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Jane Jetson working out her strained fingers in the premiere episode of “The Jetsons” (1962)

This is the first in a 24-part series looking at every episode of “The Jetsons” TV show from the original 1962-63 season.

Episode 01: “Rosey the Robot,” originally aired: September 23, 1962

If you flipped through the Cedar Rapids Gazette on September 23, 1962 the news looked fairly typical for the early 1960s.

There was a short item about a Gandhi memorial being planned in London. There was an article about overcrowded schools and the need for new junior high schools, since the baby boom had inundated the schools and enrollment in the Cedar Rapids public school system was increasing by about 1,000 students each year.

Newspaper ad for color TV in the September 23, 1963 Cedar Rapids Gazette

The Gazette also had an editorial about “lame-brain bigots” in Georgia who were burning down black churches, and a column about the fact that one out of every 38 children born in Linn County in 1961 was born out of wedlock. The paper had recipes for poached eggs and peas with lemon butter sauce, as well as ads for the Smulekoff’s furniture store imploring you to buy a brand new color TV—with prices starting as low as $495 (about $3,500 adjusted for inflation).

But tucked away within the TV listings for that week was the mention of a show that would radically shape the way Americans would talk about the future for decades to come. The newspaper had an article about the arrival of color on ABC’s Cedar Rapids affiliate, KCRG channel 9. NBC had been “carrying the color ball almost singlehandedly” for years in Cedar Rapids but starting that evening, ABC would join the color fray with a new show called “The Jetsons.” At 6:30 pm that night “The Jetsons” would debut against “Dennis the Menace” on channel 2, “Car 54 Where Are You?” on channel 6, and the season premiere of NBC’s immensely popular “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” on channels 7 and 13.

Of course, it wasn’t just the people of Cedar Rapids who were tuning in on Sunday to watch a middle class family stumble through modern life in the year 2062. People all over the United States got their first taste of the Jetsons’ vision for tomorrow on that autumn evening.

Push-Button Living

There’s perhaps nothing more Jetsonian than the push-button. Jane Jetson pushes buttons to make dinner, to clean the home, and even to wake up her husband George. The running gag throughout the entire series is that the only thing George does all day at work (all three hours of it) is push a button.

From the very first scene of the first episode we learn precisely how difficult the people of the future have it. Jane Jetson is standing in front of a flat panel “3D” TV and conducting a strenuous workout — of her fingers. Of course, we’re meant to laugh at the fact that people of the year 2062 are living in the lap of luxury needing only push a button to accomplish what used to take hours, but it was also a subtle jab to those viewers at home who may complain about how difficult life is when all the modern conveniences of 1962 were at their disposal.

It’s important to recall that some scholars have argued that modern appliances didn’t actually save nearly as much time as originally envisioned. That’s because these gadgets impose higher standards of household efficiency and cleanliness—we take it for granted that our closets will always be filled with clean clothes; that our yards should boast perfectly maintained lawns and gardens; that our shiny kitchen appliances will make it possible to enjoy diverse and tasty meals. Many people today question this same line of thinking about technological progress, arguing that computers and smartphones have made us more productive, but that the standards for how much one person needs to accomplish have simply risen with it. Not to mention the “always available” culture that our devices have cultivated.

Two screenshots from The Jetsons showing Jane Jetson doing housework

While we often associate leisurely push-button living with the Jetsons, longtime readers of Paleofuture will know that this futuristic cartoon family didn’t invent the concept. In December 1950 an Associated Press article ran in newspapers across the country that gave readers a peek at the year 2000. Experts across all kinds of fields were consulted and the article took it as a given that the American home of the future would be much more automated than it was mid-century:

People will live in houses so automatic that push-buttons will be replaced by fingertip and even voice controls. Some people today can push a button to close a window – another to start coffee in the kitchen. Tomorrow such chores will be done by the warmth of your fingertip, as elevators are summoned now in some of the newest office buildings – or by a mere whisper in the intercom phone.

But, as is often the case in the Jetsons’ world, the gadgets of tomorrow in the premiere episode don’t always work as they were intended. Gadget malfunction is rampant and a source of financial stress in the Jetson home, recalling an article in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine just a few years earlier.

Writing in the September 13, 1959 Chicago Tribune, Evelyn Zemke projects herself into the futuristic world of the year 2000. The “pizza for breakfast?” bit is nearly identical to what we see play out in the Jetson household during the premiere episode.

“Call a service man,” my husband always says when one of our appliances refuses to function.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, it is. At the very worst, probably only the washer, dryer, dishwasher, and TV would give up one day. But what about the housewife of the future – say of the year 2000, when the electronic era will be at its peak?

I can just picture myself in her place - ready to start another care-free day sitting around reading a science fiction thriller while the gadgets do all the work. Already the electronic brain in my kitchen is busy preparing and serving breakfast.

My husband, arriving at the table exclaims, “Pizza? For breakfast?”

“I pushed the button labeled BACON AND EGGS, but-”

“There’s a wire crossed somewhere. Call a service man.”

After doing so, I dispose of the garbage in the electronic disposal unit and pile the dishes in the ultra-sonic dishwasher. Then, after pushing the button which starts the electronic vacuum cleaner, I go out to the garage to set the timer for our radar controled lawnmower.

“Ki-yi-yi!” Sounds like Fifi, our pet poodle.

My daughter, standing in the doorway, calls, “Mom! The cleaner is vacuuming Fifi!”

Judy and her mother Jane Jetson in their home in the premiere episode “Rosey the Robot”

Baby Boom

The premiere episode also shows viewers an interaction with Jane and her daughter Judy that hints at what would later be called the generation gap. Many of the same fears parents have here in the 21st century about their kids “growing up too fast” were splashed across popular media of the 1960s. The August 10, 1962 issue of Life magazine ran the story “Boys and Girls Too Old Too Soon: America’s Subteens Rushing Toward Trouble.” The story included a provocative photo essay showing 12 and 13-year-olds going on dates and engaging in “heavy necking.”

In the 1950s and ’60s the teenager and “subteens” (what we today might call a tween) became a force to be reckoned with. There was suddenly a group of kids larger than any American generation that had come before it, and this had a dramatic ripple effect throughout our society. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa — like hundreds of other communities across the U.S. — that meant building more schools. And for the burgeoning medium of television, that meant delivering storylines which sometimes reflected the growing pains of what was held up as the model American family.

Slidewalks of Tomorrow

As we looked at this past January, the idea of abundant moving sidewalks in the city of tomorrow predates The Jetsons by over half a century. But some of the more interesting mid-century examples, which likely influenced The Jetsons, came from TV and Sunday comic strips. The Disneyland TV episode “Magic Highway, U.S.A.,” which aired on May 14, 1958 looks like it may have inspired the Jetsons’ slidewalks of the future. The show also likely drew inspiration from print media, like the Sunday comic strip “Closer Than We Think,” which you can see below.

Jane Jetson on a moving sidewalk in the premiere episode of The Jetsons

Moving sidewalk of the future in the 1958 Disneyland TV episode “Magic Highway USA”

The June 7, 1959 edition of Arthur Radebaugh’s Sunday comic strip “Closer Than We Think”:

The large malls planned for tomorrow’s metropolitan centers will not be tied up with vehicular traffic. Shoppers and sight-seers will be transported by mobile sidewalks that closely resemble giant conveyer belts. Parcels to be delivered will be carried by overhead rail to trucks on the area’s perimeter.

Moving sidewalk in the June 7, 1959 comic “Closer Than We Think”

Hello Rosey

An interesting detail that’s established in the first episode, but isn’t necessarily carried throughout the series, is that the robot maid of the year 2062 is considered a luxury item. One of the reasons that Jane buys Rosey instead of the more “distinguished” robots (shown as distinguished by simply having British and French accents) is that the Jetsons simply can’t afford anything more expensive.

Rosey the robot maid is perhaps the most iconic futuristic character to ever grace the small screen. Rosey is high-tech, but she’s also fallible. The mere fact that I use “she” rather than “it” speaks to what she represented — the humanoid robot helpers of our future, imperfect as they may be. And strangely, she doesn’t play a very prominent role in the first season of “The Jetsons.” The premiere episode establishes that Rosey is a valued member of the Jetson family, but as you’ll see over the course of this blog series, she doesn’t get a lot of screen time. Perhaps because she was so beloved by kids who saw her on reruns during the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s she receives a much more prominent role in the 1985 reboot.

Rosey the robot maid waits for the Space Bus in this screenshot from “Rosey the Robot”

If you own the first season DVDs or watch it online you may notice that the first season has title cards which include Orbitty, a character that wasn’t introduced until the 1980s reboot. Knowing that the episode title slates on my DVD copy of “The Jetsons” were from the 1980s, I went down to the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills a few months back to see if I could find any clues about the true spelling of “Rosey.” As I mentioned last week, there has been some confusion about the proper way to spell the name. The Paley Center has an enormous collection of old TV and radio programs and sure enough, they have a copy of the first episode of “The Jetsons.” I was a little surprised to learn that the first season wasn’t aired with individual title slates, but I found some vindication in my spelling of “Rosey” in a 1962 board game that was on display.

Jetsons board game released in 1962 (cameraphone photo taken at Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles)

Reception

Reviews of  The Jetsons were generally positive on the day following its premiere, with Rick Du Brow from the UPI calling the show a “genial time killer.” But as we looked at last week, the show suffered from a tough time slot (in most markets it was up against the established powerhouse that was “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color”) and a relative blandness when viewed in black and white, as most Americans did in 1962.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette‘s article about the new influx of color TV programming in Cedar Rapids proclaimed that “this year should be a coming-up-roses year for those who believe that television minus color is like the sky without blue.” Writer Nadine Subtonik acknowledged that it was still expensive but that if kids hound their parents enough “making Mom and Dad’s life miserable” then widespread color TV adoption was a certainty in the near future. But how many color sets were in the Cedar Rapids area at the time? “A quick survey the other morning convinced me of only one thing: Nobody has the faintest idea!”

There are a number of different technologies and subtleties within the Jetsons world that I didn’t touch on in this post, but just know that this was by design. While writing this post I came to realize that if I try to reference every gadget or social anachronism I’ll wind up with 24 novel-length posts and nobody wants to read that. We have 23 more of these to go, so please be patient if I missed your favorite doodad or whatsit. We’ll likely get to it in a future post. And thanks for reading!

The Jetsons title slate from 1962

It was 50 years ago this coming Sunday that the Jetson family first jetpacked their way into American homes. The show lasted just one season (24 episodes) after its debut on Sunday September 23, 1962, but today “The Jetsons” stands as the single most important piece of 20th century futurism. More episodes were later produced in the mid-1980s, but it’s that 24-episode first season that helped define the future for so many Americans today.

It’s easy for some people to dismiss “The Jetsons” as just a TV show, and a lowly cartoon at that. But this little show—for better and for worse—has had a profound impact on the way that Americans think and talk about the future. And it’s for this reason that, starting this Friday, I’ll begin to explore the world of “The Jetsons” one episode at a time. Each week I’ll look at a new episode from the original 1962-63 series, beginning with the premiere episode, “Rosey the Robot.”

Read my recap of Episode 1 here!

Futures Redux

Five decades after its debut, not a day goes by that someone isn’t using “The Jetsons” as a way to talk about the fantastic technological advancements we’re seeing today. Or conversely, evidence of so many futuristic promises that remain unfulfilled. Just look at a handful of news stories from the past few days:

• In fashion. (“Who better than the Jetsons to be inspired by for an out of space theme?”)
• Johnny Depp talks about the West Memphis Three emerging from prison after nearly two decades. ( ”By the time you came out, it’s ‘The Jetsons.’ It’s a whole ‘nother world.”)
• James Cameron talks about the future of interactive movies. (“There might be a certain amount of interactivity, so when you look around, it creates that image wherever you look,” Cameron says. He concedes it is far off: “You’re talking ‘Jetsons’ here.”)
• The future of cars, as depicted at the Los Angeles Auto Show. (“Considering that 2025 is only 13 years away, you would think that nobody’s going to go ‘Jetsons’ with their presentation, but the LAASDC doesn’t roll like that.”)
• The sound of kitschy futurism in modern music. (“Silencio allows Sadier’s various musical influences to breathe and linger, without being upstaged by the motorik propulsion, and ‘Jetsons’ kitsch, of the Stereolab formula.”)

Thanks to my Google Alerts for words and phrases like Jetsons, Minority Report, utopia, dystopia, Blade Runner, Star Trek, apocalypse and a host of others, I’ve been monitoring the way that we talk about the future for years. And no point of reference has been more popular and varied as a symbol of tomorrowism than “The Jetsons.”

Golden Age of Futurism

“The Jetsons” was the distillation of every Space Age promise Americans could muster. People point to “The Jetsons” as the golden age of American futurism because (technologically, at least) it had everything our hearts could desire: jetpacks, flying cars, robot maids, moving sidewalks. But the creators of “The Jetsons” weren’t the first to dream up these futuristic inventions. Virtually nothing presented in the show was a new idea in 1962, but what “The Jetsons” did do successfully was condense and package those inventions into entertaining 25-minute blocks for impressionable, media-hungry kids to consume.

And though it was “just a cartoon” with all the sight gags and parody you’d expect, it was based on very real expectations for the future. As author Danny Graydon notes in The Jetsons: The Official Cartoon Guide, the artists drew inspiration from futurist books of the time, including the 1962 book 1975: And the Changes to Come, by Arnold B. Barach (who envisioned such breakthroughs as ultrasonic dishwashers and instant language translators). The designers also drew heavily from the Googie aesthetic of southern California (where the Hanna-Barbera studios were located)—a style that perhaps best represented postwar consumer culture promises of freedom and modernity.

The years leading up to “The Jetsons” premiere in September 1962 were a mix of techo-utopianism and Cold War fears. The launch of Sputnik by the Soviets in 1957 created great anxiety in an American public that already had been whipped up into a frenzy about the Communist threat. In February 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, but less than a year earlier the Bay of Pigs fiasco raised tensions between the superpowers to a dangerous level. Americans seemed equally optimistic and terrified for the future.

I spoke over the phone with Danny Graydon, the London-based author of the official guide to “The Jetsons.” Graydon explained why he believed the show resonated with so many Americans in 1962: “It coincided with this period of American history when there was a renewed hope — the beginning of the ’60s, sort of pre-Vietnam [protests], when Kennedy was in power. So there was something very attractive about the nuclear family with good honest values thriving well into the future. I think that chimed with the zeitgeist of the American culture of the time.”

Early character sketch of the Jetson family from the Official Guide to the Jetsons by Danny Graydon

Where’s My Jetpack?

As Graydon points out, “The Jetsons” was a projection of the model American family into the future. The world of ”The Jetsons” showed people with very few concerns about disrupting the status quo politically or socially, but instead showed a technologically advanced culture where the largest concern of the middle class was getting “push-button finger.”

It’s important to remember that today’s political, social and business leaders were pretty much watching ”The Jetsons” on repeat during their most impressionable years. People are often shocked to learn that “The Jetsons” lasted just one season during its original run in 1962-63 and wasn’t revived until 1985. Essentially every kid in America (and many internationally) saw the series on constant repeat during Saturday morning cartoons throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Everyone (including my own mom) seems to ask me, “How could it have been around for only 24 episodes? Did I really just watch those same episodes over and over again?” Yes, yes you did.

But it’s just a cartoon, right? So what if today’s political and social elite saw ”The Jetsons” a lot? Thanks in large part to the Jetsons, there’s a sense of betrayal that is pervasive in American culture today about the future that never arrived. We’re all familiar with the rallying cries of the angry retrofuturist: Where’s my jetpack!?! Where’s my flying car!?! Where’s my robot maid?!? “The Jetsons” and everything they represented were seen by so many not as a possible future, but a promise of one.

This nostalgia for the futurism of yesteryear has very real consequences for the way that we talk about ourselves as a nation. So many people today talk about how divided we are as a country and that we no longer dream “like we used to.” But when we look at things like public approval of the Apollo space program in the 1960s, those myths of national unity begin to dissolve. Public approval of funding for the Apollo program peaked at 53 percent (around the first moon landing) but pretty much hovered between 35-45 percent for most of the 1960s. Why is there a misconception today about Americans being more supportive of the space program? Because an enormous generation called Baby Boomers were kids in the 1960s; kids playing astronaut and watching shows like “The Jetsons”; kids who were bombarded with images of a bright, shiny future and for whom the world was much simpler because they saw everything through the eyes of a child.

Why Only One Season?

If ”The Jetsons” is so important and resonated with so many viewers, then why was the show canceled after just one season (though it was revived in the 1980s)? I’ve spoken to a number of different people about this, but I haven’t heard anyone mention what I believe to be the most likely reason that “The Jetsons” wasn’t renewed for a second season: color. Or, more accurately, a lack of color. ”The Jetsons” was produced and broadcast in color, but in 1962 less than 3 percent of American households had a color television set. In fact, it wasn’t until 1972 that 50 percent of American households had a color TV.

The Jetsons’ future is bright; it’s shiny; and it’s in color. But most people watching on Sunday nights obviously didn’t see it like that. The immersive world of “The Jetsons” looks far more flat and unengaging in black and white. And unlike the other network shows it was up against on Sunday nights (which was in most markets “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” on NBC and “Car 54 Where Are You?” on CBS) “The Jetsons” suffered disproportionately more from being viewed in black and white.

NBC also had an incumbent advantage. If you’d made “Walt Disney’s Wonderful of Color” appointment viewing for the past year (Disney jumped ship from ABC to NBC in 1961 where they not only began broadcasting in color, but added “color”  to the name) it’s unlikely you’d switch your family over to an unknown cartoon entity. “The Jetsons” was the first show ever broadcast in color on ABC, but it was still up to individual affiliates as to whether the show would be broadcast in color. According to the September 23, 1962 New York Times only people with access to ABC’s owned-and-operated stations in New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco and Los Angeles were guaranteed to see the show broadcast in color—provided you owned a color set.

I’ve takens some screenshots from the DVD release of the first season to show just how dramatic a difference color can make with a show like this.

Establishing shot from the Jetsons (“Rosey the Robot” September 23, 1962)

Black and white versus color comparison of the Jetsons (“Las Venus” December 16, 1962)

Screenshots from “Millionaire Astro” originally aired January 6, 1963

There’s also this promo from 1962, which gives us a taste of what “The Jetsons” looked like devoid of color. It’s bizarre for those of us who grew up on “The Jetsons” to see their fantastical world reduced to black and white:

The What-Ifs

There are a lot of “what-ifs” in “The Jetsons” universe that may have had substantial bearing on politicians, policymakers and the average American today. If we accept that media has an influence on the way that we view culture, and our own place in the future—as “The Jetsons” seems to ask us to do—we have to ask ourselves how our expectations might have changed with subtle tweaks to the Jetson story. What if George took a flying bus or monorail instead of a flying car? What if Jane Jetson worked outside of the home? What if the show had a single African-American character? These questions are impossible to answer, of course, but they’re important to recall as we examine this show that so dramatically shaped our understanding of tomorrow.

1985 and Beyond

Obviously the 1985-87 reboot of “The Jetsons” TV show played an important role in carrying the futuristic toon torch, but it’s in many ways an entirely different animal. The animation simply has a different feel and the storylines are arguably weaker, though I certainly remember watching them along with the original reruns when I was a kid in the 1980s. There were also movies produced—1990′s The Jetsons was released theatrically and the made-for-TV movie crossover The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones first aired in 1987. But for our purposes, we’ll just be exploring the first season and its immediate influence during the American Space Age. With talk of a live-action Jetsons movie in the works, it will be interesting to see how a revamped Jetsons might play today.

A few style notes that I’ll get out of the way:

• I spell Rosey the way it appeared in merchandise of the 1960s. Yes, you’ll sometimes see it spelled “Rosie” in video games and comics of the 1980s, but since our focus is the first season I’m sticking with Rosey.
• The show never mentions “within world” what year the Jetson family is living, but for our purposes we’ll assume it to be 2062. Press materials and newspapers of 1962 mention this year, even though the characters only ever say “21st century” during the first season of the show.
• Orbitty is from the 1980s reboot of The Jetsons. Orbitty, a pet alien, is essentially the Jar-Jar Binks of the Jetsons’ world and you probably won’t see me mention him again.

Meet George Jetson

The Jetsons, of course, represents a nostalgia for the future; but perhaps more oddly, it still represents the future to so many people who grew up with it. I’m excited to get started on this project and welcome your comments throughout this process, especially if you have vivid memories of the show from when you were a kid. I know I certainly do — I turned it into my career!

Update: The first paragraph of this post was revised to clarify that more episodes of “The Jetsons” were produced in the 1980s.

The helper robot brings the child of the future something to drink in bed (1981)

When I was a kid growing up in the late 1980s and early ’90s there were only two things that I was certain of when it came to my future: I was going to grow up to be an animator for Disney, and I was going to have a robot.

Sadly, my drawing skills peaked around the age of 10 and I still don’t have a robot.

The 1980s saw a steady rise in the use of industrial robots (especially in Japan) which led people to believe that domestic robots were indeed just around the corner. We’ve already looked at two different restaurants of the mid-1980s — one in Southern California, the other in Tokyo — that did their best to make robot waiters a reality. But it was the household robot servant of the future that was promised to every kid who ever saw Rosey zipping around on The Jetsons.

The 1981 children’s book Tomorrow’s Home by Neil Ardley included some illustrations of what those robots might look like. Above we have a picture of the child’s bedroom of the future.

Soon another day dawns and it’s time to get up. If there’s no one to rouse you, then you will have told the home computer to wake you at a certain hour. It draws the curtains back, talks to you, plays some music or starts the radio — however you like to start the day. Or maybe you don’t need to get up early today, so you’ve asked the computer to await your instructions on waking. Once you’re awake, you may not feel like getting up right away. You can summon one of the household’s electronic servants, and instruct it to bring you breakfast in bed, or perhaps to put out a particular set of clothes for you. Then you can ask the computer to display the day’s news and any mail it has received for you. But you can’t stay in bed all day, so it’s off to the bathroom before dressing. Here you may get into a special machine that will wash and tone up your body to clean and refresh you totally for the day that lies ahead.

Robot helps pour breakfast in the future (1981)

If you’d prefer to go all the way to the kitchen for breakfast, you’ll still find a helpful robot serving up your cereal. Though it looks like you have to dispense your own milk. Forget flying cars and jetpacks, where’s my milk robot!?!

Screenshot from The Jetsons episode “Rosey’s Boyfriend” (originally aired November 11, 1962)

Americans are gearing up for the presidential election this coming November, but many people are sadly unaware of an even more important vote taking place right now: 2012 inductees to the Robot Hall of Fame.

For the first time since its founding in 2003, Carnegie Mellon University’s Robot Hall of Fame is allowing the public to vote on which robots will be inducted. The robots are divided into four categories: Education and Consumer, Entertainment, Industry & Service, and Research. The final decision on which robots make the cut will be based half on the public vote and half on a “survey of experts.” You can place your vote here until September 30, 2012.

Past inductees to the Robot Hall of Fame have included HAL 9000, Gort, and the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover. This year’s nominees are listed below. Every category is incredibly competitive, with some tough choices all around. Don’t be shy about sharing your picks in the comments.

Education and Consumer

• Create
• Nao
• Vex Robotics Design System

Entertainment

• WALL-E
• Rosey
• Johnny 5

Industry & Space

• Packbot
• Jason
• Kiva

Research

• BigDog
• PR2
• Robonaut

As a sidenote, I may have to give up on my campaign to get people to spell Rosey’s name the proper way. After the Robot Hall of Fame spells it “Rosie,” it seems my case for the original spelling is that much harder. (It appears as “Rosey” in the opening slate of the first episode, The Jetsons: The Official Guide, as well as on toys and memorabilia from the 1960s.)

Illustration in Science and Invention magazine, explaining the special effects for Metropolis (1927)

Last week Geeta Dayal over at Wired published portions of a very cool 32-page program for the 1927 futuristic film Metropolis. The program is for sale at a rare book shop in London and seeing the blog post reminded me of an article in one of my magazines from 1927. It took me a little while to find (most of my archive is a terribly disorganized mess) but I finally found the magazine I was looking for — the June 1927 issue of Science and Invention.

The magazine featured a two-page spread titled, ”Metropolis—A Movie Based On Science,” with photographs and illustrations depicting how the movie’s cutting-edge effects were achieved. The use of miniatures, sparks of electricity with forced perspective and television-telephones are all explained in illustrations credited to “Bate.”

The creation of Metropolis and its many versions is a fascinating story. Director Fritz Lang‘s original cut of Metropolis was a financial flop and appeared in German theaters for only four months before it was pulled and recut. The film premiered in Germany but was actually released to American theaters before it received a wide German release. Strangely, American audiences never saw Fritz Lang’s edit of the film, since Paramount (the film’s American distributor) preemptively edited their version of the film. If you get a chance, I highly recommend that you check out the 2010 documentary Voyage to Metropolis, about the many different versions of this film and its ultimate restoration in 2008 to an “original” version after the discovery of an old 16mm version of the film in Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires version is believed to be the closest to the original, with over 25 minutes more than any previously known edit, and Metropolis was released theatrically in 2010 with these additional (if badly scratched) scenes added. I got to see the new cut two summers ago when it screened in Minneapolis and it really is gorgeous.

Just as different versions of this film are constantly resurfacing all around the world, I suspect different promotional materials — be they programs, magazines articles or movie posters — will continue to captivate historians and film fans hoping to learn more about how this classic piece of futurism was originally filmed and promoted. In the case of this Science and Invention article the film was promoted to an audience interested in how science would be used in movie effects of the future.

The illustration above, which shows the use of miniatures in the Metropolis city of tomorrow, is explained in the magazine spread:

The miniature set which was used in the filming of this remarkable motion picture. Toy trains and automobiles were pulled along the bridges by means of wires. The airplanes were suspended by a wire which was pulled by an operator outside of the set. At times full size lower stories were used, the image of the upper stories being reflected in a mirror to blend with them.

Forced perspective is used to give the illusion of sparks jumping between giant coils

The magazine explained right down to the voltage how sparks were produced, creating a dystopian atmosphere for those working. In order to make the giant coils on the right appear to have sparks jumping between them, forced perspective was used with the sparks little more than a couple of feet in front of the camera.

The effect of sparks jumping about the machines was produced by placing a small high frequency apparatus near the camera as shown above. In the finished picture the sparks seemed to jump from the two huge coils placed on either side of the mechanism.

Creating the laboratory scene

The illustration above explains how the magnificent glowing effects were produced using electricity and Geissler tubes.

The spectacular scene in the scientist’s laboratory. A weird effect was obtained by forcing compressed air through a closed tube containing liquid and illuminated by a lamp placed at the bottom.

“Television” of the future, as explained in Science and Invention

Also discussed is the television phone. As the illustration above shows, a movie projector is used to make it appear as if two people are having a conversation. We’ve looked at the evolving definition of television many times on this blog, and it’s interesting to see that this article uses the term “television apparatus,” without mentioning the word telephone once. Before television was ever realized as a broadcast medium (and it would be decades after Metropolis was released), television was often envisioned as a point-to-point rather than broadcast technology.

Of course the city of the future would have all the inventions of which we dream today. The recently perfected television apparatus, is in common use. By using it, those who converse may also at the same time see the other party.

The sectional view of the city of the future

The illustration above shows, “A sectional view of ‘Metropolis,’ the city of the future,” with the Capitalist’s City above, power production rooms in the middle and the Workmen’s Underground Homes below.

Workers make their way up a giant staircase

The article illustrates how actors were moved through, “The maw of the huge machine which ruthlessly destroys body and soul.”

The robot of Metropolis (a mannequin in this shot) is filmed with electricity encircling her

The illustration above shows how the “concentric rings of light which played about the manikin were hand operated” and gave the illusion that they were floating.

Shooting the destruction of “Workman’s City”

The last illustration in the two-page spread shows the destruction of the “Workman’s City,” which is again shot in miniature.

A small set was used and water, forced through pipes, was directed through the sides of the buildings and down from above. Pipes placed at street level ejected water in a geyser-like effect.

Aesthetically, Metropolis went on to influence countless other films about the future — from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, to the design of the robot C3PO in the Star Wars franchise.