Then there was the early 60s classic “Fail-Safe” which I stumbled into one night in the wee hours on WGN. It has a happy ending - New York City gets nuked.
But the amazing thing to me was watching top comic actors like Walter Matthau, Dom DeLouise and Larry Hagman - before they were famous - playing serious supporting roles. They were not playing for laughs.
If you’ve never heard of Fail-Safe, it is probably because it came out at roughly the same time as “Dr. Strangelove” which took much of the same premise only made it a true comedy with Peter Sellers, Slim Pickens and George C. Scott. The comedy drew far larger crowds and forced the well-made “Fail-Safe” into rapid obscurity.
Henry Fonda played the POTUS IN Fail Safe.
Good thing (Oh say can you see) Vindman wasn’t on the POTUS’s call with the Soviets, Fonda could have been Impeached.
We almost missed having Slim Pickens as Major Kong.
Story also goes that Sellers was so against the idea of himself also playing that part that he showed with his leg in a cast, but wasn’t even injured.
I also once read the Slim Pickens took allot of flack in Hollywood for being too much a cowboy even though he was one in real life.