

They do not find as much fish as they would like to eat, and it is not safe to drink sea water. The ocean is portrayed as a grim wilderness, and the characters must persevere. They also fight among themselves to stay out of the water. There is mutiny and murder among the crew who struggle to survive.
#Lifeboat cast trial#
Winters is a survivor and adapts to her predicament, which results in her being included along with some of the crew mates who must face being put on trial for their actions aboard the ship. Therefore, they need to get rid of some on the boat, and they find it is necessary to prevent some survivors of the wreck from getting into the boat. These people do not have sufficient provisions for a long period on the sea.
#Lifeboat cast movie#
This tale is more elaborate than Steinbeck’s screen treatment for the Hitchcock movie Lifeboat.Īfter a shipwreck caused by an explosion in 1914, Winters is cast on the sea among strangers on a lifeboat which has too many people aboard and weighs down heavily in the water. Winters, who must fend for herself among strangers and the elements without her husband Henry, learns profound lessons about society, survival, and the law. Told mostly in flashbacks, Rogan's book is an effective story about personal development. Sadly, the new book is more of a legal thriller than a successful statement of the human condition. Both Rogan’s novel and Steinbeck’s screenplay have produced memorable oceanic stories which, though rooted in history, tell universal stories. Steinbeck was unhappy with the film and asked that his name to be removed from the credits, but ironically was nominated for an Oscar for his efforts (although Hitchcock also did bring in other writers to adapt and change the story for the big screen). The Lifeboatalso bears almost the same title as a 1944 Alfred Hitchcock movie for which John Steinbeck wrote the story treatment ( Lifeboat).
#Lifeboat cast series#
The most compelling element of the novel, aside from its tale of survival and mutiny on the sea, is the series of legal complications and issues which centers the book. When the rest of the passengers discover what he's done, all of them (with one significant exception) violently gang up on Gus, and once more, the lifeboat drifts about sans navigation.Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboatis an interesting oceanic story about an accident at sea, the grim time survivors spend aboard a lifeboat, and the legal aftermath for newlywed Grace Winters (Winters), 22, who loses her husband in the wreck. After it becomes necessary to amputate Gus's leg, Willy decides that the burly stoker is excess weight while the others sleep, he tosses Gus overboard, watching dispassionately as the poor man drowns.

As the only one on board with any sense of seamanship, Willy steers a course to his mother ship, while the others resign themselves to being prisoners of war. At first everyone assumes that Willy cannot speak English, but when the necessity arises he reveals himself to be conversant in several languages and highly intelligent in fact, he was the U-boat's captain. After a day or so of floating aimlessly about, the castaways pick up another passenger, Willy ( Walter Slezak), who is a survivor from the German U-boat.

This adroitly calculated cross-section of humanity is reduced by one when Mrs.

Higgins ( Heather Angel), who carries the body of her dead baby. The boat holds eight survivors of a Nazi torpedo attack: sophisticated magazine writer/photographer Constance Porter ( Tallulah Bankhead), Communist seaman John Kovac ( John Hodiak), nurse Alice MacKenzie ( Mary Anderson), mild-mannered radio-operator Stan ( Hume Cronyn), seriously wounded Brooklynese stoker Gus Smith ( William Bendix), insufferable-capitalist Charles Rittenhouse ( Henry Hull), black-steward George Spencer ( Canada Lee) and half-mad passenger Mrs. Seeking a creative challenge after several years' worth of fairly elaborate melodramas, director Alfred Hitchcock stages all of the action in Lifeboat in one tiny boat, adrift in the North Atlantic.
