A Clear and Present Danger

Having recently just seen THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, I was reminded of this movie, which when made in 1970, was prescient. In a time when the first Earth Day was still in the planning stages, the film was a dramatization of the possibility of man-made environmental disaster, at a time when very few people were acknowledging the need for any environmental protection at all. While I saw it 34 years ago when it originally aired, I have never forgotten it.

Regrettably, the issues involved seem to be the same: the unwillingness of the corporate / business community to place the health and safety of society above their profits. I regard this movie as a harbinger of environmental cinema, in the same way that Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING made people sit up and take notice of an issue that could no longer be safely ignored. This film, made without the use of today's special effects, dramatically pointed out the potential that could result from unchecked industrial pollution.

For those who disparaged THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW as alarmist and unrealistic, this would be a good film to view, bearing in mind that the 'conventional wisdom' of the time when this was made was much the same, i.e. the world was so big and and a little pollution didn't really matter. In hindsight, A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER looks positively tame. No one today would look at this film and and label it as fear-mongering.

This was a conscientious film painfully self-conscious of the fact it was conscientious. Every quick-cut frame and out-of-focus montage of Hays Stowe walking through Chamberton with smokestacks belching and billowing pollution cried out that this was an important film with an important message.

As much as I tried to resist its earnestness (that long montage-filled stroll after learning of his friend's death), I soon found myself caught up and swept away. The script was so well written, and the all-star cast lent great credibility and urgency to the unfolding story.

The plot is simple: Hays Stowe's beloved law professor died from asthma brought on by the smog in the fictional city of Chamberton in an unidentified state. Hays believes air pollution is a "clear and present danger" and wants to make it his defining issue. His father, three-term Senator Holden Stowe, who has groomed his RFK-lookalike son to be his successor, strenuously objects. So too do Hays' two advisors, a proto-Carville and Stephanopoulos pair of professional spin doctors.

The film deftly avoids stridency and does present both sides of the issue. Jeff Corey plays a factory owner who convincingly contends that air pollution is the byproduct of American industry that affords us the lifestyles we enjoy. The pollution-spewing factories also provide work for thousands of people.

Conversely, although portrayed sympathetically, Professor Duke the ecologist is revealed to be an eccentric at best and a hysterical alarmist at worst. Coming unglued, he upends Hays' breakfast table, frantically piling up dishes to illustrate his point in a foreshadowing of Richard Dreyfuss' meltdown in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

A more rational and respected voice is the doctor played by a hangdog-faced Jack Albertson, utterly exhausted after treating dozens of Chamberton's citizens who have succumbed to the smog. Even disbelieving city attorney Pat Hingle is swayed by what he sees when cajoled into coming to the hospital at four in the morning by Senator Holden Stowe.

That leads into what was actually my biggest takeaway. Politics is all about power and leveraging it--for good or ill. Sen. Stowe can pressure people, dispatch people, and even ensure his son a plum guest spot on an influential talk show. Hays Stowe, a functionary in the attorney general's office, gets hung up on and called a "jackass" by the city attorney who all but tells him to "get outta Dodge." The film closes with Hays realizing one must wield power to get things done.

That said, one high hurdle to clear in my enjoyment of this film was the arrogance and imperiousness of Hays Stowe. For a man who boasts of being raised on a farm, he sure is accustomed to being waited upon, is rude to his chauffeur (blithely strolling away after he opens his car door for him), to the phone operator (who is berated for simply doing her job), and his advisor (to whom he barks a command t go to the hospital on a fool's errand). I also found his relationship to his daughter lacking in affection. His call to tell her his friend died was just bizarre. "You asked about Professor Shamokin and I evaded your question... I just thought you deserved an honest answer." Who talks that way to his own little kid? Hays was so thoroughly a politico he couldn't turn it off.

Raising the hurdle even higher was my lingering fond memories of a movie in which Hal Holbrook played a much looser and hipper senator: WILD IN THE STREETS from two years earlier. Contrasting the two performances of similar characters is a testimony to Holbrook's talent. I eventually warmed to Hays as much as one could. He's a chilly guy (that ludicrously long kiss with his wife Sharon Acker was good acting because passion and romance seemed wholly absent from his character).

Hays was self-absorbed too, like when he blindsided his advisors at a press conference by quipping, almost as an afterthought, that he would not be seeking public office. That remark also rudely upstaged Prof. Duke who stammered and sputtered on about smog to a room hemorrhaging its audience as reporters fled to phone in Stowe's startling remark. Only Hollis Kent, the William F. Buckley-style talk show host, saw Hays' refusal to run for the savvy political maneuver it turned out to be.

Robert Quarry played that TV interrogator with aplomb. This same year he played the title role in COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE, so talk about versatility! E. G. Marshall played Senator Stowe and was at this time already playing Dr. David Craig on THE BOLD ONES: THE NEW DOCTORS. (One can hear a page for "Dr. Craig" in an earlier scene with Jack Albertson.) Joseph Campanella, who played Hays' advisor Jordan Boyle, was currently co-starring in THE BOLD ONES: THE LAWYERS. That casting had me confident that this film was intended from the outset to become a series and a spoke in the BOLD ONES wheel of dramas.

One more cast note: I got a kick out of seeing Bernie Hamilton blowing his stack and hollering at Holbrook, which schtick would become Hamilton's stock in trade a few years later on STARSKY & HUTCH.

Asking for a friend: Why didn't anybody say "goodbye" at the end of a phone call? Literally every phone call in this movie ended abruptly. People just routinely hung up on one another. Even Hays' daughter hangs up on her dad without an "I love you, Daddy, bye." Okay, a mere bagatelle in the big picture, but it bugged me each and every time (and there are dozens of phone calls in this movie, which must have been sponsored by Ma Bell).

In the end, a compelling movie worth sticking with through the end. Historically significant too as it aired in March 1970, a mere month before the first Earth Day. With its still relevant ecological message I am surprised it slipped into obscurity.

I enjoyed this movie on election day, and it effectively underscored the necessary evil that is politics and the power wielded by the privileged few who play that game.