Alabama's huge connection to '2001: A Space Odyssey'

Wearing a topcoat, Frederick Ordway III walked out of a snowy 1965 New York evening and back inside the Harvard Club to take a phone call.

The person on the other line calling for him was film director Stanley Kubrick.

The phone call lead to Ordway becoming chief technical consultant and scientific advisor on Kubrick's film next, "2001: A Space Odyssey." In that role, Ordway helped make sure director Kubrick' space-travel themed film was as realistic and scientifically accurate as possible.

Even now 50 years after its April 3, 1968 release, "2001" remains arguably the greatest science-fiction film ever. And, Ordway's work - as well as that of Huntsville artist Harry H.K. Lange, during preproduction in New York and filming in Borehamwood, England - is a key reason why Kubrick's film feels so immersive.

In addition to working closely with Kubrick, who was constantly bouncing ideas off him, Ordway's role included coordinating construction of approved designs (everything from astronaut helmets to space-pod interiors) and gathering relevant information (such as lunar surface details) from an array of esteemed sources (NASA, French Pic du Midi Observatory, University of Manchester's Department of Astronomy, etc.) Kubrick also depended on Ordway to determine if proposed changes in subplots (for example, the film's depicted mission targeting Saturn instead of Jupiter) would impact their already constructed designs.

Ordway was then working with NASA in Huntsville, a close associate of pioneering rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. " I think he was as close to von Braun in the '60s and '70s as anybody might have been at that time," says Ed Buckbee, who worked with Ordway for 34 years at both NASA, where Buckbee was a public affairs official, and at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, where Buckbee was the first director and Ordway a historian.

Right before Ordway got that 1965 phone call from Kubrick, Ordway and Lange were in New York meeting with publishers regarding a book called "Intelligence in the Universe."

After learning his friend science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was also in town and staying at the Chelsea Hotel, Ordway, a Harvard University grad, reached out to Clarke about meeting at the Harvard Club. In addition to promoting his book "Man and Space," Clarke was in town meeting with Kubrick regarding a serious, big-budget film about space travel. He and Kubrick were going to co-write the film's screenplay, which would be based on Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel."

After Clarke showed interest in what they were working on, Ordway and Lange shared some writings and artwork they'd done for "Intelligence in the Universe," which overlapped with themes Kubrick wanted to address in his film, including the possibility life might exist elsewhere.

Buckbee recalls Ordway as being "just a walking encyclopedia of rocketry" with "a great sense of humor," and just a "real gentleman" that was "a fun guy to be around." He recalls going to Ordway's Monte Sano area home and seeing "rows and rows" of science and science-fiction books everywhere.

Ordway eventually donated his sizable personal science-fiction collection to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, the collection arriving there in two batches - the first and larger one in 2001 and a second in 2014. The collection consists of correspondence, blueprints, designs, set photos, memorabilia and other ephemera. Ordway's collection is currently available at the Space & Rocket Center for research by appointment only, although some pieces have been displayed in the museum's past exhibitions.

According to Buckbee, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center almost was home to an amazing "2001: A Space Odyssey" cache.

"When he worked on that movie with Stanley Kubrick," Buckbee says, "Fred had worked out a deal with him to bring those (film) props to Huntsville, and we were going to put them in one wing of our museum here. And would you believe Stanley Kubrick had every one of those props destroyed? I almost cried when I heard that from Fred.

"Kubrick of the opinion that, 'I don't want anybody to see what I created and be able to investigate it" or pick at it or whatever, so he destroyed every one of those props. You can imagine what those props would have looked like in a museum. We had the space all set aside and Fred was working on getting them and I was working on transportation and lo and behold ol' Stanley had those damned things destroyed. It was all over."

"2001: A Space Odyssey" opens with an unforgettable, primitive scene and builds to a far-out finale, all accompanied by an avant-garde classical soundtrack. The film also features the monotone-voiced computer "character" HAL 9000 - still in 2018, an eerie vision of what artificial intelligence might someday become.

Buckbee is a fan of the film and has watched it many times. He says while Ordway told him working with Kubrick's relentless pursuit of perfection could be challenging, he was a fan too. "I think Fred was satisfied that it didn't become a Hollywood production where there would be problems believing what would be presented. I think he was pleased that Stanley really paid attention to accuracy and the real world of rocketry and space flight. I really believe he was happy with that."

Kubrick's staggering filmography also includes such works as "The Shining," "Clockwork Orange," "Dr. Strangelove," Full Metal Jacket," "Lolita" and "Spartacus." He died in 1999 at age 70 after finishing his last film, the erotic Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman drama "Eyes Wide Shut."

After Ordway completed his work on "2001" for which he and his family relocated to England, he became a faculty member at University of Alabama in Huntsville, from 1970 to 1973. According to a UAH official, he taught physics and aerospace engineering courses there. Ordway also penned dozens of books, including "History of Rocketry and Space Travel," a 1975 tome co-authored with von Braun, and hundreds of articles.

In a fascinating article that can be found on Kubrick-themed website visual-memory.co.uk, Ordway wrote of working with the legendary director: "I soon discovered that Kubrick had read voraciously on the subjects of science fiction and space science and technology and had developed quite a lingo - he would often surprise me with a new acquisition. He would often suggest a 'systems' approach to this or that problem, ask for parameters, and state that he had just 'locked on' to an idea. He was particularly fascinated with computers of the voice input-output type, and would talk about logic elements, neural nets, central processors, integrated computer networks, heuristic systems, etc."

Ordway also worked with von Braun on plans for a mission to Mars that, Buckbee says, von Braun submitted to Washington officials, including then-U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew, just weeks after astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.

"Fred thought about the future probably as much as anyone I ever dealt with in those days," Buckbee says. "He had that idea that we much continue to look to the future, we don't need to be satisfied with what we've done. And you didn't normally find people like that in the '50s and '60s, of course von Braun had that vision all the time, but Fred Ordway was right in there with him."

Ordway, a New York native, died in 2014 at age 87. Buckbee calls him one of Alabama's "greatest salesman."

"When he went elsewhere, whether he was talking to rocket people or just the taxi driver he was always very positive about what we did, especially in Huntsville. I think he had a warm feeling about the German families that came here plus the Americans that engaged with them and created this rocket team."