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So which one’s cooler, this or the Japanese poster we saw earlier? Hm? Yeah, run with that.

The American Version

A few different people have taken credit for bringing Godzilla to America, but the best claim to this seems to go to a one Edmund Goldman. Mr. Goldman, according to a surviving contract, bought the rights to Godzilla (the name already thus Americanized by Toho) on September 27th, 1955, for $25,000 – not too much, even then. He sold the rights, then, to Harold Ross and Richard Kay of Jewell Enterprises, who thought maybe they could release the film in the U.S. with new scenes cut in, to give it a new, American protagonist. So they brought in Joseph E. Levine, who bought half the rights for $100,000, and himself brought in Terry O. Morse, a minor director with a reputation as a ‘film doctor.’ Morse excised around 40 minutes (!) of the original film, and shot new scenes with noted (though not yet incredibly famous) actor Raymond Burr. Burr shot his scenes in about three days, apparently; all of the dubbing was done by a handful of Asian actors in an office, who had to read their lines at various speeds, in hopes that one such speed would sync roughly with the screen image. And then, in 1956, Godzilla, King of the Monsters was released in America.

This film is, well, a little different from Gojira. Which will happen, when you replace 40 minutes of a movie with 20 minutes of…something else. That something else is a bunch of scenes of Burr as United World News reporter Steve Martin (yes, yes, ha ha), who generally walks around and follows the action of the original while standing against remarkably bare walls. He also, helpfully, narrates, as does his apparent sidekick, security officer Iwanaga (played by Frank Iwanaga, an L.A. insurance salesman and sometime actor). The movie is also rearranged; it begins with the post-Godzilla ruin of Tokyo, moving to the hospital scenes thereafter (with Martin included as a victim), and then telling the story up to there as a flashback. In this, Martin is introduced as an old college friend of Dr. Serizawa’s, in Japan for a visit – remarkably, however, the two never meet. Instead, Martin is questioned on his arrival in Japan by Iwanaga – apparently, Martin’s plane was right over the ship disaster that kicks off the original film. Martin knows nothing, but expresses his curiosity, and so Iwanaga volunteers to escort him around; he apparently has nothing better to do. From there, the film progresses more or less in the manner of the original, with the notable exception of Dr. Yamane being consulted about the ship disasters, well in advance of any mention of a monster. Are paleontologists always consulted about shipping problems in Japan?

He is a wild and crazy – look, nevermind.

In light of all this, it should perhaps come as no surprise that a good deal of the life is sucked out of Gojira by this version. Much character development disappears; we see but little of Serizawa and his conflict, and we never learn why it is that Yamane wants to study Godzilla. Hagiwara and Shinkichi are almost entirely gone. And Martin is inserted into the story poorly; his connections to the main characters of the film are painfully contrived, and, as a character, he of course does nothing to actually propel the plot forward (as is pointed out in the audio commentary). He just, plain, out-and-out narrates portions of the movie, which is obnoxious; still, one almost wonders if things would have worked out better if he’d been even more of a narrator – a reporter sent to cover these things, rather than an ‘old friend’ of everyone, forever talking to the main characters while said characters’ backs are turned to us – the original actors, of course, having nothing to do with this. A number of sources – including the commentary – defend this version of the film, usually as “inferior to the original, but not as bad as all that.” And this is true, for what it’s worth. The dubbing is used sparingly, which is good; the film as a whole is remarkably respectful to the Japanese, considering the freshness of the memory of World War II at the time. But, again, this is faint praise, in the long run. Where this film really deserves credit is in launching the popularity of Godzilla throughout the world. For better or worse, it did accomplish that.

It has been stated that King of the Monsters deliberately downplays Godzilla’s atomic metaphor, for political reasons; this is probably not true. Indeed, Martin has a line in which he describes Godzilla’s victims as suffering from “shock and strange burns.” Still, a great deal of the a-bomb metaphor is excised, both as a result of so much of the original film in general being erased, and also presumably to make the film less grim and hence, more saleable (which is, of course, no excuse). A number of conversations comparing Godzilla to the bomb – on the train, for example, and between Ogata and Yamane – disappear; we see the mother telling her children about joining daddy, but hear no translation; Yamane’s speech at the end, about how continued nuclear testing could lead to more such disasters, is gone; and so on. The closest thing to a politically-charged alteration is the changing of Serizawa’s dread of the Oxygen Destroyer being turned into a weapon; instead it is a mere concern that it might fall into “the wrong hands” – a minor change, but a relevant one, to America at the time. In any case, this was the era of “duck and cover,” of survivable nuclear war, in the U.S.; much of the atomic allegory would have been lost on most Americans of the 1950s. The Japanese, of course, knew better.

Next: The DVD

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 8:00 am and is filed under Godzilla Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.