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In this second post about the United Nations tv programming we’ll wrap up discussing the one completed show and the planned but unfinished episode in the short-lived series. The final episode was Once Upon A Tractor 🚜 which aired on tv only, occurring September 9, 1965. This one starred British actor Alan Bates and Diane Cilento as a farmer and a spy fleeing across Europe to the promised land of New York City in what may initially seem like a Soviet Union communist propaganda piece. This would have been a common theme of narratives about the “regular Guy” in the revolutionary 1960s. Rather, though, the odd story is supposed to be a glowing piece about the beneficence of the United Nations to the world.
The story concerns the Alan Bates character of some fictitious European country who never received a tractor promised by his government. So, he apparently goes to great lengths to have the United Nations intervene on his behalf to obtain one. Aside from this there does not appear to be much information online about Once Upon A Tractor. Unfortunately, like Who Has Seen The Wind ? from my previous United Nations Program Series post, Tractor is not available for streaming. If these titles become available on Amazon, Hulu or wherever then I’ll make an update. I did find out some interesting background trivia about Tractor from research for this post. The story was written by Leopoldo Torres Nilsson who was a film producer, director, and screenwriter from Argentina.
Torres Nilsson was the son of Leopoldo Torres Rios who was also a film director and the nephew of cinematographer Carlos Torres Rios, also from Argentina. Since I was completely unaware of this film family trio, curiosity spurred me to look into their other filmography along with Once Upon A Tractor. If I can stream any of their other Spanish-language films, I may write about those too. As mentioned above there was another tv film planned for the UN series which never came to fruition. Production did begin on the fifth project titled The Kashmir Story which would’ve focused on the hotly disputed region known as Kashmir that India and Pakistan have both claimed since 1947. The hapless region has experienced varying degrees of cultural, political, and religious strife ever since then. The Kashmir Story was intended to show what the United Nations was doing to maintain peacekeeping on the contentious border between India and Pakistan.
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However, production had to be postponed on numerous occasions due to armed conflict between both nations which apparently was in one of its hotter phases during 1965 when filming on The Kashmir Story was attempted. Interestingly, the story was written by Nunnally Johnson who was better known for his writing and/or directorial efforts during the 1950s on such Hollywood box office hits like the Marilyn Monroe comedy How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) and psychological issue dramas like The Three Faces Of Eve (1957). We can only speculate on how he would’ve fared with the Kashmir Story…if it would’ve added anything special to his extensive resume of film credits.
Although we seldom hear much of anything in United States news programming about the Kashmir region today — it’s probably more relevant now than it was in 1965. The reason I say this is because since the late 1990s both India and Pakistan have possessed nuclear weapons which would be unspeakably disastrous if they used these missiles against each other. This, in turn, could lead to a wider nuclear war which would be the end of all life on this planet. In my estimation it’s very disturbing that India and Pakistan share a very long, unhappy boundary (not just the disputed Kashmir region), and loathe each other for numerous simmering historical, religious, (India primarily Hindu while Pakistan is mainly Islamic) and other reasons.
Both of them insist on claiming the Kashmir region for themselves (and are seemingly intractable to any compromises about dividing the territory over these many decades). This should be deeply concerning to the rest of the world chiefly because of the nuclear issue. It’s too bad the United Nations was ineffective in helping India and Pakistan to resolve this vexing problem back in 1965. If anything, Kashmir is much more a flashpoint for catastrophe now than it was 61 years ago. Once The Kashmir Story was finally scrapped any further productions in the United Nations series were quickly abandoned. It probably didn’t help that Xerox was the corporate sponsor working with the United Nations on the programs which were completed for the tv series.
As it turned out, right-wing organizations in the United States such as the John Birch Society were very hostile towards any corporate involvement with the United Nations in producing these shows. According to John Roussellot stated: “We hate to see a corporation of this country promote the U.N. when we know it is an instrument of the Soviet Communist conspiracy.” (Direct quote from a Wikipedia article). Therefore, when sponsors have to deal with grief and negative publicity like that, it’s no surprise that this was another reason the United Nations television series was prematurely terminated.
