Titanic: 1953

I first saw this film in the early 1960s when it initially aired on television on NBC's "Saturday Night at the Movies," and the movie sparked an interest within me about the history of the ill fated ocean liner. Keep in mind, when this movie was made (1952) and released to theaters (1953), there was not a great deal of information to be easily found about the Titanic disaster. It was not long after the movie was made that American historian Walter Lord did a lot of research on the ship's sinking, which he assembled into a book called "A Night to Remember," released in late 1955. This book was used as the basis for a British movie of the same name released in 1958. That movie was much more of a re-creation of the known historical events of the Titanic disaster. The 1953 film uses a fictional story and many fictional characters, supplemented by actual historical characters, to tell the story of the Titanic. Remember too, the Titanic was a British ship, not an American ship, although there were many American passengers aboard, as well as people from many countries, often poor people, trying to get to America for a new life; and indeed, the actual social division on the ship is depicted in the movie (first, second and third class/steerage). The Titanic was the most modern ship afloat, with the latest technology, including the ship being divided into a system of watertight compartments, that when the doors were closed could seal off water and prevent the ship from sinking in many of the likely scenarios. Notice I said "many of the likely scenarios." The worst thing many could imagine for the ship was that another ship might hit it at the junction of two of its watertight compartments, which would not be enough to sink it. Even the possibility of a head on collision didn't seem to threaten to doom the great ship, as it could stay afloat with its first four compartments flooded. The nightmare that developed, however, was that the iceberg opened the first 5 or 6 compartments to the sea (sources vary on the number, but since the discovery of the wreckage and analysis of metal and such, it "seems" the iceberg caused rivets to pop and metal plates to buckle, rather than the "can opener effect" which had long been suspected by many). With 5 or 6 compartments filling with water, this was something the ship's watertight compartments could not handle, as these compartments only extended partially up the multi-level deck ship. Once the first 5 or 6 compartments flooded, that extra weight pulled the ship down, which caused the water to flow over into the next compartment, which pulled the ship down even more, which caused the water to flow over into the next compartment and so on, until ... well, you know.  

I was in Germany when Robert Ballard and his crew discovered the Titanic in September 1985. I bought American newspapers at German newspaper kiosks to keep up with the discovery. If my memory is right, it was the European edition of "USA Today." 

Main Cast: 

Clifton Webb as Richard Sturges

Barbara Stanwyck as Julia Sturges

Audrey Dalton as Annette Sturges

Harper Carter as Norman Sturges

Robert Wagner as Giff Rogers

Thelma Ritter as Maude Young, see note below cast

Brian Aherne as Captain Edward Smith

Richard Basehart as George Healey

Allyn Joslyn as Mr. Meeker 

James Todd as Sandy Comstock 

Frances Bergen as Madeleine Astor

William Johnstone as John Jacob Astor IV

Edmund Purdom as Second Officer Lightoller

 

(Note: Thelma Ritter played the real life "Maggie Brown," a wealthy woman aboard the Titanic, who became popularized as "the Unsinkable Molly Brown," but she was renamed in the film as "Maude Young." Over time I've read that the film producers and Brown's family seemed to have some disagreement about Brown's portrayal in the film, and that perhaps to avoid any potential legal action, the name was changed to "Maude Young," although admittedly it seems a bit strange why anyone would contest the use of the real name. The real "Molly Brown" died in the early 1930s, so well before the filming of the movie in 1952 and its release in 1953. A few years after this movie there was a stage play released about "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," followed in the mid 1960s by a major motion picture and box office hit starring Debbie Reynolds. The film took in millions, and that was in the money value of those times. Keep in mind, both the stage version and the movie version were simply "based" upon Molly Brown's life, and they were not any attempt at historical reenactment.) 

 

The basic gist of the fictional story used to tell the story of the Titanic is about the Sturges family, led by estranged husband and wife, Richard and Julia. Julia takes older teenager Annette and ten year old Norman and she prepares to head to the United States, where she intends to make her separation from Richard all legal. Richard heads to the new Titanic where he pays a Basque man for his ticket, with the man planning to take another ship and to meet his family in America. During the voyage, the Sturges couple air their differences, Annette meets, and begins to get close with, a young man named "Giff," and Norman plans to spend time with his father, whom he idolizes, participating in some of the ship's activities, including shuffleboard. (There is also a side story of a moody and often drunken man, George Healey, a man we learn has been dismissed from the priesthood for persistent drunkenness. When the ship is sinking, although Healey has struggled with his life and alcohol in the priesthood, his inherent goodness comes to the fore when some of the boiler crewmen are left in the flooding boiler room. As he prepares to descend the steps to almost certain death, one of the escaping men says, "For God's sake mister, don't go in there," but Healey replies, "For God's sake I am going in there.") The animosity between Richard and Julia takes an especially hard edge when she tells him that Norman is not his son. Richard is shaken by the revelation, and he goes off to a big card game, and he devastates Norman by shunning him. Of course, all of these matters become meaningless as the supposedly "unsinkable" ship grazes an iceberg, which opens the ship below the waterline. While the collision with the iceberg is a "grazing," with most people not even realizing there has been anything happen, Richard feels the big ship shudder a bit and a little later he sees the crew reacting as if there is an emergency (which of course, there is). Richard goes to the captain and insists he tell him the truth, and indeed, the captain says the ship is going to sink. Richard goes to his family and acts as calmly as he can in an effort to comfort them, in spite of the dire predicament he knows to be the true situation. As the lifeboats are readied to be loaded, and distress rockets are fired to signal any nearby ships, rumors circulate that there are not enough lifeboats for all of the passengers and crew, which is true, and Julia now knows that Richard's downplaying of the seriousness of the situation was simply a performance. Women and children are ordered to get into the lifeboats. Julia tells Richard she knows the ship is sinking and that there are not enough lifeboats. The two express their regrets over not making their marriage work and Julia, Annette and Norman go to their assigned lifeboat, but Julia doesn't see that Norman gives up his seat to a woman and he goes to find his father. When Julia learns what has happened, she screams and cries, as she knows her son is likely to die. Norman finally finds his father and tells him "I thought we could make a swim of it together." Giff, Annette's love interest, falls into the icy water while trying to help lower one of the lifeboats. He is pulled into this lifeboat and he is thus saved from the fate of most of the other men on the sinking ship. 

 

Isador and Ida Straus, real life co-owners (with Isador's brother, Nathan) of Macy's Department Store, died that night and Mrs. Straus would not get into a lifeboat without her husband. John Jacob Astor IV, one of the richest of the rich, died that night, but his pregnant wife survived in a lifeboat, and a few months later the baby, a son, was born. Captain Smith was set to retire after this voyage, as he was in his early 60s. Barbara Stanwyck later told of the filming of the sinking, which was done at night and she was in a lifeboat about to be lowered away. She noted that she looked at the people they were leaving behind to die and how it struck her that this had happened in real life and that emotion overtook her and she burst into tears

 

The historical accuracy of the movie has been battered by historians, beginning with the early part of the movie. We hear in the film that the ship is sold out, and that's why Richard Sturges has to buy a ticket from a passenger; but in reality, the Titanic was not sold out; in fact, there were hundreds of tickets available. A truly glaring error in the film is when the iceberg and the Titanic make contact. The film correctly (historically) shows the ship trying to clear the iceberg, which is on its right. Then comes an underwater shot of an ice spur ripping open the Titanic, but on its left! (Some clips, and perhaps even some versions of the entire movie have reversed the scene to show the ship grazing by the iceberg on its right side, as happened historically.) By the way, remember what we've heard many times, that more than three quarters of an iceberg is underwater; so, the idea of a spur tearing the Titanic open below the waterline was not farfetched, but the movie has it on the wrong side of the ship (until, at least, some editions had the scene corrected). The movie depicts the iceberg as absolutely monstrous, dwarfing the Titanic, and this was just the part above the water, but reports from survivors and from ships in the area in daylight indicate the iceberg was not anywhere near the size shown in the movie (ships in the area noted several icebergs in the aftermath of the sinking). The Titanic itself was slightly less than 900 feet long (about 270m). The events that had to happen to bring the Titanic and the iceberg together late on April 14, 1912 were mind boggling. Hundreds of square miles of the North Atlantic with this iceberg and the Titanic meeting at just the right instant to cause a catastrophe. Further there were no binoculars for the crow's nest, perhaps because the original crew member with the key to the storage for the crow's nest had been assigned to a new ship at the last minute in Europe, and he forgot to leave the key. In the movie, I believe some dialogue indicates the binoculars for the crow's nest had been accidentally left behind, with Captain Smith intending to get another pair in the U.S. Another thing was, the sea was basically calm; thus, no waves, even minor waves, lapping up onto the iceberg to help the lookout's to spot it. Remember too, the ship was damaged late on April 14, but sank shortly before 2:30 on the morning of April 15.     

Photo is of the 2003 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD

 

WORD HISTORY:

Mourn-This is NOT the same word as "morn" or "morning," both having to do with the early time of a day, nor is it even related to those forms. "Mourn" means "to grieve, to remember someone or something in a sorrowful way." It is distantly related to a number of words having to do with remembering, for example: commemorate, memorial, memorize, memory and remember, all words of Latin derivation, most of them borrowed by English via Latin-based French. "Mourn" goes back to Indo European "(s)mer," which had the notion, "to remember, to think (about)." This gave Old Germanic "muranan," meaning, "to remember in a sorrowful way, to think of." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "murnan" meaning, "to remember in a sorrowful way," but also seemingly a secondary meaning of "to worry about." This then became "mornen," before the modern version. The noun form in Old English was "murnung," meaning "the act of expressing or showing grief or sorrow." The 1300s saw the idea of particular clothing worn during a period of grief (mourning), as "mourning clothes or habit," and this seems to have simply been shortened to "mourning" by the 1600s (mid?) for the clothing or home adornments expressing grief (typically of dark colors, usually black). Its seems only English "mourn" and "mourning" have survived into modern times among the Germanic languages (unless there are dialectal forms), but Old French borrowed a form from Germanic Frankish, although it too seemingly has died out of usage.