A great movie and could it be an early peek at “The Hale”?

I was watching a movie during the last month that we recently added to our collection called “The Heavenly Body”. No it’s not a recent film about dancing or whatever that more modern film with the same name is called. This is an older film from 1944, produced by MGM and sold in the Warner Archive Collection.

This movie is about astronomy and astrology. It’s a great movie, but I’ll save the reviews for a short article in the FAAC newsletter.

There is a “big telescope in the movie”. And for a while I thought it might be the “Hale Telescope” at Palomar. I watched the clip and read up a little more about the telescope online. The Hale telescope was being built but they stopped it’s construction during WWII. Could this mean, that someone was able to use it for a prop and a few scenes in this movie.

I decided to see if I could get some expert advice. Who better than someone out in California at the observatory. So I ripped a short clip of the big telescope in action and posted it on Youtube as well as talked to the Public Affair’s co-ordinator at Palomar. Scott Kardel. When I called he answered the phone and I asked him if he knew of an old movie from 1943 that might have the Hale telescope in it. He didn’t know of it or heard of the movie. He said he’d like to pick up a copy and watch the movie. It’s an excellent movie by the way and really a great movie for Astronomers and old classic movie fans.

Once I ripped a clip showing the “telescope” in action I sent him a follow up email with a link to the Youtube video.

(See first comment for link to Youtube video clip which will be removed in a few days.)

Before I tell you the results let’s take a look at a screen grab and talk about this compared to the image of the actual Hale Telescope today.

On the left you can see the telescope in the movie. It’s base looks a lot like the Hale in design. It’s back could have been the Hale at some point. The axis and counterweight area of the yold looks differently. Ther is a ladder that goes up on the movie version on the left side of the back of the yolk. But no cover over the base of the yolk and movie version shows a counterweight that is bare. Later in the movie our “professional Astronomer” in the movie played by William Powell stands behind the movie telescope. The movie telescope even moves. But the sky in the background outside the shutter looks fake. Could it be they draped some fake sky over the real dome for the movie? The dome looked pretty close to the Palomar dome, but of course all domes that were large looked that way. It would be easy for a studio to create a dome or set that looks a lot like the Palomar dome.

The Hale would not have a real mirror in the telescope, but we only see the scope in the movie used in a very basic way. The yolks to me look very similar, but there are some support braces missing in the movie version and it’s a different color scheme. Perhaps two tone. Also there is an extra ring cage on the top of the movie telescope. Could it be that this cage was on the original Hale during part of the construction and appeared in the movie?

Even the doorways, not shown in the scene, but there are doors and passageways that seem to match a bit from the modern photos and the hale. In another actual modern movie of the Hale, the floor has a circular round section. In the movie there seems to be a hole and place in the floor below the movie telescope, but it’s surrounded by a permanent looking wall and the floor may have some kind of basement stairwell or something like that inside it. Could they have moved or built some kind of more conventional looking wall around the pit below the telescope for the movie?

The desk in the movie looks fake kind of like a prop with controls that look more like buck rogers perhaps than a real control desk. Could it be that this was some early prop placed in a perspective to show the actors. Maybe they hauled a desk and did a little dressing at the Palomar observatory for a few quick shots?

In the movie the telescope moves toward the dome, but the yolk doesn’t rotate at all.

There are a lot of things that look very much the same, which you can see by comparing the screen shot below.

As I was waiting for his reply I found a Time life site, from under one of the links of “Friends of Palomar” site that had historical photographs of the Hale telescope. There is a cage at the top where a person sits. There was no ringed extra cage area on the top like that shown in the movie. Surely if this was real it might show up in some historical photo. That seemed to be a bad sign.

So what do you think?

Within a few hours an email arrived in my mailbox. He had told me on the phone the Palomar and Hale were featured in some science fiction movies. Would it be in this early movie. Did I discover some rare footage that was kind of lost from many of the Hale moving as a movie prop?

Scott stated there were enough things missing from this and in the basic way the movie prop functioned to show it clearly as a prop. The way it functioned proved it was not the Hale telescope. He stated it was a movie model that was built to look like the Hale, but it was just a model.

Even so, when you look at the scale of the set you will feel impressed and will feel like you are watching a huge Hale like telescope being used. For a prop or model looks massive. Perhaps the cutaways of William Powell behind the scope are even on a different set and they did some good trick photography with a model.

And perhaps a clue is the size of the back, but I thought for a while it was perhaps the inside rear cylinder and that was perhaps about 6 foot across and the model looked massive. If you watch the entire scene you’ll be able to see what I mean. I’m not leaving that clip up very long, as it was just put up for basic research and review purposes. I’m going to be taking that clip down soon. Even though it is a clip and I’m going to be reviewing the movie and it might be considered “fair use” I’m going to be taking it down soon.

For pictures of the real Hale telescope, check out the time life archive here.

http://images.google.com/images?q=palomar&q=source%3Alife

These came from a much more impressive blog about Palomar here.

http://palomarskies.blogspot.com

If you’d like to see an interesting shot of an early model of the Hale. Check out this direct link. It shows only one upper cage. Why would they add one for the movie?

The telescope or model in the movie gives you the feeling of a huge space and something as big as 200 inches. It was a really good model in my opinion.

Not bad for special effects in 1943.