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Flashback: Stanley Kubrick on the set of ‘Dr. Strangelove’

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FROM THE PHOTO ARCHIVES

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The late Stanley Kubrick would have celebrated his 80th birthday this year and this past April also marked the the 40th anniversary of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ That almost mystical masterpiece holds a singular place in cinema history, but for me the most enjoyable of Kubrick’s many great films was his scathingly funny (and in many ways, culturally prescient) 1964 film ‘Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which was nominated best picture and should have taken home the Oscar (sorry all of you ‘My Fair Lady’ fans).

I was digging through a folder of photos here in the stacks of the Los Angeles Times library and I came across this photograph that has no credit on it. I’m assuming it was sent out by Columbia Pictures’ publicity department but I can’t be sure. As far as I can tell, it never ran in the paper. Anyway, it shows the famously meticulous Kubrick on a ladder presiding over a shot of Tracy Reed (a member of a notable British family, which includes her late cousin, Oliver Reed) who happens to have been the only woman who appeared in the nuclear farce. She plays Miss Scott, the secretary for Gen. ‘Buck’ Turgidson (George C. Scott) but she also pops up in the movie as the woman in the centerfold of the Playboy magazine being read by Maj. T.J. ‘King’ Kong (Slim Pickens).

-- Geoff Boucher

RELATED: MORE RARE PHOTOS FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ARCHIVES

The stars of ‘Star Trek’ at work on the animated series in 1973

Superman on stage on Broadway in 1966

Star Trek’ fans protest NBC plans to cancel the show in 1968

Leonard Nimoy at age 20 in 1952, ready to live long and prosper

Alec Guinness with Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, 1987

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