To make it jive better with their script, they added a change at the beginning with actor Kevin McCarthy telling the story to what appears to be a psychiatric doctor. Siegal, along with Wanger hated it and yet he and Mainwaring did what the studio wanted. The way Siegel and Mainwaring did the movie was too bleak for the studio executives so they made them change it, and that’s the ending we see today.

In the book the ending is entirely different by way of tying up the loose ends and bringing about a definite conclusion to the crisis facing the town.

The script was very close to the novel with a few exceptions, the main one being the ending. You’ll also see other actors in small parts that were in numerous TV shows and commercials in the ‘60s and ‘70s (see if you can pick them out when you watch this classic.) For Wynter this was her American debut and also her first feature movie. McCarthy has since acted in many movies and TV shows and also had a cameo in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Bennell, Dana Wynter as Becky Driscol, his old high school sweetheart, and Carolyn Jones as “Teddy”(Morticia in the Addams’ Family TV show). The principle actors in Invasion of the Body Snatchers were Kevin McCarthy as Dr. (Siegel went on to gain fame as the director of Escape from Alcatraz, Coogan’s Bluff, and Dirty Harry, and was great friends with Clint Eastwood.) Wanger gave director Don Siegel a copy of the story and Siegel suggested that his buddy Daniel Mainwaring do the screenplay. That’s where producer Walter Wanger first saw it and brought it to the attention of Allied Artists film studio executives.Īt that time Finney had his first novel Five against the House made into a movie so the studio heads were probably hopeful that his next novel would be movie-worthy and lucky for us they were right. Before Invasion of the Body Snatchers was published in book form in 1955, writer Jack Finney serialized The Body Snatchers in Colliers magazine.

Invasion of the body snatchers book