The Beginning or the End (M-G-M), the first full-length movie to grapple with the atom bomb, was given its title, inadvertently, by Harry Truman. When the picture was proposed, the President (as well as MGM's pressagent can remember) remarked: "Make it a good movie. . . . This is either the beginning or the end." The M-G-M boys undoubtedly did their best, under great difficulties; but, also undoubtedly, they didn't make a very good movie.
Their difficulties, indeed, are more interesting than the finished product. Both Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer wanted to make the...