Joe and Mary Smith, along with their son Johnny, have a modest home in a San Fernando Valley post-war housing tract. Joe works at the nearby Ajax Aircraft Company, Johnny
attends school and delivers papers with the goal of saving enough for a new bike and Mary is nine-months pregnant, staying at home these days.
The newspaper the next morning reports that thousand of people also listened to the radio the previous evening at 8:30 (different stations) and also heard a voice saying that it was God speaking.
Joe has a morning routine — a battle of sorts — with his car and a touchy starter. Invariably, he has to get out, raises the hood and jiggles things around to get the car started. And then zoom, out of the garage and down the driveway he goes, either just missing passing cars (which results in nasty exchanges) or, on this particular morning, he has a run-in with a motorcycle cop who cites him for reckless driving. As Joe angrily speeds away after getting a ticket, the cop chases him down again and cites him for speeding.
It’s bowling night and when Joe returns home, Mary tells him that she listened to the radio and heard the voice of God. A sign, she says, will be forthcoming.
The next evening, a mix up with the radio prevents the three from hearing the 8:30 broadcast live and by the time they get the radio up and running the announcer tells them that efforts to record the voice of God were a failure ... he reads God’s message. A sudden storm approaches and torrents of rain fall throughout the night.
The next morning, sunny, not a cloud in the sky … the storm has passed.
As they await to hear the 8:30 message the following night, Mary’s sister, Ethel arrives and moments later there is a clatter of dishes in the kitchen, Joe rushes in and finds that Mary is experiencing labor pains. Ethel stays with Johnny, while Joe takes Mary to the hospital and along the way his favorite motorcycle cop pulls him over for speeding, but lets him go with a warning when Joe explains the rush.
It turns out to be a false alarm and they return home. Ethel reads to them what God said in the broadcast that evening and is distraught over what she sees as a sign from God. Their mother died giving birth to Mary, and she is certain that this is what is going to happen to Mary with her second child. Joe becomes enraged.
On Saturday, Mary is still upset over the events of the night before, so Joe tells her that he is going to go out to get a pack of cigarettes, which takes the form of walking several blocks to a local bar, which has a vending machine. He’s about to leave when his old friend Mitch, just back from a long sea voyage, spots him and asks him to stay for a drink, Joe reluctantly agrees.
One drink leads to another and soon Mitch is calling over to their table a women sitting at the bar, whom he calls “Sweetie.” Joe, drunk and stammering, suddenly has something of an epiphany and accuses Mitch and the bar floozy of being evil enticements and storms out.
At home, Johnny sees his father falling down drunk and is ashamed. Joe passes out and Mary comforts him as he sleeps it off on the living room floor. When he awakes he apologizes to Mary for his behavior.
The next day, after attending church, Joe comments to Mary that their son remained aloof. Ethel arrives for the evening broadcast and Joe gives a heartfelt apology to her for his behavior, not only on the night of the false labor episode, but for the way he has treated and mocked her over the years.
When they go to get Johnny for the 8:30 broadcast, he is missing and Joe begins a frantic search of the neighborhood for his son. It is fruitless. As he stands in front of Bannon’s house, dejected, he starts to leave, but decides to check to see if son might be there, even though he knows that this is not likely.
When Bannon answers the door his demeanor is completely different from the daily encounters at work. He calmly invites Joe in and explains that Johnny, during the course of delivering newspapers each day, have become good friends. He tells the concerned Joe that his son is in the workshop out back … father and son reconcile.
The next evening, the entire community attends church to hear the 8:30 message from God. Joe, Mary, Johnny and Ethel sit with their neighbors and fiends and wait patiently for the message when the time arrives, but the radio that has been set up on the pulpit remains silent. One of the gathered clergymen rises and takes to the pulpit and announces that it is the seventh day and God must be resting … at that moment Mary goes into labor.
As they push through the overflow crowd outside, Joe’s favorite motorcycle cop spots them and seeing the problem gives Joe a motorcycle escort — siren blazing — to the hospital. Johnny and Joe wait until the news arrives that Mary has given birth to a daughter. Both are doing just fine.
God Speaks and the Atomic Bomb … A Changing Hollywood
There were two words that contributed is so many ways to define the types of science fiction, horror and fantasy movies that were made in the 1950s … these were: atomic bomb.
On July 16, 1945, the day of the Trinity test, J. Robert Oppenheimer is quoted as saying: “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” With the blast, mankind had become God’s competitor … a revelation that has echoed down the corridors of time. Not in a positive way to be sure.
Dore Schary, the recently appointed vice president in charge of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, had two things he wanted to explore with the making of just one film. The first was to produce a message film about, as he put it, “Man’s misuse of certain scientific miracles,” which is a nice way of saying that mankind had created the atomic bomb and now had at hand the means of total annihilation.
Add in the post-war tensions with Russia and what seemed to be an accelerated pace in the development of new technologies and the conclusion seemed to be that maybe, just maybe, we needed an intervention from God.
Secondly, Schary was faced with the rapid rise and influence of the medium of television, its impact on Hollywood and the business of making movies … some reforms were needed at MGM to address these issues. He needed to streamline and make more cost-effect the movie-making process.
Dore Schary want to shoot a film in two weeks for half the budget of what MGM was currently producing a film. This would be the movie put into production to see if it could be done.
Robert L. Lippert, as an example, had already figured it out … he was making movies in eight days to two weeks on modest budgets. In 1949 alone, Lippert produced 18 films … in 1950 he produced 22 new films.
Schary knew very well that there are two types of films that you avoid making in Hollywood. Audiences want to be entertained when they go to the local cinema and so “message movies” are a no-no.
Making movies about religion is “poison” and a quick way to lose money. If you lose money making movies at a major Hollywood studio you tend to get fired.
He was about to do both, a religious movie with a message.
The Making of The Next Voice You Hear
As the story goes, Albee was having lunch with a friend (as described in Schary’s book, which is a quick read and full of all sorts of film production insights) and the subject came up, “You Know,” he said, “wouldn’t it be something if God would come on the radio and give people such a scare they’d wake up and behave themselves!” Albee repeated his idea to Dale Eunson, the fiction editor of Cosmopolitan, who said he’d publish it if Albee followed through with writing such a story. Albee did.
The proposal to turn the Cosmopolitan piece into a movie landed at MGM and was rejected not once, but twice. Schary, however, was convinced that this would be the perfect vehicle for his two-week film production experiment, so he green-lighted the project and things were set in motion in November of 1949 to make The Next Voice You Hear.
You can’t actually hear the voice of God, such a thing would set off all sorts of religious backlash, so the script adaptation would have to be written is such a way as to have the various characters in the film talk about what they just heard on the radio rather than the audience hearing the voice of God first hand.
Schary would serve as producer and he also did the outline, or what is called a “treatment” for the film and then turned the actual script writing over to Charles Schnee. His resume was second to none at the time — Red River, They Live by Night, Born to be Bad, The Furies … and he would go on to win the Oscar for his 1952 script for The Bad and the Beautiful.
With the treatment and script in place, the production design team could block out the locations and the number of sets required for the film. Although billed as a small-budget film, this is still MGM, so 18 sound stages were devoted to the construction of the various interiors to be used in the film, including two bars — one seedy, one nice.
With the actors for the roles of Joe and Mary Smith in place — Joseph and Mary, really? — the next task was to fill the spot of their son, Johnny. After a round of auditions, Schary, decided upon the pro, child actor Gary Gray, who had more acting credits then Whitmore and Davis combined at the time.
Filming started on Feb. 21, 1950 and wrapped 14 days later on March 8.
It’s a Wrap … Now What?
Schary had accomplished the first phase, set it up, shot it quickly and kept the production costs down. By the 24th of March the film was complete enough for a “test” screening, which took place at the United Artists Theatre in Pomona — about 40 miles from the MGM lot.
Schary, Wellman and members of the production team “listened” to the audience’s reaction. Did they laugh when it was appropriate? Did they laugh or react to a scene that was completely off from what was expected? Was the screening a disaster? Is this a flop?
With the notes from the test screening, the visual evidence from observing the audience during the performance and the responses recorded on the question cards that were collected from them as they left the theatre, The Next Voice You Hear was going to be a commercial success. Some minor edits and corrections would be necessary, but nothing major.
Sheilah Graham’s “Hollywood Today” column followed a few days later and had this little ditty running in newspapers from the Atlantic to the Pacific, “Dore Shary’s ears must have been burning yesterday.” She continues, “A bunch of the boys who caught ‘The Next Voice You Hear’ — Dore’s pet project — were saying, ‘mark it down as the Academy Award winner for 1950’.”
Long-term contracts, Oscar-buzz … WOW! Then on Sunday, May 7, in the Los Angeles Times there’s a feature story E. J. Strong titled “ ‘Miracle’ of Spiritual Movie Lifts Nancy Davis to Stardom.” The studio was going all in on promoting Nancy Davis as a rising star, concluding the piece with, “If she becomes a top star it will not be an amazing miracle. It will be an every day miracle such as Dore Schary offers in ‘The Next Voice You Hear’.”
The Rollout … Small Budget Voice Gets Premium Venue
National gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported on May 17, “When Gus Eyssell saw ‘The Next Voice You Hear’ at a private showing, he insisted on having the picture for his New York (Radio City) Music Hall. It follows ‘Father of the Bride’ into the theatre on June 15.” Eyssell was the head of the Paramount Publix theatre circuit at the time, which ran the Radio City Music Hall.
The Sunday supplement, Parade Magazine, had a feature piece on May 28 from Kay Sullivan and Sid Ross titled “Here’s How to Cry.” There’s a full-page picture of Nancy Davis in the arms of James Whitmore crying her eyes out. The story read in part, “The pictures on these pages, taken by a PARADE photographer in Hollywood, show Nancy Davis rehearsing her crying scene for ‘The Next Voice You Hear.’ Miss Davis was really crying — her tears were so real that the impressed photographer reported he was ‘in cold perspiration’ after shooting the scene.”
June 15 came and went and the film still hasn’t opened at the Radio City Music Hall. On June 18 there’s a wire photo sent out with the caption, “Nancy Davis and Ronald Reagan were dates. Nancy, a former Broadway and television actress, soon will be seen in her first starring role in ‘The Next Voice You Will(sic) Here’.” Wonder how that worked out?
Billy Rose’s nationally syndicated “Pitching Horseshoes” column appears in newspapers nationwide on June 19. “ ‘The Next Voice You Hear.’ This strange and provocative chunk of film was produced by Dore Schary … I understand it was brought in for about $400,000, which is peanut-brittle money in Hollywood.” He continues, “Yet it has been booked into Radio City Music Hall — the first quickie to ever crash its platinum precincts.”
The teaser ads continue in the New York City newspapers on June 21, with the addition of new copy: “So important a production is ‘The Next Voice You Hear’ … that Random House will soon publish a book about it!” This would be Schary’s “Case History of a Movie.”
In the Sunday edition of the Daily News it is announced that The Next Voice You Hear will be making its “World Premiere” on Thursday, June 29. It would run exclusively for three weeks at Radio City.
Missed Opportunity … Schary and Wellman Play it Safe
The New York critics were mixed, but the common theme was that the film was “overly sentimental.” Schary and Wellman had pulled backed and made The Next Voice You Hear a family film with a small message about acting as better human beings (an embodied in Joe’s reactions to the voice of God on the radio) and not a “change your ways or face nuclear annihilation” wrath of God warning.
It turned a small profit for the studio, but did not make the Oscar cut. James Whitmore would become a star, but actually got more ink for his performance in The Asphalt Jungle, which also opened in 1950. Nancy Davis would marry Ronald Reagan on March 4, 1952, retire from acting in 1962 and become the First Lady of the United States in 1981. Gary Gray would also retire from acting in 1962, start a new, life-long and very successful career in the pool and spa industry.