“Deadly
Planet” 1954
Tagline: “A Weird
Journey To The Furthest Reaches Of Outer Space!
A Strange And Forbidding Place Where No One And Nothing Are What They
Seem! Can They Escape The… Deadly Planet?”
In 1952 a screenplay was being shopped around to various studios in Hollywood to very unenthusiastic reception. Planet of Death was unlike anything Hollywood executives had ever seen. Written by newcomer Dean Shah, it was a familiar enough tale but told through the setting of an outer space adventure.
The crew of the interplanetary space saucer BR-549 led by Captain Hanno receives a distress beacon originating from the distant, previously unexplored planet, Exxilon 1. The crew is ordered to land on the planet, investigate the source of the signal, and report their findings back to Earth. Upon landing on the planet, they discover the lone survivor of the Icarus Party, Dr. Hephaestus. The Icarus Party was a colony ship of doctors, scientists and engineers presumed to have been lost in space when all contact was lost with them twenty years earlier...
(Blog Edit: Full plot synopsis in the book 😁 )
Majestic Studios was founded in Kourik, California in 1939 by investor Michael T. Snidely, who had found financial success by investing in several small, independent photography studios around New York. Snidely always insisted that you have to “give the public quality and something a little different from what they’re used to…at a reasonable price.” As his fortunes grew, he expanded to the Midwest, first to Chicago, Illinois, then southwest to St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri. It seemed only natural that Snidely would eventually progress to the next level and enter the motion picture business. In 1942 he sold his interests in all of the photography studios and, accompanied by a few of the photographers he convinced to try filmmaking, headed west to Hollywood where he founded Majestic Studios.
Majestic was never a very prolific or greatly successful studio, but what they did produce was of higher-than-average quality compared to other “poverty row” studios. By 1945 Majestic had improved its standing to a fairly respectable small studio, where an artist could be sure that executives would listen to their needs and concerns. Despite those efforts, most people considered Majestic just a B movie and serials studio, but Snidely was always keen to expand the studio’s output with hopes of becoming a more “respectable” and successful organization.
Snidely was impressed with Shah’s script for Planet of Death and with the passion the writer had for the story. His faith in the project led to Majestic taking a big financial gamble. Until that time, most science fiction films were thinly-scripted, B-movies rushed into and through production. This production would be unlike anything Majestic or any other studio had produced before in the genre. This film would be a big-budget, full color motion picture. Snidely collected on debts, called in favors and wooed investors, eventually succeeding in scraping together the funds that would be needed to realize the project.
In early 1953, planning and concept art was produced under the watchful eye of both Snidely and writer Shah, who had been brought onboard to assist in seeing his vision, now titled Deadly Planet, brought to life.
The original draft of the script only referred to the character as “the robot” or “atomic robot” and neither Shah nor Snidely had any idea of what it should look like. For convenience, they began referring to the robot as “Bob”, in notes and discussions, as a provisional name. Samuels made a few attempts at designs that resulted in the fairly dull, boxy robots common up to that time, and he admitted to being unable to get a proper idea to “gel” in his mind. Snidely reluctantly considered renting a robot costume from another studio, when Samuels suggested that Snidely check with an artist that he, himself, had only recently become aware of.
T.M. Lindsey was an eccentric California artist/engineer/inventor known for creating unusual works utilizing (then) relatively unknown techniques and materials. He had gained a small but respectable following but was not a household name, which seemed to have suited Lindsey’s reclusive nature.
“I was starting to get desperate,” Snidely said in a 1959 interview. “We needed the robot character, who [sic] we had started calling ‘Bob’ as sort of shorthand, and it needed to be right. Not just acceptable, but right. We had a meeting; “we” being me, Sammy (Gerard Samuels), and Dean (Shah), we had a meeting with this kind of oddball artist-inventor named Lindsey. His personality was a little off-putting, but his work was impressive. What sold me on hiring him was the look he had when we described the character to him. He just sort of went blank, in a way; just staring off into space. At first, it looked like he’d stopped paying attention, but if you looked, you could tell that behind his eyes, the gears were already turning, and I knew I had found my robot man.”
More to come...
