Robert Walker portrays General Groves' aide, with Audrey Totter adding a dash of spice as his girlfriend, who is also General Groves' secretary.
Henry O'Neill is General Farrell, in charge of the mission to drop the bomb, with Barry Nelson as the pilot of the Enola Gay, Col. The large cast includes Hume Cronyn as Robert Oppenheimer his fellow scientists are portrayed by Richard Haydn, Joseph Calleia, Hurd Hatfield, Norman Lloyd, Frank Ferguson, and several other fine character actors. The final part of the film depicts the flight of the Enola Gay, a story which MGM would focus on more extensively half a decade later in ABOVE AND BEYOND (1952). Documentary footage is briefly incorporated showing the construction of production facilities in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. Groves, who had the challenge of managing the massive, multi-state project which had to be kept top secret. This movie, which was released in February 1947, traces how scientists from the U.S., Britain, and Canada joined together in atomic testing and the development of the atomic bomb. Given the historic scope of the story, it's somewhat surprising that this film - made just a year after the war ended - is today relatively little known. THE BEGINNING OR THE END is MGM's telling of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Joel and Frances McCrea Ranch Foundation.A Mythical Monkey Writes About the Movies.Tonight's Movie: Shipmates Forever (1935).