On the Beach is a 1959 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins.

Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer,[2] it is based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same title depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war.

[3] Unlike the novel, no one is assigned blame for starting the war, which attributes global annihilation to fear, compounded by accident or misjudgment.

Air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the Southern Hemisphere, where Melbourne, Australia will be the last major city on Earth to perish.

Peter Holmes, a young Australian Naval officer with a wife and infant child, is assigned to be Towers' liaison.

Although Davidson falls in love with Towers, he finds himself unable to return her feelings, because he can't bring himself to admit his wife and children in the United States are dead.

Soon after, the Australians also detect an incomprehensible continuous Morse code signal coming from the West Coast of the United States, where there should be nobody alive to send it.

Osborn, having bought the fastest Ferrari in Australia, wins the Australian Grand Prix, in which many racers, with nothing left to lose, die in fiery crashes.

As drunken revelers sing "Waltzing Matilda" in the hotel bar, Towers and Davidson make love in their room.

The scene where Peck meets Gardner as he arrives from Melbourne by rail was filmed on platform #1 of Frankston railway station, now rebuilt.

Scenes were also filmed at Queenscliff High Light,[8] the Shell Geelong Refinery, Melbourne Public Library,[9] Flinders Street Station and Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital.

These scenes include an array of late-1950s sports cars, including examples of the Jaguar XK150 and Jaguar D-Type, Porsche 356, Mercedes-Benz 300 SL "Gullwing", AC Ace, Chevrolet Corvette, Swallow Doretti[11] and prominent in sequences was the "Chuck Porter Special", a customized Mercedes 300SL built by Hollywood body shop owner Chuck Porter and driven by a list of notable 1950s to 1960s west-coast racers, including Ken Miles and Chuck Stevenson, who purchased and successfully raced it in the early 1960s.

His original draft of a tongue-in-cheek piece about the making of the film said that he had not been able to confirm a third-party report that Ava Gardner had made this remark.

[20][17][21] Frank Chacksfield's orchestral performance of the love theme from On the Beach was released as a single in 1960, reaching #47 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Nevil Shute was displeased with the final cut of the film, feeling that too many changes had been made at the expense of the story's integrity.

After initial collaboration with producer/director Stanley Kramer, it was obvious that Shute's concerns were not being addressed; subsequently, he provided minimal assistance to the production.

Other premieres were held in West Berlin, Caracas, Chicago, Johannesburg, Lima, Paris, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Zurich[29] The film also was screened in a theater at Little America in Antarctica.

Peck and his wife traveled to Russia for the screening, which was held at a workers' club with 1,200 Soviet dignitaries, the foreign press corps, and diplomats including U.S.

In putting this fanciful but arresting story of Mr. Shute on the screen, Mr. Kramer and his assistants have most forcibly emphasized this point: life is a beautiful treasure and man should do all he can to save it from annihilation, while there is still time.

To this end, he has accomplished some vivid and trenchant images that subtly fill the mind of the viewer with a strong appreciation of his theme.