Cuban Missile Crisis Documentary 1964 ‘One Week in October’
Released in 1964 by the Department of Defense and the Office of Civil Defense, ONE WEEK IN OCTOBER tells the gripping story of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The events of that week are vividly re-created through original American reconnaissance plane footage and extensive tension-packed scenes of the faces and voices of the key figures involved: President John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk and Adlai Stevenson. Yet “One Week in October” had a message to promote, beyond merely re-telling the events of that fateful week — promoting fallout shelters and the National Fallout Shelter System. The film’s postscript (28:30) is all about “shelter space” and how “fallout protection” would be vital “to our national survival”, and that while progress has been made in this area “more work must be done”.
