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World of Westfahl |
Encyclopedia Introduction |
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Acknowledgements
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(1916–1983). Hungarian writer, producer, and director.
Wrote stories for scripts: "Beyond" (script Robert Smith
and George Van Marter), "Y.O.R.D." (with Van Marter; script Leon Benson), "Stranger
in the Desert" (script Robert M. Fresco and Curtis Kenyon), "Sound of Murder"
(script Stuart Jerome), "Death at 2 AM" (script Ellis Marcus), "The Frozen
Sound" (with Norman Jolley; script Jolley), "The Stones Begin to Move" (script
Doris Gilbert), "The Negative Man" (script Thelma SCHNEE), "Dead Storage"
(script Jerome), "Target Hurricane" (script Eric Freiwald and Robert Schaefer),
"Postcard from Barcelona" (with Tom Gries; script Sloan Nibley), "Before the
Beginning" (script Arthur Weiss) (1955), "Signals from the Heart" (script
Jerome), "The Long Sleep" (script Weiss), "The Green Bomb" (script Gries),
"When a Camera Fails" (script Jolley), "The Missing Waveband" (script Lou
Huston), "The Human Experiment" (script Gilbert), "Beam of Fire" (script
Jerome), "Living Lights" (script Marcus), "The Miracle of Dr. Dove" (script
George Asness), "Brain Unlimited" (script Nibley), "Survival in Box Canyon"
(script Huston) (1956), episodes of Science Fiction Theatre.
Supplied divers and diving equipment: Thunderball
(Terence Young 1965).
Appeared in: The World of Inner Space (short
documentary) (1966).
Anyone familiar with the history of science fiction film
can readily maintain that this has long represented a grievous omission in this
encyclopedia—since during the key decade of the 1950s, when science fiction
film essentially was defining itself, Ivan Tors was a major player in the
process. A few plays written in his native Hungary, military service during
World War II, and some nondescript screenplays in the late 1940s and early
1950s had not satisfied his ambitions: he wanted to be a producer, and he
wanted to produce science fiction films. He consulted with noted science
fiction fan Forrest J. ACKERMAN,
who suggested several noteworthy novels he
might adapt for the screen, but Tors ultimately resolved to rely upon his own
original stories, which would place an unusual emphasis on scientific accuracy
and originality.
The three films that resulted—The Magnetic Monster,
Gog, and Riders to the Stars—are often dismissed as stilted and
didactic, but no one can say that they were derivative, because Tors if nothing
else had a flair for story ideas that were unlike anybody else's. The
Magnetic Monster was not a biological creature with homicidal impulses, but
rather a newly discovered radioactive element with the ability to expand
indefinitely if hero Richard CARLSON
cannot devise a scientific solution to the
problem, while Gog features an underground laboratory, dedicated to
constructing Earth's first space station, which is menaced by enemy agents who
take control of the facility's robots to carry out acts of sabotage and murder.
But Tor's masterpiece was unquestionably Riders to the Stars. Ignore the
idiotic premise that Americans must send astronauts into space to retrieve
meteors in order to discover what sort of coating they have to allow them to
travel through space unmolested, and you are left with science fiction film's
most realistic portrayal of how human space flight would actually proceed, with
astronauts in space constantly communicating with monitors on Earth who provide
information and advice, as well as the most skilled cast ever assembled for
such a project: astronauts Carlson and William
LUNDIGAN, supported by
scientists Herbert MARSHALL and Martha HYER.
Tors next moved into television to produce the
pioneering television series Science Fiction Theatre, which did have a
certain quaint charm, as host Truman Bradley would always begin by offering
some brief scientific lesson vaguely relevant to the slow-moving narrative
which would follow. All things considered, it's ironic that one of the novels
that Ackerman pitched and Tors rejected as a film project was Hugo Gernsback's Ralph
124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (1925), since episodes of this series,
even more so than Tors's movies, generally represented precisely the sort of
science fiction that Gernsback preferred—heavy doses of scientific education
combined with a story about a scientist and his latest invention or discovery.
While there may have been enough novelty in its subject matter to keep Science
Fiction Theatre alive for two seasons, it's hardly surprising that it
wasn't a big hit and has been rarely watched since its cancellation.
Obviously interested
in greater profits than these ventures had provided, Tors then decided to
radically change the direction of his career—which would be the basis for a
counterargument to the effect that my neglect of Tors was entirely understandable,
since after five years of specializing in science fiction, Tors effectively
abandoned the genre for the rest of his long career. His subsequent films and
television series, almost without exception, either would feature adorable,
bright animals regularly coming to the aid of their less-capable human
companions, or would involve explorations of an exotic but more down-to-earth
realm than outer space—the world beneath the sea. Considering the former, the
preternatural intelligence of the creatures Tors presented, unobserved in their
real-life counterparts, would arguably qualify their series as fantasies, yet an
encyclopedist has to draw a line somewhere, and I personally refuse to spend
any of my time researching mind-numbing series like Flipper (1964-1967),
Daktari (1966-1968), and Gentle Ben (1967-1969). As for the
latter aquatic epics, these would occasionally stray in mildly futuristic
territory, but the results were either dull—Around the World under the Sea,
The Aquarians—or risible—Hello Down There (a film which, if
you can actually manage to sit through it, qualifies you as a better man than I
am). Still, all of these efforts, unlike his earlier science fiction work,
undoubtedly earned Tors enough money to support a luxurious retirement—which
was fortunate, since similar endeavors in the 1970s, his final decade of work,
were uniformly unsuccessful.
Today, it is
hard to discern any evidence of Tors's legacy, since few if any science fiction
films or television series follow his quirkily pedagogical pattern, and few if
any films or television series feature heroic animals or undersea adventurers.
The unifying aspect of all his productions, one might say, is that he told the
kinds of stories that people rapidly outgrow. However, this also is precisely
why Ivan Tors is fondly remembered by those aficionados of science fiction film
who never grow up. Speaking as one of them, I should have remembered him long
ago.
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