Trailer for "Seven Days in May" (1964), the film JFK wanted made (and whose filming he had ...

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2. Walker and LeMay

Seven Days in May was published in 1962. It was made into a motion picture and released in February 1964, with a screenplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, and Ava Gardner.

Americans are apt to scoff at the idea, that a military coup in the US., as so often happens in Latin american countries, could ever replace our government. but that is an idea that has grounds for consideration.

Certainly this was a consideration on the mind of many people, especially JFK, who was well aware of the military's attitude, especially after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and was certainly thinking about the possibility of a coup, as he related to Paul Fay and others, when he said that it could happen in the USA if there were a series of Bay of Pigs type incidents. He also permitted John Frankenheimer to use the White House as a setting for Seven Days in May, about a military coup in the USA, complete with composite characters who clearly resembled Generals Walker and LeMay.

The story is said to have been influenced by the right-wing anti-Communist political activities of General Edwin A. Walker, after he was forced to resign from the military. Burt Lancaster's role of Air Force General James Mattoon Scott was based, in part, on Walker.

An additional inspiration was provided by the 1961 interview conducted by Knebel, a political journalist and columnist, with the newly-appointed Air Force Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay, an advocate of the first-strike nuclear option. LeMay went on to be the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.