Film in Kansas City - The Day After

In 1982, ABC-TV selected Kansas City as the location for their dramatic and controversial made-for-television film, The Day After, about the aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack on Kansas City. Jason Robards was the star, and although most of the post-attack action took place in Lawrence, Kansas, several scenes before the blast were filmed on location in Kansas City, and about 100 extras from Kansas City were used. At the end of the film, Robards returns to his home in Kansas City, stumbles through rubble and devastation, and finds his home, having a confrontation with radiation victims taking residence as squatters in the rubble of his house. Director Nicholas Meyer used the demolition site of the old St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City as the set, and as Robards stumbled through this destruction for the cameras, wearing makeup that made him appear to have lost half his hair from radiation and to have suffered serious flash burns, traffic slowed on the surrounding streets and passers-by strained for a closer look as Robards lifted a human arm from under a fallen building—just the arm, severed at the shoulder. In 1983, The Day After was aired on TV and Americans responded to it soberly and broke down at the thought of a nuclear war.