S.O.S. Titanic

This article is about the 1979 film. For other uses, see Titanic (disambiguation).

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.

S.O.S. Titanic
StudioCanal DVD cover
Genre	Drama 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 origin	United States/ United Kingdom
Original language	English
Production
Executive producer	Roger Gimbel
Producer	Lou Morheim
Production locations	RMS Queen Mary - 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach, California Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England The Waldorf Hotel, Aldwych, Strand, London, England
Cinematography	Christopher Challis
Editor	Rusty Coppleman
Running time	Unedited 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
Release	September 23, 1979 (1979-09-23)

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

• David Janssen as John Jacob Astor IV
• Beverly Ross as Madeleine Astor
• Cloris Leachman as Margaret "Molly" Brown
• Susan Saint James as Leigh Goodwin
• David Warner as Lawrence Beesley (Warner also appears in the 1997 version, Titanic)
• Geoffrey Whitehead as Thomas Andrews
• Ian Holm as J. Bruce Ismay
• Helen Mirren as Stewardess Mary Sloan
• Harry Andrews as Captain Edward J. Smith
• Robert Pugh as James Farrell (Irish Traveller in steerage)
• Jerry Houser as Daniel Marvin
• Deborah Fallender as Mary Marvin
• Shevaun Briars as Katie Gilnagh
• Catherine Byrne as Bridget Bradley
• Nick Brimble as Olaus Abelseth
• Norman Rossington as Master-at-arms Thomas King (Who also Appeared in the A Night to Remember (1958) as Titanic Chief Steerage Steward (uncredited)
• Ed Bishop as Henry B. Harris
• Lise Hilboldt as Renee Harris
• Christopher Strauli as Harold Cottam
• John Moffatt as Benjamin Guggenheim
• Aubrey Morris as Steward John Hart
• Nancy Nevinson as Ida Straus
• Gordon Whiting as Isidor Straus
• Peter Bourke as Harold Bride
• Kate Howard as the Countess of Rothes
• Madge Ryan as Stewardess Violet Jessop
• Malcolm Stoddard as Second Officer Charles Lightoller
• Philip Stone as Arthur Rostron, the captain of RMS Carpathia
• Paul Young as First Officer William McMaster Murdoch
• Victor Langley as Wallace Hartley
• Tony Caunter as Chief Officer Henry Tingle Wilde
• Maurice Roëves as Frederick Barrett
• Warren Clarke as Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall
• Karl Howman as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe

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

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

• S.O.S. Titanic was originally broadcast as a television film on ABC on September 23, 1979. It ran for 3 hours, or approximately 144 minutes, excluding commercials. Although this version was shown on TV occasionally and bootleg copies sometimes surfaced on the internet, it was never commercially released until making its debut on home video from Kino Lorber on October 13, 2020, as both a Blu-ray and a two-disc DVD set along with the European theatrical version.^[6][7]

See also

• List of films about the RMS Titanic