Titanic (TV miniseries)

Titanic was a made-for-TV movie that premiered in 1996. Titanic follows several characters on board the RMS Titanic when it sinks on its maiden voyage. The film's tagline is The story so few lived to tell.

Main cast

George C. Scott - Captain Edward J. Smith
Marilu Henner - Mrs. Margaret "Molly" Brown
Peter Gallagher - Wynn Park
Catherine Zeta-Jones - Mrs. Isabella Paradine
Tim Curry - Simon Doonan
Eva Marie Saint - Hazel Foley
Roger Rees - J. Bruce Ismay

Plot summary

The Titanic has three different storylines. Mrs. Isabella Paradine is traveling on the Titanic to see her husband. On the Titanic, she meets Wynn Park, her ex-husband. She falls in love with him again, sending her husband a telegram saying that they can't be together anymore. When the ship starts sinking Isabella has to leave Wynn reluctantly.

Also in first class are the Allison family, a real family who traveled on the actual ship, returning home to Montreal with their two small children and new nurse, Alice Cleaver. They notice something wrong with her, and a maid asks her if she had been in Cairo last month. She denies it, because when she lived there she killed her baby. When the Titanic starts sinking Alice Cleaver panics and leaves with the Allison's baby, Trevor, and gets into a lifeboat. The family doesn't know, and they refuse to leave the ship without their baby.

In third class, Jamie Pierce steals a ticket to get on board. He manages to become friends with the ship's purser Simon Doonan, who is a robber. Jamie falls in love with Osa Ludvigson and they spend time on board together. However, she is raped by Doohan, and she doesn't trust anybody anymore. When the ship hits the iceberg, Jamie can't convince Osa to go into a lifeboat, but in the end she does.

Historical inaccuracy

Produced in advance of the imminent James Cameron film on the same topic, this TV version was rushed into production and very hastily completed in order to cash in on the latter's pre-release hype. It premiered over two nights in late November 1996. Since the film was so rushed, it included many mistakes and historical inaccuracies, which many Titanic enthuasiasts found in-excusable since that by the late nineties, the true facts of the sinking were well known and easily available.

Some of the mistakes and historical inaccuracies include:

Alice Cleaver was not a psychotically insane child murderess as portrayed. She was confused with another woman of the same name, a common mistake when it comes discussing the Titanic survivors. The real Alice Cleaver went on to be a recluse rarely talking about the Titanic until she died in the 70s.
Alice Cleaver and baby Trevor Allison boarded lifeboat number 11, quite late into the sinking; not lifeboat 7, the first one launched.
The real Lorraine Allison was barely two at the time of the sinking.
First Officer William Murdoch did not commit suicide or shoot another passenger. (This is a longtime Titanic myth that also appeared in the Cameron film.)
Thomas Andrews, a person of major historical importance, was deleted altogether, with parts of his involvement during the night fused onto Captain Smith's character.
J. Bruce Ismay would have never been allowed to participate in such practices as the final outfitting of the ship and simply could not have been in the boiler room because no passengers were permitted down there and most certainly the stokers would not have listened to his orders on lighting more boilers because, aside from the being the chairman of the White Star Line, he had no such authority.
Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall did not go down with the ship. In fact he went on to have a successful career in the Royal Navy and the White Star Lines rival company. He then went onto be a technical advisor on A Night to Remember and to be one of the foremost authorities of the disaster.
At one point Captain Smith complains that the rockets are white, when in fact they should be red for distress. Such conversation would never have take place because white is the right color for distress and Captain Smith, of all people, would have known that.
The crew aboard the Californian are shown giving up trying to achieve contact with the Titanic after a short while and the ship's Captain, Stanley Lord, calmly going to sleep. That is far from the truth, the ship tried to achieve contact with the ailing Titanic throughout the night and Captain Lord never went off to bed.
The real Captain Lord and wireless operator, Cyril Evans (both of the Californian) were much younger than the actors chosen to potray them. Captain Lord was in his mid-thirties, while Evans was twenty.
Margaret Tobin Brown was not referred to as "Molly" until well after her death, neither was she a raving hillbilly as portrayed by Marilu Henner. In fact, Margaret was very intellegent, well-mannered and spoke several foreign languages. Also, Margaret was a lot older and heavier than portrayed in the film and she did not board the Titanic until Cherbourg.
The Titanic, in reality, was not booked solid as indicated in the film. In fact, the majority of her first and second class cabins were empty during the voyage.
The hallways leading to first class staterooms were not wood paneled, their walls were mostly white with varying types of colorful wallpaper.
The first class smoking room did not have a bar, the stewards served drinks and other beverages in a classic waiting fashion.
John Jacob Astor did not utter the famous joke, "I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous!" It is, however, a popular urban legend.
Contrary to the popular belief, Molly Brown did not spend any time gambling and drinking at the smoking room. The smoking room was a male-only preserve, and women would not be granted admittance. At the time of the collision, she was most likely sound asleep in her cabin.
The first class grand staircase is shown without the now infamous glass dome, with the addition of two light fixtures on either side of the central clock and with much more darker, heavier oak paneling.
During a sweeping crane shot of the port side of the ship, several mistakes in the design of the set are apparent, including but not limited to, an extra deck house on the poop-deck, the main mast facing the wrong direction, the absence of 'B' Deck and just any over all "wrongness".
The first class dining room is shown to be on A deck, while in actuality it was on D deck. In reality, there was a large reception room at the base of the grand staircase in which you accessed the Dining room from two double doors on either side of a Funnel casing. In the film, this reception room and correct layout are substituted for 3 large arched openings.
The actual first class dining room was painted white, not peaches-and-cream like shown in the film.
Although it was already pointed out that the dining room was located on A deck, instead of D deck, two characters are later shown looking at the dining room through the boat deck windows.
Several errors during the Southampton scenes, such as having Titanic docked by her starboard side.
The Titanic was fitted-out in Belfast, not Southampton as shown in the film.
There were no press conferences held aboard the ship the day before her maiden voyage and the speech Captain Smith gives the reporters about the art of ship building was in reality delivered by him seven years ago on another White Star liner, the Adriatic.
Chief Officer Henry Wilde, Third Officer Herbert Pitman and Sixth Officer James Moody are omitted.
Contrary to the popular belief, there was no organized dancing in first class. In fact, it would have been considered borderline obscene to dance during dinner within the upper class, though a dance floor was created on Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic, in the late 1920s.
Moreover the tango originated in the bordellos of Argentina and would have been completely beneath the notice of the upper-classes. It was almost unknown as a ballroom dance until after World War One.
Shortly after the ship collides with the iceberg, first class passengers Molly Brown, John Jacob Astor and the fictional character of "Mr. Foley" (loosely based on Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, a real passenger) are shown emerging from the second class entrance at the aft port side of the boat deck and admire the passengers tossing around the pieces of ice that fell onto the deck after the collision, even though the ship hit the berg with its starboard side, at the bow and the iceberg never even fully reached A-deck, which was a level below the boat deck.
On two separate occasions in the film, both the characters played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Peter Gallagher visit a service window to receive and send out wireless telegrams. Such a window did not exist on the Titanic; first class passengers sent and received telegrams via steward, rather than first hand with the Marconi operators.
The Carpathia's deck was not littered with corpses as the film shows. In fact, only one body was found by the rescue ship and buried at sea shortly afterwards. The majority of the bodies recovered were found by the cable ship "Mackay-Bennet" which was chartered by the White Star Line for the recovery of the bodies, several weeks later.
At the very end of the film, a caption reads that "all the attempts to raise the Titanic had failed." That is completely false, as no such attempt has ever been made. In fact, it is practically impossible to raise even a large portion of the ship, considering even just the financial burden involved.
The davits seen on the film's Carpathia were actually first developed in 1926.
Unlike the steerage bathroom seen during the rape scene, Titanic's 3rd class had only two bathtubs to bathe in. There were no shower stall as seen in the film.

Trivia

Originally intended as a remake of the 1979 television film S.O.S. Titanic.
Contains many elements shown in James Cameron's epic blockbuster (which, in turn, liberally borrows from the 1943 version.) The rumor in Hollywood was that someone at CBS got ahold of Cameron's original script from 20th Century Fox and altered it into their own miniseries in order to cash in on the impending blockbuster's pre-release hype.. The first draft of the teleplay for the mini series contains several fictional scenes that were clearly lifted from Cameron's vision. It is alleged that the script was re-written at the last second in order to avoid lawsuits from 20th Century Fox and Paramount. Such a hasty re-write can explain numerous plot holes, mistakes and awkwardly written-in subplots.
The film was released to home video soon after the release of the Cameron film.

External links

Titanic (1996) | Titanic (minisarja)

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Main cast

Plot summary

Historical inaccuracy

Trivia

External links