(Bonus) On the Beach is a 1959 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film from United Artists starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer,[2] it is based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel On the Beach depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war.[3] Unlike the novel, no one is assigned blame for starting the war, which attributes global annihilation to fear compounded by accident or misjudgment.