Just Imagine
| Just Imagine | |
|---|---|
Lobby card
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| Directed by | David Butler |
| Produced by | Buddy G. DeSylva |
| Starring |
El Brendel Maureen O'Sullivan John Garrick Marjorie White |
| Music by |
Hugo Friedhofer Arthur Kay |
| Cinematography | Ernest Palmer |
| Edited by | Irene Morra |
| Distributed by | Fox Film Corporation |
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Release date
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Running time
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109 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Just Imagine is a 1930 American pre-Code science fiction musical-comedy film, directed by David Butler. The film is known for its art direction and special effects in its portrayal of New York City in an imagined 1980. Just Imagine stars El Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan, John Garrick and Marjorie White. The man from 1930 was played by El Brendel, an ethnic vaudeville comedian of a forgotten type: the Swedish immigrant.
The film starts with a preamble showing life in 1880, where the people believed themselves the "last word in speed". It switches to 1930, with the streets crowded with automobiles and lined with electric lights and telephone wires. It then switches to 1980, where the tenement houses have morphed into 250-story buildings, connected by suspension bridges and multi-lane elevated roads.
In 1980, J-21 (John Garrick) sets his aircraft on "hover" mode in New York, lands and converses with the beautiful LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan). He describes how the marriage tribunal had refused to consider J-21's marital filing and applications, and LN-18 is going to be forced to marry the conceited and mean MT-3 (Kenneth Thomson). J-21 plans to visit LN-18 that night.
RT-42 (Frank Albertson) tries to cheer him up by taking him to see a horde of surgeons experimentally revive a man from 1930, who was struck by lightning while playing golf, and was killed. The man (originally named Peterson now is called Single O) is taken in hand by RT-42 and J-21, where it is revealed that aircraft have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food and liquor, and the only legal babies come from vending machines. That night, LN-18 feigns a headache, and her father and the despicable MT-3 decide to go to "the show" without her. The second they are gone, RT-42 and J-21 appear and woo B-27 and LN-18 respectively. MT-3 and LN-18's father return quite early, as MT-3 was highly suspicious, and RT-42 and J-21 hide. However, the game is foiled by the moronic Single O (El Brendel), the man from 1930, becoming addicted to pill-highballs, getting drunk, and trying to get some more pill-highballs from J-21.
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