Great Characters: Dr. Strangelove (“Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Loved the Bomb”)

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Loved the Bomb is one of my top five favorite movies, a brilliant satire on the Cold War. Living as a boy for four years on a SAC Air Force Base in Minot, North Dakota, home to the country’s largest B-52 group and a state strewn with ICBM sites, I was pretty motivated to track U.S.-Soviet relations. So when I saw Dr. Strangelove for the first time as a teenager, the movie pretty much rocked my world. And no character rocked it more than Dr. Strangelove himself:

In addition to Strangelove, Sellers played the British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake and the U.S. President Merkin Muffley. But it’s Seller’s performance as former Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove that is one of the most memorable roles in the last half-century of movies:

In the insanity of the movie’s story universe, Strangelove serves as a Mentor figure. And his character is a great object lesson that even demented figures have, at least in their own mind, a plausible world view.

Well, that would not be necessary Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Slams down left fist. Right arm rises in stiff Nazi salute. Arrrrr! Restrains right arm with left. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.

Perfectly reasonable, right? But then there’s the slight issue of the good doctor’s unresolved feelings for “Mein Fuhrer” that derails the effect of his ‘logic.’

Dr. Strangelove: a great movie character.

A trailer for the movie:

Who else is a fan of Dr. Strangelove?

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