Alas, Babylon

A live teleplay based on the novel by Pat Frank about the ultimate horror coming to your neighborhood. Don Murray is a lawyer in a small town in rural Florida. Life is simple; slow and idyllic, until the unthinkable happens one afternoon. Done at a time when most people had black and white TV's and the Cold War was very real and very, very close,it had a stark documentary style and feel to it that terrified people. A truly remarkable event in TV history, that probably should be in the Smithsonian and/or on the AFI's preservation list if it isn't there already.

a long, long, time ago i saw this on TV. well, does anyone remember it? i still do. it's one of the "golden age of TV" dramas that, at the age of 15, made me think outside the box (to use a modern phrase). the TV flick, the Day After, approached the same subject in a more scientific manner. Babylon, however, was more intimate and hopeful about the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. it contrasted with the movie On the Beach, which was released about the same time, and which had a dismal prediction for humanity.

pat frank and neville shutte had vastly differing outlooks.

i prefer Babylon.

Most people you might ask (those who have some idea) would tell you that "On the Beach" starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astaire is the most sobering movie made about a possible civilization ending nuclear war. They would be wrong. "Alas, Babylon" will chill you even now that the threat is gone. Andrews is a military officer on the Florida panhandle talking on the phone to his brother in southern Florida. The line goes dead. He walks outside and looks up to see a giant mushroom cloud over the city where his brother was. It goes downhill from there. The anarchy. The savagery. The beastliness of a human civilization thrown immediately back to the stone age and subjected to the cold blooded kill or be kill code in what was a few days before friendly neighborhood streets. No one's politics can overcome this stark reality.

April 1960... I was about to turn 13 and looking forward to high school. The black and white world view my Catholic education offered was dissolving into shades of grey. It was a year of personal renaissance-an explosion of diverse interests from zen, Tchaikovsky, architecture and TV shows like The Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90, which aired the haunting "Alas Babylon". Despite the optimistic prospects of an energetic young President, the looming complexities of the real world hit home. Nuclear annihilation was not just a very real possibility, it seemed hell bent toward probability with each evenings newscast. Alas Babylon. The details have seriously faded but I recall the title was a coded message between characters confirming the collapse of civilization. Alas Babylon might as well have been the prequel to Mad Max. My last recollection was hordes of strung out junkies destroying anything that stood between them and the nearest pharmaceuticals. It may not have had the biting wit of Dr. Strangelove or the graphic gore of The War Game but I was riveted nonetheless. I haven't a clue how it ended but I'd love to see it again if only to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

It is worth noting the majority of reviewers were living and viewing in Florida at the time of the Playhouse 90 broadcast. I am one of them, we had moved to Miami in 1959 from New Hampshire, and I was 11 when this program aired in 1960. To think we had been cooked for entertainment purposes was one thing, but, two years later when we were living in Satellite Beach during the Cuban Missle Crisis was another. It was real time - there were Davy Crockett missle emplacements right outside my school window. Patrick AFB had always been open, but then it was shut down, and attack aircraft taking off every 20 minutes. I walked to school (8th grade) one morning wondering if I would be alive that afternoon. The story Pat Frank wrote had currency. Those of you not around in those days, well, we have hopes you won't experience similar feelings.