50 Fun Facts About Dr. Strangelove

Which event on the day of Dr. Strangelove's first test screening forced the studio to delay the release?

Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, fell on the very day of the first test screening. The premiere was pushed into late January because the public was judged to be in no mood for nuclear satire.

Stanley Kubrick won arguments with his Turgidson actor on the Dr. Strangelove set by beating him at which game?

Chess was played frequently on the set, and Kubrick kept winning. Those victories, more than any argument, got his star to go along with scenes the two men disagreed about.

Dr. Strangelove, a satire of American nuclear war plans, was filmed at Shepperton Studios in which country?

England hosted the studio shoot, on three main sound stages near London. Peter Sellers was in the middle of a divorce and unable to leave the country, so the War Room had to be built there.

What does Major Kong wave as he rides the falling bomb toward its target in Dr. Strangelove?

A cowboy hat is in his hand as the Texan pilot whoops his way down. He ends up astride the weapon because he climbed into the bomb bay to fix the wiring on its jammed doors.

In Dr. Strangelove, which public health measure does General Ripper believe is a Soviet plot against Americans?

Water fluoridation is the general's obsession, and he starts a nuclear war to stop it. The joke was topical: far-right activists of the 1950s really did call fluoride a Communist plot.

Stanley Kubrick filmed and then cut which slapstick ending set in the War Room of Dr. Strangelove?

A pie fight among everyone in the War Room was shot as the original finale. Kubrick dropped it, later saying it played as farce and did not fit the satirical tone of the rest of the film.

Which musical beat Dr. Strangelove to the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Mary Poppins also in the race?

My Fair Lady took Best Picture, leaving Kubrick's satire with four nominations and no wins. Peter Sellers also lost Best Actor, to the musical's own Rex Harrison.

Which former rodeo performer plays Major Kong, the Texan pilot who rides the bomb, in Dr. Strangelove?

Slim Pickens spent nearly 20 years in rodeo before turning to acting. Kubrick never told him the film was a comedy, so he played the part completely straight.

Where does the title character of Dr. Strangelove propose sheltering several hundred thousand people from fallout?

Deep underground mines, he argues, would keep the radiation out. General Turgidson at once frets that the Soviets will dig in too and leave America behind in mine shafts.

In Dr. Strangelove, why does the Soviet doomsday machine fail to deter the attack that triggers it?

It was kept secret, so nobody could be deterred by it. The Soviet premier had planned to unveil the machine to the world at the Party Congress the following week.

Which actor, later the first to decline a Best Actor Oscar, plays the Joint Chiefs chairman in Dr. Strangelove?

George C. Scott turned down his Oscar for Patton, arguing that performances cannot be compared. Here he plays General Buck Turgidson, who urges the President to back the rogue attack with an all-out strike.

Which future star made his film debut as Lothar Zogg, the bombardier on Major Kong's plane in Dr. Strangelove?

James Earl Jones made his screen debut here, years before his voice became famous as Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mufasa in The Lion King.

Which wartime Vera Lynn song plays over the nuclear explosions in the final scene of Dr. Strangelove?

We'll Meet Again dates from 1939, and its promise of reunion turns bitterly ironic as the world ends. Kubrick used Lynn's 1953 recording, made with an armed services chorus.

Which Hollywood star was offered the role of Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove after Peter Sellers dropped out?

John Wayne was offered the part once an injury forced Sellers out, but never took it. It went to a veteran character actor from Westerns, who said his salary jumped five times afterwards.

Which earlier Kubrick film, starring Peter Sellers in several disguises, inspired his multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove?

Lolita cast Sellers as a playwright who keeps turning up in new disguises, and the studio credited him with its success. It made his playing several parts a condition of financing the next film.

Kubrick had the War Room table in Dr. Strangelove covered in green baize to suggest which game?

Poker was the idea: the leaders sit under a ring of lamps as if gambling for the fate of the world. The green cloth cannot even be seen on screen, because the film is in black and white.

The gleaming black floor of the War Room in Dr. Strangelove was inspired by dance scenes in which star's films?

Fred Astaire's dance numbers gave the designer the idea for a shiny black floor. In the finished set it mirrors the gigantic strategic maps that cover one wall.

Which British comedian took on Peter Sellers's multiple roles in the 2024 West End stage version of Dr. Strangelove?

Steve Coogan played several parts in the show, the first stage version the Kubrick family ever authorised. It opened at the Noël Coward Theatre and was later broadcast to cinemas worldwide.

Dr. Strangelove's ex-Nazi scientist evokes which real US program that recruited German experts after World War II?

Operation Paperclip secretly brought more than 1,600 German scientists and engineers to America after the war. Several were confirmed former Nazi Party members, which is the film's uncomfortable joke.

Dr. Strangelove's rebellious saluting arm lent its name to a nickname for which real neurological condition?

Alien hand syndrome makes a limb seem to act on its own, without conscious control. It has been called Dr. Strangelove syndrome, after the adviser who cannot stop his arm from saluting.

Which star of Kubrick's heist film The Killing returned to play General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove?

Sterling Hayden had retired from acting when Kubrick coaxed him back for the role. He went on to play the police captain McCluskey in The Godfather.

Which Cold War thriller novel, first published as Two Hours to Doom, is the basis for Dr. Strangelove?

Red Alert was a deadly serious novel, written under a pseudonym while its author was a serving RAF officer. The film's title character does not appear in the book at all.

Kubrick sued the makers of which rival Sidney Lumet nuclear thriller so that Dr. Strangelove would open first?

Fail Safe told almost the same story as a straight-faced drama, with Henry Fonda as the president. The suit was settled out of court, and the rival opened months later to mediocre ticket sales.

Which studio agreed to finance Dr. Strangelove only if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles?

Columbia Pictures made the demand, and Kubrick accepted it as the kind of stipulation the movie business runs on. Sellers ended up playing three parts after giving up the fourth.

Peter Sellers gave up a fourth role in Dr. Strangelove, the bomber pilot, after which injury?

A sprained ankle, suffered while leaving a restaurant, meant he could no longer work in the cramped cockpit set. He had already been anxious about managing the pilot's Texan accent.

Which RAF officer, played by Peter Sellers, deduces the recall code from General Ripper's doodles in Dr. Strangelove?

Lionel Mandrake spends the crisis locked in an office with the general who launched the attack. Sellers found the part the easiest of his three, having mimicked his superiors while serving in the RAF.

Which placid American President, partly modeled on Adlai Stevenson, does Peter Sellers play in Dr. Strangelove?

Merkin Muffley was first played with a comic head cold, which made the crew laugh so much that takes were ruined. Kubrick had Sellers play him straight, though the cold survives in several scenes.

The title character of Dr. Strangelove is usually held to be based partly on which real-life rocket scientist?

Wernher von Braun was a central figure in Nazi Germany's rocket program before being recruited to the United States. Sellers said he was always the model, denying rumors that it was Henry Kissinger.

The Soviet doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove is a network of buried bombs salted with which element?

Cobalt bombs began as a thought experiment by physicist Leo Szilard about a weapon that could poison the whole planet. In the film, the fallout would leave Earth's surface uninhabitable for 93 years.

The full title of Dr. Strangelove spoofs a 1948 self-help book about how to stop worrying by which author?

Dale Carnegie wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and the film's subtitle twists it. Among the titles Kubrick considered and dropped was Wonderful Bomb.

How does General Ripper keep the recall code from the soldiers who storm his air base in Dr. Strangelove?

He shoots himself once the base falls, taking the three-letter code with him. It is recovered only because of the doodles he left behind on his desk blotter.

In Dr. Strangelove, the President and his generals gather in a War Room located inside which building?

The Pentagon houses the War Room in the film, though no such room really existed there. The designers imagined it as an enormous concrete chamber that suggests a bomb shelter.

Dr. Strangelove was among the first 25 films chosen for the National Film Registry by which institution?

The Library of Congress picked it in 1989, the registry's first year, as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. Its co-writer recalled the studio once playing it down as a zany novelty picture.

Leftover aerial footage shot for Dr. Strangelove was reused in which Beatles film, prompting a complaint from Kubrick?

Magical Mystery Tour needed pictures for its song Flying, and an editor found the aerial reels stored at Shepperton Studios. Kubrick phoned him to complain.

Which comic novelist, later a co-writer of Easy Rider, was hired to help make Dr. Strangelove a black comedy?

Terry Southern got the job after Kubrick read his comic novel The Magic Christian, a gift from Peter Sellers. Raised in Texas, he also taped the bomber pilot's lines to coach Sellers in the accent.

Which James Bond production designer built the vast triangular War Room set for Dr. Strangelove?

Ken Adam had already designed Dr. No, and he missed the second Bond film to work for Kubrick. His set was an enormous concrete room 130 feet long, with a ceiling 35 feet high.

The only woman in the cast of Dr. Strangelove also appears as a centerfold in which magazine read by Major Kong?

Playboy is what the pilot leafs through in the cockpit, and its model is Tracy Reed, who plays a general's secretary. Hers is the only female character in the film.

Dr. Strangelove's single black-gloved hand echoes the mad scientist Rotwang in which silent German film?

Metropolis gave Sellers the gloved hand and wild hair of its inventor Rotwang. The glove itself was one of Kubrick's own, worn on set for handling hot lights.

In Dr. Strangelove, which radio device stops the bombers receiving any message that lacks General Ripper's secret code?

CRM 114 became a running joke in Kubrick's films: the drug given to Alex in A Clockwork Orange is Serum 114, a near homophone. The name came straight from the source novel.

Which director did Stanley Kubrick have in mind to make a Dr. Strangelove sequel in the 1990s?

Terry Gilliam only learned of the plan after Kubrick's death and said he would have loved to do it. The script, titled Son of Strangelove, was never completed.

Dr. Strangelove's Ripper and Turgidson both satirize which cigar-chomping former chief of Strategic Air Command?

Curtis LeMay ran the nuclear bomber force from 1948 to 1957, and many viewers would have spotted the likeness at once. Some of the film's dialogue closely paraphrases his own statements.

Which RAND strategist, author of On Thermonuclear War, briefed Kubrick on the doomsday machine used in Dr. Strangelove?

Herman Kahn coined the term megadeath, which turns up on a binder in the War Room. His cool estimates of how many millions America could lose and still rebuild are echoed by General Turgidson.

Which son of a famous vaudeville comedian plays the Army colonel Bat Guano in Dr. Strangelove?

Keenan Wynn was the only child of vaudeville comedian Ed Wynn. His colonel is the officer who reaches the general's office once the base is stormed.

Which British actor and avid teddy bear collector plays the Soviet ambassador in Dr. Strangelove?

Peter Bull published several books about teddy bears, including Bear With Me. His ambassador is caught secretly photographing the War Room.

The accent Peter Sellers gave Dr. Strangelove was partly borrowed from which New York crime photographer on the set?

Weegee, born Arthur Fellig, worked on the film as its stills photographer. He had been an early influence on Kubrick, who started out as a photographer himself.

Which World War II bomber, whose shadow can be seen on the Arctic ice, was the camera plane for Dr. Strangelove?

A B-17 Flying Fortress carried the cameras over the polar ice, and its shadow is visible in several shots. The jet bomber on screen was a scale model composited into the footage.

Which romantic standard plays instrumentally over the mid-air refueling in the opening credits of Dr. Strangelove?

Try a Little Tenderness, first recorded in 1932, accompanies authentic footage of a B-52 being refueled in flight. Kubrick later agreed with a fan that the film has a sexual framework from start to finish.

Which cinematographer shot Dr. Strangelove and A Hard Day's Night in the same year, and later the original Star Wars?

Gilbert Taylor had to light the War Room almost entirely from lamps built into the set. His black-and-white work on the film led Roman Polanski to seek him out for Repulsion.

Which Goon Show writer and friend of Peter Sellers is credited with suggesting the closing song of Dr. Strangelove?

Spike Milligan had starred with Sellers in the radio series since 1951. His choice plays over real nuclear test footage, including the Baker shot at Bikini Atoll.

Peter Sellers earned Best Actor Oscar nominations for Dr. Strangelove and which later film about a sheltered gardener?

Being There brought his second and last Best Actor nomination, and again he lost. His co-star Melvyn Douglas won the supporting award for the same film.