A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember is a 1955 non-fiction book by Walter Lord and a 1958 film directed by Roy Ward Baker and produced by William MacQuitty, about the sinking of the ocean liner RMS Titanic in 1912. Both the book and film were very successful and are still considered definitive resources about the RMS Titanic.

Plot introduction

Walter Lord had been interested in the sinking of the RMS Titanic since he was child and wrote A Night to Remember while working as a copy editor at a New York ad agency. Lord interviewed over sixty survivors of the sinking and described in detail the events leading up to the Titanic striking the iceberg, the sinking and the rescue by the RMS Carpathia.

A Night to Remember became a bestseller and was turned into a live Kraft Television special in 1956.

Film

In 1958 Lord's book was adapted into the film A Night to Remember. Produced as a docudrama, the film was highly successful. Filmed in England A Night to Remember was adapted by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Ward Baker. The movie used blueprints from the ship to recreate sets and Titanic's Fourth officer Joseph Boxhall worked as a technical advisor, all supervised by producer William MacQuitty.

Kenneth More recalled the production of the film in his autobiography, published 20 years later in 1978. He had served in the Royal Navy in WW2 (as a gunnery officer aboard the cruiser HMS Aurora) and automatically took on the naval officer's crisp and confident air of command when a crisis arose in the film-making: There was no tank big enough at Pinewood Studios to film the survivors struggling to climb into lifeboats, so it was done in the open-air swimming bath at Ruislip Lido at 2 o'clock in the morning of an icy-cold November day. The extras flatly refused to jump in. More realised it would be up to him. "Come on!" he cried.

'I leaped. Never have I experienced such cold in all my life. It was like jumping into a deep freeze. The shock forced the breath out of my body. My heart seemed to stop beating. I felt crushed, unable to think. I had rigor mortis, without the mortis. And then I surfaced, spat out the dirty water and, gasping for breath, found my voice. 'Stop!' I shouted. 'Don't listen to me! It's bloody awful! Stay where you are!' But it was too late ....'

Cast

The film stars:

Kenneth More as Second Officer Charles Lightoller
Ronald Allen as Mr. Clarke
Robert Ayers as Arthur Peuchen
Honor Blackman as Mrs. Liz Lucas
Anthony Bushell as Captain Arthur Henry Rostron
John Carney as Mr. Murphy
Jill Dixon as Mrs. Clarke
Michael Goodliffe as Thomas Andrews
Kenneth Griffith as Jack Phillips
Frank Lawton as J. Bruce Ismay
David McCallum as Harold Bride
Tucker McGuire as Margaret Brown
Laurence Naismith as Captain Edward Smith
George Rose as Chief Baker Charles Joughin.

Notes

Reference

External link

Michael Sragow essay on criterionco.com