In 1961, shortly after John F. Kennedy had been sworn in as president, two journalists, Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, set to writing a political thriller. It was inspired by the unsettling behavior of two generals, Edwin Walker and Curtis LeMay, both of whom had a history of using their positions to spout dangerous right-wing rhetoric that threatened to provoke nuclear war. In Knebel and Bailey’s version, a highly decorated Air Force general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff plots with other senior military officers to seize power from the president to prevent a disarmament treaty with Russia from going into effect.
And so, the nation got "Seven Days in May," which shot to the top of the New York Times best sellers list and remained on the list for months. When Kirk Douglas and director John Frankenheimer decided to adapt the book to the screen, Kennedy, who had read the novel and thought it frighteningly plausible, encouraged the project and even helped in the production. The film, as the book, enjoyed enormous success.
The two leads were Burt Lancaster, who played the general, and Douglas, as a marine colonel who helped foil the plot. But it is with two other members of the cabal that current interest lies. One is a California senator, played by ubiquitous character actor Whit Bissell, and the other is an overly ambitious right-wing media celebrity, played by Hugh Marlowe, who had once been the lead in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers." Without those two, representatives of the civilian government and the media, the plan would fail.
