A Night to Remember
From Free net encyclopedia
A Night to Remember is a 1955 book by Walter Lord and 1958 film directed by Roy Ward Baker 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.
Contents |
Book
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
Template:Infobox Film In 1958 Lord's book was adapted into the film A Night to Remember. Produced as a docudrama, the film was highly successful.Template:Ref 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.
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 ....'Template:Ref
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 and George Rose as Chief Baker Charles Joughin.