"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine..."
Last November was the 40th anniversary of, perhaps unexpectedly, one of the most important TV dramas ever aired.
While next month will undoubtedly see much coverage of Threads, the acclaimed BBC equivalent drama - which celebrates its own ruby anniversary on September 23rd - it’s easy to overlook how big an impact The Day After had on both sides of the Atlantic.
From sparking grassroots activism towards nuclear disarmament to literally shaping US military policy, Nick Meyer’s TV movie - still the second-most watched drama in US television history - is more than just a footnote in modern politics, let alone broadcasting.
This was the very first thing I wrote for From The Sublime’s pilot issue, early last year.
It is October, 1983. The height of the Cold War.
Just two weeks previously, the world had teetered – accidentally – on the brink of nuclear Armageddon after Russian weapons detection systems erroneously mistook some clouds for US ICBM launches. A fortnight before that, a Korean 747 had been shot down by Russia after mistakenly straying into Soviet airspace.
All 269 people on board died.
Meanwhile America was preparing to deliver the first Pershing II nuclear missiles to West Germany. The planet’s superpowers were, to put it mildly, on a hair trigger.
On Columbus Day, President Ronald Reagan sits down to watch a video sent to him by television network ABC, a preview of something it was going to air the following month.
The contents of the tape were so shocking, it would leave him ‘greatly depressed’ and would – in part – shape the future of US–Soviet disarmament talks and the thawing of the Cold War.
But what was on that tape that so moved Reagan?
It wasn’t a news report, or a powerful new documentary, or a heartfelt story from a guest on a talk show.
It was a TV movie. Starring Steve Guttenberg and John Lithgow, and directed by the man who’d just made Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
And that TV movie would, incredibly, change the balance of world peace.
ABC had been looking for the next big drama following after the acclaimed, controversial success of Roots in the late 1970s. Following a screening of the Jane Fonda–starring nuclear drama The China Syndrome, the head of the network’s movie division started kicking around the idea of making a film depicting what would actually happen in the event of a nuclear war.
Experienced TV and film writer Edward Hume – the co–creator of procedurals such as The Streets of San Francisco and Cannon – was commissioned in 1981 and began digging into the wealth of research material around the topic.
Originally his focus was on Kansas City itself, and how it would have coped (or not) if the nearby Whiteman Air Force base was hit during a nuclear strike. But on a location visit in the area, they found the town of Lawrence – home to the University of Kansas – while researching places to stand in for a fictional small community in the story.
The town had both the needed locations and was, it was felt, about as close to the centre and the heart of America as you could get. As research and rewrites went on, it was decided to focus entirely on Lawrence and, rather than making it the location of a fictional stand–in, to set the story in the actual town itself.
Several directors turned the project down before Robert Butler, Hollywood’s go–to guy for filming TV pilots – including Star Trek and the 60s Batman series – was brought in to help steer the film. But after he dropped out due to other contractual obligations as production continued, ABC turned to an acclaimed young director who’d just been responsible for the second Star Trek movie – Nicholas Meyer.
Meyer was sceptical the film would even go ahead, because of the subject matter, but eventually agreed to take charge, bringing his experience in special effects requirements from making The Wrath of Khan.
His vision was to cast the film with largely unknown or lower profile actors, figuring the more it looked like a Hollywood star vehicle, the less believable it would be for audiences – although ABC insisted on at least one ‘name’ to sell the film overseas.
As a result, many of the minor parts were filled locally in Kansas, while the key roles ended up going to actors who – if not big names – had credible bodies of stage and screen work behind them.
Academy Award-winning character actor Jason Robards (above) was cast as the film’s nominal lead, Dr Russell Oakes, after a chance encounter with Meyer on a flight. The other major name, John Lithgow, came in on the back of two previous best supporting actor Oscar nominations.
Award–winning Broadway star John Cullum took the film’s everyman role, as farming father Jim Dahlberg while Bibi Besch – who had played Carol Marcus in Meyer’s Wrath of Khan – played his wife. Steve Guttenberg had already starred in a US TV series based on Billy Liar, and came to The Day After as student Steven Klein on the back of an acclaimed turn in Barry Levinson’s debut movie Diner.
JoBeth Williams had already made The Big Chill and Poltergeist when she took the role of an ill-fated nurse, while the production would provide early appearances for a clutch of actors who went on to bigger roles, including Stephen Furst, ‘80s scream queen Lori Lethin and Amy Madigan - who would win the Golden Globe for rising star shortly after finishing filming.
ABC had originally envisaged The Day After as an event miniseries, with two two–hour episodes airing on consecutive nights. Meyer, however, pushed back on this feeling the material would work better as a single movie–length story.
A fraught shoot – not helped by Meyer’s strained relationship with ABC films vice president Stu Samuels – added to an already difficult atmosphere on set. Producers showed Hiroshima Mon Amore to cast and crew to give them a sense of what they were making. Ellen Anthony, cast locally as the youngest Dahlberg daughter, later admitted the mood of the town had notably changed after seeing the horror the production was depicting.
Months of rows over edits and changes demanded by Samuels, by censors and even from the US Government – which said it would only cooperate with the film if it was made clear Russia fired first, dragged tensions out further.
Eventually Meyer walked off the project entirely, with ABC bringing in different editors to try and cut the film together… before conceding defeat and bringing the director back, with an final agreement to cut the whole thing down to two hours.
The rows, and special effects work required to depict the nuclear explosions – provided by Star Wars’ Oscar winning FX artist Robert Blalack and his Praxis visual effects company (a name which would crop up in a future Meyer SF project…) meant the film missed the originally planned airdate of May, 1983.
Ironically, that delay would ultimately prove a blessing in disguise for the film, allowing the hype to build for months before transmission.
ABC sent out their own version of protect and survive pamphlets, designed to prepare audiences for some of the more gruesome scenes and put context to the dramatic trailers that aired ahead of transmission.
If you’ve never actually seen The Day After – not necessarily surprising, for reasons we’ll go into in a bit – it tells the story of what happens to a small cluster of people living around the town of Lawrence, Kansas before, during and after an all out nuclear war between America and Russia. Ostensibly it is focused on two locations – the University of Kansas’ teaching hospital, where Dr Russell Oakes and his colleagues work, and the Dahlberg dairy farm 40 miles away at Harrisonville, Missouri.
While the Oakes are getting ready to say goodbye to their daughter, who is moving on an art scholarship to Chicago, the Dahlbergs are preparing for the impending wedding of their oldest daughter Denise to Bruce, a student at the university.
We also follow the ancillary stories of Airman Billy McCoy, stationed at the nearby Whiteman Air Base, another smaller crop farm owned by the Hendrys next door to McCoy’s post, and a group of science students led by Professor Huxley.
Against these domestic dramas, playing out in the background through news reports and barbershop conversations, tensions increase between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, culminating in a blockade and eventual invasion of Berlin by Russian forces.
As things escalate out of control, both sides launch their missiles, and World War 3 destroys their lives.
What follows is the story of attempted survival in the remains of the city as Dr Oakes and his hospital colleagues struggle to cope with the increasing number of casualties, while the Dahlbergs shelter in their basement along with Steven.
This being all out post–apocalypse, it’s safe to say – without fear of spoilers – that it doesn’t end well for anyone.
Watching The Day After now, it’s easy and glib to describe it as a Hollywood version of Threads, the BBC’s own horrific nuclear war drama which would scar a generation of British audiences the following September.
There are undoubted, coincidental similarities – the stories both follow the lives of families in provincial cities, and the war is largely a background event compared to the horrific aftermath it produces.
But where The Day After is much more American is not just in the different scope or the more expensive visuals, but in the focus on how communities react in the build–up to, and aftermath of, nuclear Armageddon.
Some of that comes from highlighting more of the military aspects of the war. Meyer made use of footage from a US propaganda film called First Strike, which had been made to question American military readiness in the Cold War. This gave Meyer the opportunity to show B52 crews getting their launch orders, and missile silo teams launching their weapons.
The inclusion of William Allen Young’s character, Billy McCoy, helps contextualise that further. As he says to his colleagues after the first missile launches: ‘The war is over. It’s over. We’ve done our job. So what are you still guarding? Guarding some cotton–pickin’ hole in the ground, all dressed up and nowhere to go?’
But the other notable difference is in the impact on society itself. Threads shows us how authority – in the form of local government – would function around a nuclear strike. Or not, as the case turns out. In The Day After, the government, barring one brief delivery of food parcels and a Presidential address on the radio, is completely absent.
The communities are left to sort things themselves, either through choice – as Jim Dahlberg asserts he won’t hand over any of his crops or livestock to the authorities in the workprint edit – or because the Republican vision of America leaves everyone to just get on with it.
The extended cut, originally released in Europe and outside the USA in cinemas, restored a few minutes of material removed from the ABC version – including, much to the horror of network TV censors, a scene where Denise retrieves her diaphragm before heading off with Bruce for the night.
But Meyer wanted to go much further with the film, as a rough, three–hour workprint cut highlighted when it surfaced online a couple of years ago.
Much of the cut material expanded on the characters in the build–up to the attack, showing more of Bruce’s reckless nature, as he cuts up a truck with Denise on the back of his bike while driving to the church.
Kyle Aletter lost most of her scenes as Marilyn Oakes, including a lengthy dinner with her mother who is clearly struggling with the increasing discourse around the potential conflict, and an extended scene with Russ where she explains why she’s moving to Chicago.
We see much more of her sheltering with the little girl and her grandfather during the attack build–up too. In the main edit they go underground, the bomb happens, some pipes explode and she goes up onto the street where she dies as one of the x–ray figures montage.
In the end her demise is much more grizzly – having used her art skills to try and calm the girl down by drawing her, the shockwave blows the pressure mains. In the ensuing stampede to escape the boiling steam, the little girl is trampled to death and as Marilyn reaches the surface, her jumpsuit bursts into flames, leaving her running down the street ablaze before being consumed by the nuclear firestorm.
The fate of the Hendry family was even worse. Although the film briefly shows them being consumed in the fireball, the original edit saw the skin on randy farmer Dennis’ arm visibly carbonise and smoulder. Scenes shot, but not included even in the rough cut, showed the doomed family – or convincing dummies standing in for them, at least – combusting and burning in the nuclear fire, a sequence too far even for the filmmakers.
JoBeth William’s character, Nurse Nancy Bauer, and Calvin Jung’s Dr Sam Hachiya both lost significant character moments that gave their stories more depth. Sam, we learned had twin daughters about to start school – and his wife was taking them out clothes shopping when the attack happened.
Nurse Bauer had a long sequence cut where she talks to Russ – where it turns out she had only just started at the hospital and he didn’t even know her name, and which adds more context to her ‘I don’t have children’ remark to an expectant mother before the attack.
Also lost – and indeed not filmed, although storyboarded as an elaborate FX sequence – was a planned birds eye view of the strike on Kansas itself, seen from the passengers of a plane flying overhead.
Sadly cut for timing was a brief moment as Oakes recovers in the university ‘hospice’ after his collapse - where John Lithgow’s character meets him in person, the film’s ostensibly biggest name stars incredibly never meeting on screen in the finished edit.
Perhaps the biggest loss, though, is the original ending. While the rough cut finished per the finished movie, with an ailing Oakes returning to the remains of his home in Kansas City, lost was an entire extra sequence where Steven takes the Dahlberg children back from hospital to the farm – and as he arrives, realises something terrible (and only briefly alluded to in the finished version) has happened to the other members of the family.
Presumably having Steven and Denise dying of radiation sickness and Danny permanently blinded was already seen as enough of a downer
That Columbus Day morning, Ronald Reagan sat down at Camp David with his tape, forwarded on by ABC in advance of the film airing on TV.
He wrote in his diaries for the day: “It is powerfully done — all $7 mil. worth. It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed. So far they haven’t sold any of the 25 spot ads scheduled & I can see why. Whether it will be of help to the “anti nukes” or not, I can’t say. My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent & to see there is never a nuclear war.”
The Day After was also screened for the Joint Chiefs, who were left ‘turned to stone’ by the experience, according to one official there.
It undoubtedly had a significant effect on Reagan, who had been a strong proponent of the nuclear arms race and deterrence since entering office. Almost exactly two years later, he and new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held their first summit in Lake Geneva, and by 1987 Russia and America had signed a treaty to begin reducing their nuclear arms race.
Reagan, in his 1990 memoir An American Life, made a direct link between that first screening of The Day After and the beginning of the disarmament programme, admitting a briefing days later from Pentagon officials on what nuclear war would be like ‘in several ways paralleled those in the ABC movie”, while his biographer Edmund Morris claims the film left the President brooding and upset for days afterwards.
Kevin Hopkins, director of the White House Office of Policy Information at the time, was sufficiently impacted by the film that he wanted Reagan to make a presidential address before The Day After aired, to talk about the White House’s deterrence policy.
“This would permit him to reach nearly all persons who are about to watch the movie, yet it would not unduly expand the movie's audience, as a speech earlier in the week theoretically might,” he wrote in a warning memo to Ed Messe, Reagan’s presidential counsellor – who had led the talks on the ‘Star Wars’ anti–nuclear defence programme.
To pre-empt the film, the Administration embarked on a pro-nuclear publicity round - and sent notes to ABC on what they wanted cut from the film.
“The sales department didn’t want it to go on the air, the legal department didn’t want it to go on the air, the programme department Management wouldn’t talk to me and Friday night before we aired on Sunday, the White House issued instructions to ABC - ‘we want the following edits’,” ABC Films president Brandon Stoddard revealed in an 2007 interview.
“And I said tell them to fuck off.”
The Day After remains one of the most watched non–sports programmes in US TV history, and the joint–highest rated drama – tied with that landmark 1977 adaptation of Roots. 100million people tuned in on November 20, 1983 – almost 65% of the US viewing audience, all watching in stunned silence at the same time.
The build–up to the airing had been controversial, to say the least. Although press coverage was huge – with it having the rare distinction of covers on Newsweek and Time among other publications, it was also poison for advertisers wary of having their products associated with the end of the world or Steve Guttenberg’s face peeling off.
"Everyone believed that no sponsors would come near it, and they were right, it was largely done commercial–free,” Meyer admitted in an interview last year.
Indeed the initial airing was largely devoid of ad–breaks entirely, particularly after the attack sequence when the horror starts to mount. The few adverts that did air, mainly for a low rent popcorn company, had been sold cut-price in an attempt to recoup anything from the movie’s $7million budget.
In the end, Reagan did not make a presidential address before the film. Instead, star John Cullum appeared in a piece to camera, where he warned parents that the subject matter would be disturbing for children – something reiterated with text captions during the ad breaks.
ABC would follow the show with a live debate, hosted by the distinguished journalist Ted Koppel and featuring the likes of Carl Sagan, Henry Kissinger and Bob McNamara to discuss what they’d just witnessed – in front of a traumatised looking studio audience – and the merits of nuclear deterrence policies.
However, Reagan was still sufficiently perturbed by the film that he sent his Secretary of State, George Schultz, to appear on the programme and argue the case for the administration’s nuclear policy.
Koppel introduced the debate: “There is, and you probably need it just now, some good news. If you can, take a quick look out the window.
“It’s all still there. Your neighbourhood is still there… Lawrence is still there.”
Reaction to the film was mixed, with right-wing critics accusing Meyer of doing Russia’s work for it and spreading anti–American propaganda, despite the film taking care to not definitively say who fired first and to show, ultimately, nobody would win a nuclear exchange.
But in the aftermath, it was clear it had had an impact - not just on policy, but on audiences. Discussion groups spread across the country and anti-nuclear campaigns across the US saw a huge spike in sign-ups.
Reagan himself would note, in his State of the Union Address a few weeks later, the need to avoid nuclear conflict. Within two years he was in talks with Gorbachev about reducing their respective nuclear arsenals - including those Pershing II missiles which the film narrowly predated.
The Day After would be shown around the world after its successful US transmission - either as a TV special or, in some countries, a full-blown cinema release – including Japan, where a special screening in Hiroshima was attended by survivors of the 1945 nuclear bombing of the city.
After the US controversy, the film would prove no less politically charged in the UK, where it aired shortly before Christmas 1983.
Michael Hesseltine, then defence secretary, demanded – and was granted, via an interview on ITV’s own debate show which aired immediately afterwards – a right to reply to the film, which drew 15million viewers on primetime Saturday night. Notably, in a sign of the nature of the debate in Britain at the time, TV regulator the IBA banned the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from running any adverts during The Day After’s commercial breaks.
Viewers in London, though, were treated to an added bonus - as late night topical revue show After Midnight, aired after the debate show, opened with John Sessions doing his impersonation of Hesseltine’s earlier response.
“The film you’ve just seen is no better than propaganda… well, it’s better than our propaganda, which is why I’m worried about it ”
The film was nominated for 12 Emmy awards at the 1984 ceremony – including best single drama, best director for Meyer, best supporting actor for Lithgow and best screenplay.
In the end, though, it only just two – both technical awards, for special effects and sound editing – though Hume’s script would later win the Writer’s Guild of America award for drama.
40 years on, The Day After remains a notably difficult film to get hold of, let alone watch.
Despite its importance and legacy, the show remains distinctly absent from Hulu in the USA or Disney+ globally, even though an episode of 2010s spy drama The Americans which is centred around – and features clips from – the drama and the characters watching it, is freely available.
Much like Threads taking an age to arrive on Britbox after its original announcement, the controversy around The Day After – and the timing of the Russia–Ukraine War – appears to have made potential homes for the movie twitchy about uploading it.
Even the 2018 blu–ray is difficult to track down these days. It occasionally pops up on the obscure end of the Sky EPG, if you look hard enough, but other that – and some dodgy uploads to YouTube – you might struggle to find it.
Curiously on this side of the pond, despite the controversy over the initial ITV airing, The Day After has not had the same impact. Indeed, in the last couple of decades has been increasingly overshadowed by the large mushroom cloud–shaped discussion and occasional memes generated by the re-evaluation of Threads.
But as we pass the 40th anniversary of The Day After, that impact is worth re-evaluating, especially given the current, troubled world condition.
The legacy of The Day After cannot be underestimated. There are not many television dramas that can claim to have a whole file around their contents stored within a presidential library, let alone be cited as a cause for changing an entire defence policy.
While The Day After may be hard to find these days, it remains even harder to watch - an unflinching vision of an apocalypse that thankfully never came. As a result. it has entered US television folklore in the way few other TV movies managed.
Indeed, an entire generation can, arguably, point to its transmission as a factor in them avoiding their own particular nuclear Armageddon.