A Space Odyssey
Film marking its 50th anniversary of opening in theatres featured well-known actor born and raised in the city
As movie buffs and sci-fi fans mark the 50th anniversary of the release of “2001: A Space Odyssey” this week, it is worth noting there is a Hamilton connection to what is now rated one of the greatest and most influential films ever made.
The Hamilton connection is actor Robert Beatty, who grew up in the Steel City and played the part of Dr. Ralph Halvorsen, who greets Dr. Heywood Floyd to the American moon base Clavius and accompanies him on the moon bus to view the mysterious and buried black monolith.
Dr. Floyd: “Don’t suppose you have any idea what the damn thing is, huh?”
Dr. Halvorsen: “Wish to hell we did.” The best that Halvorsen can come up with is that it was “deliberately” buried about four million years ago.
At the dig, a loud, high-pitched radio signal causes the visitors to cringe and grab their space helmets. The signal leads to the second half of the picture, the trip by the spacecraft Discovery One, two astronauts and the ominous HAL 9000 to Jupiter.
2001 had its world première on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, D.C. It is returning to theatres in May after being remastered by “Dunkirk” director Christopher Nolan.
Beatty was an actor for five decades, between the 1930s and 1980s, and appeared in many TV shows and films, but 2001 is probably his most significant role. It wasn’t a starring part, however, as the actors were not really the stars of 2001. It was the high-tech vision by director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke that was the star of the picture (though others say HAL, voiced by Winnipeg’s Douglas Rain, was the star).
In a 1974 interview with The Spec, Beatty was pleased with his career. He admitted it had been a bumpy life — noting he had been married four times — but said, “I killed myself dead as far as television is concerned. And with movies, too.”
Beatty was born Oct. 19, 1909, and raised on Sanford Avenue and Blake Street (No. 24). He attended Adelaide Hoodless Elementary School and Delta high school and, during the 1930s, worked as a cashier for United Gas and Fuel Company at its office on Main Street East, near Hughson Street South, in downtown Hamilton. He graduated from the University of Toronto.
In his spare time, he was an amateur actor for the Hamilton Players’ Guild and Attic Club. He found that his hobby was taking up more and more of his time and he finally made a decision between job or hobby. He left for England in 1936 after being accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
He was soon understudying for Raymond Massey in a West End production and worked for the BBC during the Second World War (he tried to enlist but was rejected because of a minor heart defect). He started landing roles in British films and later branched into TV work. He continued doing stage work.
2001 was greeted with mixed reviews in 1968, with some people like actor Rock Hudson not knowing if he had seen a masterpiece or the worst movie ever made. The reputation of the Kubrick film eventually fell on the positive side and it is often ranked by critics and film magazines as one of the top 10 films of all time. It was inducted into the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress in 1991.
Directors from Steven Spielberg to James Cameron have talked about the impact of 2001 on moviemaking over the years. They touched on the alteration of storytelling and the landmark special effects. George Lucas said it made people take science fiction seriously.
“2001 was more than a vision of the future,” critic James Verniere wrote in 2002 in a series on 100 essential films for the Library of Congress. “It was a vision of the future of movies.”
Some of Beatty’s other films included “Stairway to Heaven” (1946) with David Niven, “Odd Man out” (1947) with James Mason, “Captain Horatio Hornblower” (1951) with Gregory Peck and “Where Eagles Dare” (1969) with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. He was also in “The Martian Chronicles,” the 1980s miniseries of Ray Bradbury’s book, and had a role as an oil tanker captain in “Superman III” (1983). Beatty died March 3, 1992, at the age of 82 in London.