The Missiles of October (1974) (TV)

Director:

Anthony Page

Writers:

Stanley R. Greenberg (writer)
Robert F. Kennedy (book)

Release Date:

18 December 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | History | Thriller

Plot:

Based in part on Robert F. Kennedy's book, "Thirteen Days," this film profiles the Kennedy Administration's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Plot Keywords:

Missile | Cuban Missile Crisis | Diplomacy | Nuclear Threat | 1960s

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 1 win & 8 nominations

Cast

William Devane	...	President John F. Kennedy
Ralph Bellamy	...	U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson
Howard Da Silva	...	Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
James Hong	...	U.N. Secretary-General U Thant
Martin Sheen	...	Att. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
James T. Callahan	...	David Powers, Special Assistant to the President
Peter Canon	...	Admiral's Aide
Keene Curtis	...	John McCone, Director CIA
Charles Cyphers	...	Press Photographer
Clifford David	...	Theodore Sorensen, Special Counsel
John Dehner	...	Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson
Francis De Sales	...	Senator
Peter Donat	...	David Ormsby-Gore, British Ambassador to U.S.
Andrew Duggan	...	Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Army Chief of Staff
Richard Eastham	...	Gen. David M. Shoup, USMC Commandant
Dana Elcar	...	Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
Gene Elman	...	Russian Presidium Member
Ron Feinberg	...	Gen. Charles De Gaulle
Michael Fox	...	Soviet Marshal
Arthur Franz	...	Congressman Charles A. Halleck
Larry Gates	...	Secretary of State Dean Rusk
Jerome Guardino	...	Reporter
Ted Hartley	...	American General
Bern Hoffman	...	Russian Presidium Member
Richard Karlan	...	Chief of the Presidium
Stacy Keach Sr.	...	W.E. Knox, President Westinghouse International
Wright King	...	Sen. Richard Russell
Will Kuluva	...	Valerian Zorin
Paul Lambert	...	John Scali, ABC Correspondent
Doreen Lang	...	Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, President Kennedy's Secretary
Michael Lerner	...	Pierre Salinger, Whitehouse Press Secretary
Robert P. Lieb	...	Gen. Curtis LeMay, Air Force Chief of Staff
John McMurtry	...	Yefgani Yeftashanko
Byron Morrow	...	Sen. William Fullbright
Stewart Moss	...	Kenneth O'Donnell, Special Assistant to the President
Stuart Nisbet	...	Reporter
Buddy Ochoa	...	Television Assistant
James Olson	...	McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs
Dennis Patrick	...	Llewellyn Thompson, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
Albert Paulsen	...	Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin
Nehemiah Persoff	...	Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko
William Prince	...	Secretary of the Treasury, C. Douglas Dillon
John Randolph	...	Undersecretary of State George Ball
Toby Russ	...	Waiter
Kenneth Tobey	...	Adm. George W. Anderson Jr., Chief of Naval Operations
Serge Tschernisch	...	Soviet Stenographer
Jay Vallera	...	Cuban Delegate
George Wyner	...	Civillian Aide
Harris Yulin	...	KGB Agent Alexander Fomin

Runtime:

150 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Viacom Productions

Trivia:

This was originally shot on videotape, and first shown in this format, but when it was sold to local stations, it was transferred to film.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When President Kennedy addresses the nation, the camera is a Philips PC-70 color camera which was not available until several years later. The actual address was televised with two RCA TK-30 black-and-white cameras (the second was a backup).

Quotes:

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev: [thinking about President Kennedy on the other side of the world, before being interrupted again] Just now, I work and he sleeps. Then, he works and I sleep.
[pauses]
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev: Perhaps soon we both sleep...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Goonies (1985)

What we escaped from.

This isn't going to be everybody's favorite movie. The production values don't shoot out the lights. All the sets are indoors. There's no motion to speak of. The whole shebang seems static and talky.

Yet it's an important document and in some ways well done. If much of the dialog sounds stilted it's because it was taken from official sources. So we get a lot of formal speech and very little in the way of offhand nudges. But the acting, at least in the important roles, is really pretty good. DeVane as JFK, Martin Sheen as his brother Bobby, and Howard DaSilva as Krushchev are outstanding.

Most impressive is the way this film takes us back to what now seems almost like a Golden Age, despite the missile crisis and the insanity of Mutual Assured Destruction.

It was a time when a president would make certain that the meetings were attended by an old Cold Warrior, Dean Acheson, even though Acheson was presumed to represent a dated point of view and was only a private citizen at the time, because the president wanted to hear all points of view during brainstorming sessions.

In discussing those planning sessions, Robert MacNamara describes President Kennedy leaning towards military action in order to save face, and one of the participants saying to him, "Mister President, you're wrong." ("That took guts," says MacNamara in Errol Morris's documentary, "The Fog of War.") I was in school at the time of these events and no one knew anything except what was released to the media. If we'd known how close we were to war I believe church attendance would have soared.

Many incidents and coincidences came together to get the world out of that tight spot, chief among them the reluctance of both sides to engage in war. Both Krushchev and Kennedy had a pretty good idea of how that worked. JFK had written a book about it. More than that, imagine a president who is able to muse that he recently finished reading Barbara Tuchman's history of the accidental beginning of World War I, "The Guns of August". "If I could do it, I'd send a copy to every commanding officer aboard the blockading destroyers -- not that they'd read it." The resolution of the conflict, despite missteps and mistakes on both sides, hinged on a single event. Krushchev, depressed, wrote an ameliorative letter to Kennedy, saying that he understood Kennedy's position, and that he, Krushchev was willing to dismantle the Cuban missiles in return for a guarantee that the USA would neither launch nor aid any invasion of Cuba in the future. (Using anti-Castro Cubans, we had invaded the island at the Bay of Pigs, which was a miserable failure.) At last both sides seemed to have what they wanted. The USA was getting rid of the missile threat, and the USSR was getting a guarantee of Cuba's sovereignty.

Alas, under political pressure from his "war camp" at home, Krushcheve wrote a second letter, much harder in tone, reneging on earlier proposals and adding demands which the USA could not grant. Two mutually conflicting proposals a day apart. What to do? What they did was follow Robert Kennedy's suggestion. They ignored the second letter and responded only to the first. More fumbles and confusion followed but the crisis was eventually resolved with both sides compromising, but not in ways that jeopardized their own defenses.

The crisis required -- and got -- deft handling at the top and cautious but effective diplomacy. That's why I used the expression "Golden Age" before.

As drama, this isn't much. No villains, no fist fights, and not a gun in sight. Yet for its educational value alone, in our somewhat history-shy culture, it ought to be seen by everyone, especially now.