On April 1, Cinema Retro held a screening of Sidney Lumet's 1964 Cold War classic Fail Safe at the legendary Players club in New York City. Editor-in-chief Lee Pfeiffer interviewed actor Fritz Weaver, who made his feature film debut in the movie. Weaver recalled that Lumet gave his leading actors the choice of what role they wanted to play. He chose the cold, calculating political scientist, but Walter Matthau had already taken that role. Weaver then chose to play the tightly-wound colonel who cracks under the pressure of trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. He later learned that Matthau had wished he had played that role, so both men ended up playing the part the other actor actually would have preferred.
Weaver recalled that the film was shot entirely at the old Fox Studios on 54th Street in New York. With a virtually non-existent budget, production designer Albert Brenner worked miracles by creating some stark and realistic sets replicating the interiors of bombers as well as the Air Force command center in Omaha. (Also in attendance was Players member Joe Wishar, who worked on Brenner's team.) Weaver said there was some intimidation on his part performing with such heavyweights as Matthau (who was not yet associated with comedy roles) and Henry Fonda, who so memorably played the president. He recalled that Fonda was a quiet man who rarely looked people in the eye, preferring to endlessly doodle on pads while engaging in conversation. Weaver landed the part after having impressed Lumet when he worked with him in TV productions. He said that Lumet had his cast rehearse for three weeks to get in sync with their parts - a practice the director still follows today. He also discussed the high profile actions brought by Stanley Kubrick, who feared that his similarly-themed Dr. Strangelove might be hurt if Fail Safe was released first. Ultimately, Columbia, which was releasing the Kubrick movie, bought the rights to Fail Safe and shelved it until Strangelove's run had been concluded. The result was a box-office disaster for Lumet's film, though it has since been regarded as a classic. Â
Weaver, who had not seen the movie in many years, said he was deeply moved by the film and felt it had not lost any of its power - especially the ending that still packs a wallop today. On a lighter note, he expressed shock at how many club members had approached him to commemorate his pop culture status as the first villain on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series, having played Andrew Vulcan in the show's pilot The Vulcan Affair. "It was just another job at the time", he said. "I never dreamed it would have such influence on people!"