S.O.S. Titanic

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S.O.S. Titanic
SOSTitanic.jpg
StudioCanal DVD cover
GenreDrama
History
Written by James Costigan
Directed by William Hale
Starring David Janssen
Cloris Leachman
Susan Saint James
David Warner
Ian Holm
Helen Mirren
Harry Andrews
Beverly Ross
Music by Howard Blake
Country of originUnited States/
United Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
Production
Executive producer Roger Gimbel
ProducerLou Morheim
Production locationsRMS Queen Mary - 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach, California
Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England
The Waldorf Hotel, Aldwych, Strand, London, England
Cinematography Christopher Challis
EditorRusty Coppleman
Running timeUnedited U.S. TV version
144 min.
Edited European theatrical version
103 min.
Production company EMI Films
Budget$5 million [1] 1979 $dollars
Original release
Network ABC
ReleaseSeptember 23, 1979 (1979-09-23)

S.O.S. Titanic is a 1979 drama disaster television movie that depicts the doomed 1912 maiden voyage from the perspective of three distinct groups of passengers in first, second and third class. The script was written by James Costigan and directed by William Hale (credited as Billy Hale). It is the first Titanic film to be filmed and released in colour.

Contents

Plot

First class passengers include a May–December couple, multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor IV (David Janssen) and his new wife Madeleine Talmage Force (Beverly Ross); their friend, Molly Brown (Cloris Leachman); another pair of honeymooners, Daniel and Mary Marvin (Jerry Houser and Deborah Fallender); and Benjamin Guggenheim (John Moffatt), returning to his wife and children after a scandalous affair.

One plot line relates the tentative shipboard romance of two schoolteachers, Lawrence Beesley (David Warner, later appearing in the James Cameron 1997 film Titanic ) and the fictional Leigh Goodwin (Susan Saint James).

In steerage, the plot focuses on the experiences of eight Irish immigrants, who are first depicted approaching the ship from a tender in the harbor of Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland. These characters, all based on real people, include Katie Gilnagh (played by Shevaun Bryers), Kate Mullens, Mary Agatha Glynn, Bridget Bradley, Daniel Buckley, Jim Farrell, Martin Gallagher, and David Charters. During the voyage, Martin Gallagher falls for an unnamed "Irish beauty", played by Antoinette O'Reilly.

The cast also includes Helen Mirren in a small role (as Mary Sloan, a real-life surviving Titanic stewardess). [2]

Cast

Historical characters

Fictional characters

Production

The film was greenlit by Bernard Delfont of EMI Films, at the same time as Delfont's brother, Sir Lew Grade, was making a film based on Raise the Titanic . [3] Delfont says Grade was upset about this and asked his brother to stop production but Delfont refused as it was too late. He wrote he consoled "myself with the thought that the market was big enough for the both of us. It was an expensive miscalculation. SOS Titanic and Raise the Titanic were disaster movies in every sense." [4]

Producer William Filmore called it the "thinking man's disaster film". [5]

Filming

The RMS Queen Mary, which in the movie was partly used as the RMS Titanic Queen Mary hotel.jpg
The RMS Queen Mary, which in the movie was partly used as the RMS Titanic

Several of the scenes on the exterior decks, as well as those in the ship's wheelhouse, were filmed on board the later British ocean liner from the 1930s, the retired RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. [5]

Some interior scenes were filmed at the Waldorf and Adelphi historic hotels in London and Liverpool, respectively. The town of Peel on the Isle of Man served as the Queenstown backdrop. Some external shots were filmed aboard, and of, the TSS Manxman which also appears as the R.M.S. Carpathia in some of the opening sequences and as the R.M.S. Titanic in a few shipboard scenes.[ citation needed ]

Versions

See also

References

  1. ↑ Made-for-TV Films--Hollywood's Stepchild Comes of Age: Made-for-TV Films Come of Age By KIRK HONEYCUTT. New York Times 19 Aug 1979: D1.
  2. ↑ Robert Bianco (April 26, 1995). "Some movies with a sinking feeling". Calhoun Times and Gordon County News. Retrieved August 9, 2017.
  3. ↑ From Playmate to Governor Mann, Roderick. Los Angeles Times 22 Feb 1979: e15.
  4. ↑ Delfont, Bernard (1990). East End, West End: An Autobiography. MacMillan. p. 195.
  5. 1 2 TITANIC RESURFACES ABOARD QUEEN MARY Gore, Robert J. Los Angeles Times 6 May 1979: se_a1.
  6. ↑ "Kino: Three TV Films Dated for Blu-ray" – via www.blu-ray.com.
  7. ↑ "S.O.S. Titanic Blu-ray Release Date October 13, 2020" – via www.blu-ray.com.
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