Jump to content
The Education Forum

Seven Days in May and General Walker


Recommended Posts

Last night I watched "Seven Days in May". The film stands up very well. I was especially impressed with the acting and the script by Rod Serling.

The film is based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II and published in 1962. The author, Knebel, got the idea for the book after interviewing the Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay. At the time LeMay had spoken to some of his staff about removing the President from power.

In the film the leader of the plot, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, is compared to General Edwin A. Walker.

It is believed that Knebel got the idea for the book after a conversation with President Kennedy. It was Knebel's first novel. According to John Frankenheimer, the director, Pierre Salinger conveyed to him that JFK wanted the film be made, "these were the days of General Walker" and, though the Pentagon did not want the film made, the President would conveniently arrange to visit Hyannis Port for a weekend when the film needed to shoot outside the White House.

The main figure behind the film was not John Frankenheimer but Kirk Douglas and his film company, Joel Productions. It was Douglas who broke the blacklist with producing Spartacus in 1960. Joe McCarthy along with General Walker gets a mention in the film.

In the book, the secret United States Army combat unit created and controlled by Scott's conspiracy is based in Texas near Fort Bliss. However, in the film the venue is changed to San Diego. I wonder why?

Rod Serling is an interesting choice to write the script. He had very left-wing views and was very frustrated by the amount of political censorship he suffered. In 1959, he began producing The Twilight Zone. He stated in an interview that the science fiction format would not be controversial and would escape censorship unlike his earlier work on television. In reality the show gave him the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context.

Serling died of a heart-attack at the age of 50.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 41
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Last night I watched "Seven Days in May". The film stands up very well. I was especially impressed with the acting and the script by Rod Serling.

The film is based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II and published in 1962. The author, Knebel, got the idea for the book after interviewing the Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay. At the time LeMay had spoken to some of his staff about removing the President from power.

In the film the leader of the plot, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, is compared to General Edwin A. Walker.

It is believed that Knebel got the idea for the book after a conversation with President Kennedy. It was Knebel's first novel. According to John Frankenheimer, the director, Pierre Salinger conveyed to him that JFK wanted the film be made, "these were the days of General Walker" and, though the Pentagon did not want the film made, the President would conveniently arrange to visit Hyannis Port for a weekend when the film needed to shoot outside the White House.

The main figure behind the film was not John Frankenheimer but Kirk Douglas and his film company, Joel Productions. It was Douglas who broke the blacklist with producing Spartacus in 1960. Joe McCarthy along with General Walker gets a mention in the film.

In the book, the secret United States Army combat unit created and controlled by Scott's conspiracy is based in Texas near Fort Bliss. However, in the film the venue is changed to San Diego. I wonder why?

Rod Serling is an interesting choice to write the script. He had very left-wing views and was very frustrated by the amount of political censorship he suffered. In 1959, he began producing The Twilight Zone. He stated in an interview that the science fiction format would not be controversial and would escape censorship unlike his earlier work on television. In reality the show gave him the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context.

Serling died of a heart-attack at the age of 50.

for Rod, R.I.P. ,

RIP.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When Rod Serling began producing The Twilight Zone he recruited his friend and fellow radical, Charles Beaumont, to write some of the scripts for Twilight Zone.

However, in 1963, Beaumont began to suffer the effects of what has been called "a mysterious brain disease". His speech slowed and his ability to concentrate diminished, arresting his creative output. He died on 21st February, 1967.

For more information on Charles Beaumont see:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14497

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When Rod Serling began producing The Twilight Zone he recruited his friend and fellow radical, Charles Beaumont, to write some of the scripts for Twilight Zone.

However, in 1963, Beaumont began to suffer the effects of what has been called "a mysterious brain disease". His speech slowed and his ability to concentrate diminished, arresting his creative output. He died on 21st February, 1967.

For more information on Charles Beaumont see:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14497

Rod Serling attended Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, Ruth Paine's alma matter, where I had taken a course on the history of Vietnam in 1971 while at nearby University of Dayton.

Serling had a heart attack while in Ithica, upstate New York, where he was to give a lecture.

When I read in the newspaper that he had a heart attack I sent him a one-page letter c/o the hospital, but about a week later he died of a second massive heart attack. I wondered if he got my letter, which included a poem by William Butler Yeats, and a question as to what interesting projects he was working on at the time.

The day after he died I got a letter from Serling. I remember reading it on the front porch, and hearing the Twilight Zone theme in my head as I opened the letter.

He said, apparently in a dictation to a secretary, that he was not involved in any new projects, as he was more sick than the newspapers let on, and he thanked me for the poem.

BK

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Serling had a heart attack while in Ithica, upstate New York, where he was to give a lecture.

When I read in the newspaper that he had a heart attack I sent him a one-page letter c/o the hospital, but about a week later he died of a second massive heart attack. I wondered if he got my letter, which included a poem by William Butler Yeats, and a question as to what interesting projects he was working on at the time.

The day after he died I got a letter from Serling. I remember reading it on the front porch, and hearing the Twilight Zone theme in my head as I opened the letter.

He said, apparently in a dictation to a secretary, that he was not involved in any new projects, as he was more sick than the newspapers let on, and he thanked me for the poem.

What an interesting story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd be willing to bet that the title of the novel and movie was a pun on "LeMay." I mean, it could have been "Seven Days in June" or "Seven Days in August."

I remember seeing the movie a couple of times, wondering how they came up with such a believable story about an attempted coup d'etat in America. It was preposterous, such a thing could never happen here, but they made it seem so realistic! That's how naive or stupid I was back then.

I was also a big fan of The Twilight Zone. It would never have occurred to me back then that the government would care what was being written or shown in the entertainment world. (I had no idea, for example, that the government was out to get the editor of Mad Magazine!) Weren't there more important things to worry about? I remember reading about how the "insane" Ernest Hemingway, who was just a novelist who enjoyed hunting and bullfights, was convinced that the FBI was spying on him. How crazy can you get!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd be willing to bet that the title of the novel and movie was a pun on "LeMay." I mean, it could have been "Seven Days in June" or "Seven Days in August."

I never thought of that. I am sure you are right. It is one of the few "conspiracy" films that critics seem to like. I liked the way that Kirk Douglas character supports Scott's views but disagrees with his tactics. I thought the debates about disarmament were dealt with great fairness in the film.

What was the name of the editor of "Mad Magazine"?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What was the name of the editor of "Mad Magazine"?

William Gaines. His company also published great comic books like Tales from the Crypt, and some about war (I forget the titles) that told good stories depicting the horror of war. Of course the MIC (which in those days I didn't have the faintest idea about) didn't like that at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Was it LeMay whom Kennedy wanted removed from any future meetings with MacNamara, JFK and his staff or someone else?

Here is an exchange between myself and Jim Root where I posed several questions about Walker and he replied in what he emphasized was

necessarily a cursory manner.

To quote Jim:

"Feel free to post my replies but please add my name and the caveat that my research is complicated and in depth dealing with Edwin Walker and that these are nothing more than brief responses."

(I posed these questions and Jim replied.)

1) What do you make of Jack Ruby's attempt to implicate Edwin A. Walker and the Dallas Birch Society in the JFK hit during

Ruby's WC testimony?

Ruby was consistently afraid of Walker and his connections. Personal opinion leads me to believe that Ruby was working for another organization.......Check his lie detector information....if you examine it carefully there is a particular point where the needle jumped and no reason (such as movement) was noted at the time...This particular jump was questioned by the Warren Commission attorneys when they took the testimony from the technician that administered the test. The same "problem" was questioned by a future commission....In both cases the particular anomaly was explained away by the fact that Ruby may have moved causing the needle to jump but was not noted by the technician at the time.... The movement occurred before a question was asked so the explanation seems plausible but Ruby was informed that he was to be asked a question about a person when the jump occurred. It is the testimony of this person that Ruby was to be asked a question about that I find even more interesting in perhaps explaining Ruby's actions......

Two and three together:

2) What do you conclude from Walker's efforts at publishing the "Eagle Forum" as part of Willis A. Carto's racist and anti-Semitic

Noontide Press in California? Walker was a part owner as I recall. Have you ever read any of his racist and anti-Semitic diatribes

from The Eagle Forum yet?

3) Have you read Dr. Jerry Rose's Third Decade articles on Mary Ferrell's site about "Nut Country" and the meetings at the Jung

Hotel in New Orleans run by Edwin A. Walker a week before the assassination? What are your conclusions about these meetings?

It is my belief that Walker's actions after the Pro Blue fiasco was orchestrated to discredit Walker.....While this is difficult to explain in a short response I will suggest that Oswald's "defection" to the Soviet Union was an orchestrated event that Walker was directly involved in. When Oswald first sent a letter to the US Embassy suggesting that he wanted to return to the US, Walker's troubles begin. In parallel when the Soviets finally realize that Oswald is going to be allowed to return to the US, Soviet defector Noreseko makes contact with US Intelligence. I believe that, as Walker himself suggested, Oswald was working (knowingly or unknowingly) for both countries. It is also my belief that Walker was forced to accept his fate, without knowing the WHY and, as he did throughout his career, accepted his orders without question. US Law does not allow the military to spy on US citizens, by resigning from the military Walker was free to infiltrate the far right in America and may have been legally spying for US Intelligence agencies. I believe that if I am correct when Walker saw Oswald's picture on TV the day of the assassination he realized that he could be framed as a participant in the assassination, his action in the next 48 hours can be explained within this scenario.....as can the McCloy - Walker correspondence of June, 1963. Walker may have been the biggest Patsy!

4) Exactly whose "orders" do you think Walker was following when he led the "American Insurrection" at Ole Miss when his troops

opened fire on National Guardsmen? Have you read the book: "American Insurrection" and do you think Walker was an insurrectionist?

Did "his troops" open fire? No I have not read the book "American Insurrection." I do believe that Walker was a very slippery fellow!

5) What have you concluded about Walker and the sniper shot and "assn attempt" when he lived on Turtle Creek Drive?

I believe as Marina Oswald still believes to this day, Oswald attempted to kill Maj. Gen. Edwin Anderson Walker. Although Marina apparently does not now believe that her husband killed Kennedy when recently asked why are you so sure he shot at Walker....she replied because he told her he had! I also believe that Demitri D, brother of George D was instrumental in providing this information to those involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. It is shortly after the Walker assassination attempt that Richard Helms is being informed by the FBI of Oswald's movements....right up until FBI Agent Hosty reports on exactly where Oswald was working......this information (Hosty's third note) remains as a "missing" piece of information.....and as V Bugliosi says the withholding of evidence can be used to prove guilt. As I have pointed out in some of my posts in the months preceding Oswald's defection Helms was meeting with former SI personal that included close associates Of John J. McCloy and the brother of George D. It was speculated by one from this group that Helms was going to be running an off radar intelligence operation through Helsinki in the upcoming months. Was this the Oswald "defection" into the Soviet Union? Good question but I uncovered this correspondence exactly where my research has led me.

6) Was RFK justified in sending Walker to the loony bin at the Springfield, MO federal penitentiary after Ole Miss?

Well Walker, until his death, believed that RFK was instrumental in releasing Oswald after the attempt on Walker's life. I believe that Oswald was involved in the downing of the U-2 aircraft on May 1, 1960 which led to the failure of the Paris Summit scheduled for May 15, 1960, a summit that John J. McCloy did not want a Limited Test Ban Treaty signed at. McCloy got exactly what he wanted! Oswald was very familiar and disturbed by these two incidents and spoke about them at Spring Hill College. I will suggest that Kennedy's success in the Democratic Primary was sealed after the downing of the U-2 and the election would have been won by Nixon if, in May of 1960, Nixon and Eisenhower would have been perceived by the American Public and the world as a whole as being the men Working toward cooperation with the Soviet Union and to a thawing of relations in the Cold War. It is my belief that Kennedy recognized that his election may have been helped by the actions of John J. McCloy and rewarded him by recognizing him in the first paragraph or his very first press conference. RFK may have been well aware of the roll of Walker in the insertion of Oswald into the Soviet Union and how that played into the downing of the U-2 and the Presidential election. If true it is reasonable that RFK would have worked to tarnish Walker's reputation rather that have the possibility of having revealed the true nature of a, perhaps, orchestrated U-2 event that had led to the election of his brother John. Oswald running around in the US may have presented an interesting problem to people such as Richard Helms and others........

7) Do you still consider Walker to be more of an "American Patriot" or an "American Insurrectionist?" Just curious.

Well he may have been one or the other as you suggest.....but hey, if he wasn't one then was he the other? Interesting question that has led me to research in great deal the whole life of Edwin Walker. And as I said he was a very slippery fellow.......!!!!!!!!

I forgot to add item number 8 which was:

8) Richard Condon even refers to either a Turtle Bay or Turtle Creek location in Texas in 1959 where a certain suspect in the 1958 plot to kill JFK lived at that time. Walker lived on Turtle Creek Drive, but was there ever a Turtle Bay section in Dallas? Do you think Condon was referring to Edwin Walker at that time and his residence on Turtle Creek Drive?

Perhaps item 8) is the most important of all questions about Walker...

I think that perhaps even I have given short shrift to the role of Edwin A. Walker over the years, having temporarily overlooked what

Jack Ruby and Richard Condon had to say about him decades ago. My guess is that many of you would reach the same conclusion.

Ironic is it not, that despite the number of MacArthur's minions thick as thieves in the JFK plot, little attention has been focused

on these characters over the years despite the recent onslaught of evidence spearheaded by the revelations in TMWKTM by Dick Russell.

Wonder if it would have been any different had this knowledge been revealed in the 1970's instead? I think so and told Dick as much.

When you put together the research done on Edwin A. Walker by Dr. Jerry Rose in "Nut Country" (Third Decade) and elsewhere you

must be inspired to include Walker high on your suspects list. After all, he joined Willoughby, MacArthur, Wm Potter Gale and others

like Wedemeyer, Stratemeyer, Fellers, etc. among the recently humiliated, debunked and deposed anti-USA insurrectionists and mutinous recalcitrants who seemed to favor Nazism over Democracy as their birthright. This characterization might just blow the doors off most

alternative conspiracy theories being proposed, but in fact history shall record this theory and this pattern as being quite factual. I just wonder

why it took so long for this concept to get even a small foothold in JFK conspiracy documentation. Well, not really, when you had the

Far Reich fighting the concept for so long. They did a hell of a job at it, too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What was the name of the editor of "Mad Magazine"?

William Gaines. His company also published great comic books like Tales from the Crypt, and some about war (I forget the titles) that told good stories depicting the horror of war. Of course the MIC (which in those days I didn't have the faintest idea about) didn't like that at all.

here are some of the threads where Gaines has been discussed:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10259

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4338

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4384

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9366

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Note that the Scots-o-phone names Mattoon Scott and the character's maneuvering for political party influence also invoke Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who opposed Truman.

I could swear that the dialog does at one point put the Ecomcon base in Texas, but Mr. Simkin's seen the film more recently than I. Maybe there's a breach of continuity in the script.

The San Diego location may reflect a budgetary need to build and shoot the base and the associated diner and highway scenes closer to Hollywood, in the California desert. The filmmakers may have felt it unrealistic to pass off western desert as Texas scrublands, and so changed the dialog.

Edited by David Andrews
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rod Serling is an interesting choice to write the script. He had very left-wing views and was very frustrated by the amount of political censorship he suffered. In 1959, he began producing The Twilight Zone. He stated in an interview that the science fiction format would not be controversial and would escape censorship unlike his earlier work on television. In reality the show gave him the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context.

In 1952 Charles Beaumont wrote a short story entitled The Beautiful People. In 1962 it was adapted for the Twilight Zone (Number 12 Looks Just Like You). This is the opening narration in the Twilight Zone: "Given the chance, what young girl wouldn't happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let's call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future when science has developed a means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow — but it happens now in the Twilight Zone. ”

This is the synopsis of the story that appears on Wikipedia:

In a society of the future, Marilyn Cuberle chooses not to undergo "The Transformation", which happens to everybody at the age of nineteen (either by convention or by law; it isn't made clear) and makes them beautiful and immune to disease.

Many years before, wise men decided to try to eliminate the reasons for inequality and injustice in the world. They saw that physical unattractiveness was one of the factors that made men hate, so they charged the finest scientific minds with the task of eliminating ugliness in mankind. As they learned to reshape the features and remove the body, they also learned to eliminate most of the causes of illness, and thus to prolong life. Before "The Transformation" a person could expect to live 70 or 80 or perhaps 90 years, but with "The Transformation" a person can live two or three times that long. "The Transformation" must be performed when the body and the tissue are at the proper state, which is at nineteen years old.

Nobody else can understand why Marilyn does not want to undergo "The Transformation" and sees nothing wrong with her own, distinctive appearance. Her "radical" beliefs were fostered by her father, who came to regret his own Transformation years earlier (and, as we learn, committed suicide in a fit of depression.) By reading her deceased father's diaries and books (banned in that time), she comes to realize that when everyone is beautiful no one is because without ugliness there can be no beauty. That the leaders of society don't care whether people are beautiful or not, they just want everyone to be the same. In a fit of despair she eventually undergoes the procedure and--surprisingly--is enchanted with the beautiful result. Why this is so is ambiguous: does "The Transformation" alter personality, too? Or is Marilyn so seduced by her lovely new form that her objections have simply melted away?

The closing narration: “Portrait of a young lady in love — with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These and other strange blessings may be waiting in the future — which after all, is the Twilight Zone."

One critic noted the anti-capitalist theme of the programme and wrote: "Rod Serling begins to seem like a living-room Bertolt Brecht."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting thread. I must admit that both The Twilight Zone and Mad Magazine were huge influences on my youth, and probably helped sculpt my progressive sensibilities.

As most here know, JFK thought a Seven Days in May scenario was possible, if a young president made a number of mistakes like his mistake at the Bay of Pigs. He didn't seem to know that the likes of LeMay considered his performance re the Cuban Missile Crisis and test ban treaty equally deserving of condemnation.

The initial reaction to Seven Days in May is also of interest.

From patspeer.com, chapter 1b

The next day, February 12, 1964, the cinema classic Seven Days in May was released to the public. The film, a cautionary tale directed by John Frankenheimer, depicted an attempted military coup within the United States. Its creation was encouraged by President Kennedy, who'd told a number of his friends that he thought such a coup was a real possibility should the president lose the support of the Pentagon. The initial response to the film reflects that elements of the media and government, even months after the assassination, still believed that their primary responsibility was to assure a worried public that everything was OK. As reported in David Talbot's Brothers, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner publicly questioned whether the film should even have been made, as "The world is on too short a fuse," and the film could damage "the American image abroad." Across town, the Examiner's larger rival the L.A. Times shared this concern but instead took the time to assure its readers that nothing like this could happen in America. Meanwhile, congressmen called for the film to be clearly labeled fiction before it could be shown overseas.

Meanwhile, across the country, Americans picked up the February 15, 1964 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. Inside was an article by the CIA-friendly columnist Stewart Alsop, not surprisingly defending the CIA against some recent charges that it was out of control and was conducting its own foreign policy. No doubt concerned about the effect these charges might have on the public, particularly when combined with the almost simultaneous release of Seven Days in May in the theaters, Alsop tried to cut off any speculation of CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, and made out anyone questioning their involvement to be a communist dupe. He complained about the recent treatment of the CIA in general, and then reported "a few highly respectable journals have even half-echoed The Communist Worker's charge that Lee Harvey Oswald, murderer of President Kennedy, went to the Soviet Union in 1959 as a CIA hireling." Alsop then shared even more certain knowledge that he could not possibly know, assuring his readers: "Lee Harvey Oswald never at any time had any connection whatever with CIA, although suspicions on that score are perhaps natural in view of the mystery surrounding Oswald's travels and his sources of income. The highest officials in the CIA are ready to so testify--and indignantly--before the Warren Commission investigating the murder. 'If anybody in the CIA had hired so obvious a psychotic,' says one of the greatest experts in the intelligence business, 'he should have been fired on the spot." One might rightly wonder if Alsop's "expert" wasn't Allen Dulles himself, seeking to cut off the questions he knew would not be answered by the Warren Commission. One might also wonder why the "highest officials in the CIA" would be so "indignant" about being asked such a reasonable question, by men who fully understood that they would lie without impunity.

Two days later, on February 17, 1964, probably at the prodding of the same CIA employees who'd probably prodded Alsop (this might have been Allen Dulles-let's be realistic), Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut made a long speech defending the CIA. Dodd repeatedly, and cynically, quoted President Kennedy, in support of the CIA. He concluded "I think it can be stated as a certainty that many countries that remain free today would not be free if it had not been for the CIA." The possibility that the CIA was involved in killing Kennedy was not among the litany of criticisms dismissed by Senator Dodd. Apparently, such talk was not to be acknowledged within the hallowed halls of the U.S. Senate.

The next week, in its February 21, 1964 issue, Life Magazine ran an article about Oswald, and, for all intents and purposes, convicted him in the public eye. The cover featured a photo of Oswald holding a rifle, with a pistol on his hip. The caption read "Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit." The cover story was entitled "The Evolution of an Assassin." Oswald had been convicted as the sole assassin by President Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the New York Times, Newsweek, T.V. Guide, and Life Magazine. The only witnesses called by the Commission up to this date had been members of his own family.

If there'd been conspirators still at large, they were now specks off in the distance.

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Incredibly, the folks at HBO thought they could do a better job than Douglas and company did, and did a remake, entitled "The Enemy Within," in 1994. (They stole their new title from a book by Robert Kennedy.)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/19/arts/tv-...ays-in-may.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Incredibly, the folks at HBO thought they could do a better job than Douglas and company did, and did a remake, entitled "The Enemy Within," in 1994. (They stole their new title from a book by Robert Kennedy.)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/19/arts/tv-...ays-in-may.html

I've seen the Enemy Within, and it's a good film, with a fine performance by Forrest Whittaker. I'm not so sure HBO thought they could do a better job. It seems far more likely they thought they could update the story, so that its insights could reach a new and younger audience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...