The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming Revisited

A crane shot of Mendocino on a cold day.

An internet archive link led me to watch The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming again the other day, and I put together some clips for my memory archive. The filming dates spanned September to December 1965, and for a good stretch of that time, the production took place on the Mendocino Coast, where I was born and raised. My mother, Toni Lemos, was the local film coordinator, so my sister and I got to go along for the ride.

One of the movie posters for The Russians Are Coming.

The story is set in October, circa 1961, after a Russian submarine becomes stranded, “high and dry on a sandbar off Cape Cod,” somewhere between Nantucket Sound and Narragansett Bay. Nathaniel Benchley, who wrote the original light-hearted novel, “The Off-Islanders,” assured readers that he had “gone to some lengths” to make sure his story was not to be mistaken for his own community in Nantucket. The book is significantly different from William Rose’s screen adaptation, with Benchley’s finale depicting a comedic shootout at the local dump verses Rose’s breath-holding child rescue mission.

The very impressive styrofoam submarine.

In a July 2023 Variety interview with director Norman Jewison after the death of Alan Arkin, he said,

“There’s a scene towards the end of the film where he’s getting in the submarine and saying goodbye to the Americans he’s gotten so close to, and he just breaks your heart. When we shot it, Alan was on this styrofoam submarine that my production designer had created. It looked real most of the time, but if there were a lot of waves the whole thing would bend and start to fall apart.”

What I think is remarkable about watching this film again is how the symbolism of our shared humanity is captured in a brief moment at the end between Theodore Bikel and Cindy Putman.

It’s also notable that when the movie was released in May 1966 it was considered “politically charged material.” Nearly 20 years earlier in 1947, diplomat Bernard Baruch described the tension between the US and the Soviet Union in a speech, declaring, “Let us not be deceived: We are today in the midst of a cold war.” After the movie release, it would be another 25 years before the Cold War officially came to an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

It’s also super cool to see me in my bowl-cut bangs and stand-out blue sweater. Mostly, I remember getting up crazy early in the North Pacific cold and being bundled into the station wagon while it was still dark out.

That’s my mom in the camel coat and my sister, June, acting scared because she knew how to follow directions.

All the kids got warm donuts and hot chocolate once we arrived on set. We also got out of school for several weeks in a row! We waited on a big bus all day until it was time for our scenes. Parked somewhere out of camera range on the Noyo flats, we had studio teachers with us so we could keep up with the class. Occasionally, some actors, especially Alan Arkin, would burst in through the driver-controlled doors and make us laugh.

These Russians weren’t all that scary.

I like to tell the story that during a cast and crew party at my folk’s house, I sat on Jonathan Winters’ lap in my mother’s chair in the living room as they enjoyed cocktails. “Don’t give that kid any booze, Winters!” someone quipped and, naturally, that was my first sip of whiskey at the impulsive age of eight.

Here is a short [spoiler alert] clip from the movie’s end with my screen debut. Enjoy!

Film clips and stills from Mirisch-United Artists are used for review purposes.