PROJECT MOONBASE

   Film (1953). Galaxy Pictures/Lippert. Dir Richard Talmadge, starring Donna Martell, Ross Ford, Larry Johns, Hayden Rorke. Screenplay Robert A. HEINLEIN, Jack Seaman. 63 mins, cut to 51 mins. B/w.

   This rarely seen film is of interest mainly because Heinlein worked on the screenplay. A three-strong expedition takes off from a space station orbiting Earth to select a site for a Moonbase from lunar orbit, but their rocket crashlands on the Moon. One of the three - a foreign spy (Johns) - subsequently dies and the others, a man (Ford) and the woman team leader, coyly named Colonel Breiteis (Martell), though doomed, are married via television bythe President of the USA (who, in a typical Heinlein touch, is also a woman). The ambitious idea, with its confident taking for granted of future TECHNOLOGY, is undermined by melodramatics, poor performances, and sets designed for tv, this being the theatrical release of an unsold pilot for a projected tv series, Ring Around the Moon.

   JB