Our Mr. Sun (1956)

Our Mr. Sun is a one-hour American 1956 television film in Technicolor written, produced, and directed by Frank Capra. It is a documentary that explains how the Sun works and how it also plays a huge part in human life. It was first televised by CBS in 1956.

The film starred Frank Baxter as "Dr. Research", and Eddie Albert as "the writer", the other recurring character in the The Bell Laboratory Science Series. Marvin Miller voiced the animated sun. Sterling Holloway, who was uncredited, voiced an animated version of chlorophyll. The film marked the last project of Lionel Barrymore, who played the voice of Father Time. It was first shown on television two years after Barrymore's death.

Our Mr. Sun, and a companion film Hemo the Magnificent (about blood circulation), were popular favorites for showing in school science classrooms. The film is currently packaged on DVD with another Frank C. Baxter film The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957).



^
^

Synopsis

The film opens with Dr. Research (Dr. Frank C. Baxter) and the Writer (Eddie Albert) meeting Father Time (Lionel Barrymore) and Mr. Sun (Marvin Miller) who explain that time started a few billion years ago and that the Sun is a star. Mr. Sun explains that he was worshipped as various gods (Shamash, Mithra, Ra and Apollo) until Anaxagoras proclaimed the Sun was a very hot stone and not a god. Logic and reasoning were the beginning of the end of worshiping the Sun as algebra and the astrolabe were used to study the heavens.

Acteurs