Wacky World of Rubber: Hollywood tackles polymer science with 'Flubber'

Last year, I wrote about the role of tires in the movies—and apologies to all you Smokey and the Bandit and Dukes of Hazzard fans out there for not mentioning those tire-punishing entertainments. But, even without them, I had plenty of examples to cite.

But some of you asked—what about rubber itself? And rubber science?

Here, unfortunately, the Hevea crop is sparser. Rubber plays an invaluable role in movie and TV special effects; my colleague Chris Sweeney demonstrated as much in his article about the silicone rubber masks devised for the Army of the Dead in Game of Thrones.

But rubber as the theme of a movie is rare. There was Malaya, a 1949 World War II-themed thriller in which Spencer Tracy and James Stewart tried to smuggle rubber out of the eponymous country during the Japanese occupation. Nine years earlier, there was William Wyler's The Letter, based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, in which a rubber plantation served as backdrop for Bette Davis ridding herself of an inconvenient lover.

As for rubber science? So far as I know, it has shown up in only three films, one of them exactly two minutes long, and they were all made by people who didn't know a thermoplastic from a thermal blanket.

Oddly enough, one of the first (though very short) fiction films ever made was L'Homme a' la Tete en Caoutchouc (The Man with the Rubber Head), directed in 1901 by Georges Melies.

Melies, a magician before he became a director, was the first special-effects master in cinematic history, and L'Homme a' la Tete en Caoutchouc is a prime example of his work.

The action is simple: a mad scientist pulls out a table, then a box, out of which he pulls a man's head. He sets the head on the table, pulls out a bellows, inflates the head to five or six times its usual size, then deflates it. The head looks around and chatters frenetically (if silently) throughout. The scientist brings in a visitor and invites him to inflate the head; the visitor does so, and the head explodes. The scientist kicks the visitor out the door and sobs inconsolably into his apron.Not exactly an Oscar winner.

Or a Goodyear Medal winner, either.

Genuine rubber scientists might feel (slightly) more at home with the 1961 Walt Disney comedy, The Absent-Minded Professor, and its 1963 sequel, Son of Flubber. In those movies, Fred MacMurray played Ned Brainard, a professor of physical chemistry at fictional Medfield College.

Brainard—reportedly based on Hubert Alyea, an eccentric chemistry professor at Princeton—gets into all sorts of trouble when he invents "Flubber," a synthetic rubber that can bounce several times higher than any other polymer. It helps the Medfield basketball team win games, to be sure, but the Pentagon takes a dim view, and greedy tycoon Alonzo P. Hawk (Keenan Wynn) tries to steal the formula to enrich himself. Later, Brainard compounds his problems by developing the "son" of Flubber, "Flubbergas," which allows it to rain indoors.

There are some laughs to be had in seeing flying Model Ts and basketball players jumping 10 feet into the air. Also, it's nice to think that some children might have seen this film, or might still see it, and get the idea that rubber is fun.

On the other hand, not many in our industry would be amused by having a businessman as the villain. (What kind of commie subversives are these Disney and MacMurray, anyway?) However, a lot of viewers would identify with Brainard being hit with a crippling tax bill from the IRS, before he ever made a cent off Flubber.

Disney remade The Absent-Minded Professor in 1997 under the simple title of Flubber. Robin Williams starred as beloved, bumbling Brainard in the updated version of the film, which paid tribute to the original with scenes such as one where Brainard tests Flubber's effects on the basketball court.

Someday, some screenwriter might take rubber science seriously. Till then, we can indulge in rubber fantasy, and float away over the rooftops of Paris with the little boy in The Red Balloon. It might not be as believable as The Hindenburg, but it's a lot more enjoyable.

Miles David Moore is senior Washington reporter for Rubber & Plastics News. This does not necessarily make him an expert on movies, but he'll bend your ear about them anyway.