture to be made.

The term, “Let George do it,” was reborn again when, after viewing Destination Moon, the Paramount execs pounced on their When Worlds Collide property, dusted it off, and, in grand unison, shouted, “Let George do it!” George Pal, natch!

And so, the problems confronting Pal today are not the problems of Destination Moon but rather those of When Worlds Collide. To give just a tiny idea of what really tremendous importance this new project will be in the field of top exploitation pictures, listen to the facts of the story. A great scientist and humanitarian predicts from his observations that a runaway planet will come close enough to our own earth to completely destroy all forms of life. When he tells the world of his findings and fears, he is roundly ridiculed, even by fellow scientists. Completely altruistic to his beliefs, he creates a space ship which will provide interplanetary transportation to another habitable planet. He then proceeds to gather about him only such chosen individuals who will be worthy of starting a new human race on this planet.

Plans progress, and his small band of interplanetary adventurers are slowly selected, and brought to the launching site. True to his predictions, a strange series of atmospheric disturbances cause anxiety to the scientists who had earlier ridiculed his findings. Then, as these disturbances become more alarming in scope, chaos seizes the entire world. Giant tidal waves, scorching heats such as we have never experienced, monumental earthquakes, and almost every other form of frightening and violent tortures of earth, water and sky come to pass as the destructive influence of the runaway planet comes to bear full force on this helpless world of ours. Humanity must surely perish. The massive panorama of the physical destruction of this world we know — and successful rocket flight from the global holocaust by the scientist and his band, the only remaining humans, should provide the motion picture screen with a subject of epic proportions. In the hands of George Pal, Paramount, (and Paul Manning) know it will be painted with a master’s touch. — P. M.

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Pal designed this lunar landscape, which helped lend an air of authenticity to ELC’s Technicolor presentation of space travel, Destination Moon.

Two interplanetary travelers make repairs to their rocket ship in a scene from Eagle Lion Classics’ Destination Moon, some two years in making.

Collection: Exhibitor Magazine (Studio Survey), November 1950