Abandon Ship! (1957)

Cast:

Tyrone Power ... Alec Holmes (Crescent Star Executive Officer)
Mai Zetterling ... Nurse Julie White
Lloyd Nolan ... Frank Kelly
Stephen Boyd ... Will McKinley (officer on Crescent Star)
Moira Lister ... Edith Middleton
James Hayter ... 'Cookie' Morrow
Marie Lohr ... Dorothy Knudson
Finlay Currie ... Mr. Wheaton
John Stratton ... Jimmy 'Sparks' Clary
Victor Maddern ... Willy Hawkins
Eddie Byrne ... Michael Faroni
Noel Willman ... Aubrey Clark
Moultrie Kelsall ... Daniel Cane
Robert Harris ... Arthur J. Middleton
Gordon Jackson ... John Merritt

Crew:

Director... Richard Sale

Produced by...

Ted Richmond .... executive producer
John R. Sloan .... producer
Tyrone Power .... producer (uncredited)

Original Music... Arthur Bliss

Cinematography...Wilkie Cooper

Film Editing...Raymond Poulton

Casting.... Paul Sheridan

Production Design...Wilfred Shingleton

Art Direction...Ray Simm (as Raymond Sim)

Makeup Department
Joan Smallwood .... hair stylist
Neville Smallwood .... makeup artist

Production Management
R.L.M. Davidson .... production manager
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director

David Eady .... second unit director
Basil Keys .... assistant director

Art Department
Basil Mannin .... scenic artist

Sound Department
John Cox .... sound supervisor
Red Law .... sound recordist
Winston Ryder .... sound editor
Bill Salter .... sound recordist (as W.S. Salter)

Special Effects ...Wally Veevers

Camera and Electrical Department

Eric Gray .... still photographer
Ronnie Taylor .... camera operator
Maurice Gillett .... supervising electrician (uncredited)
Skeets Kelly .... camera operator: second unit (uncredited)

Editorial Department
Valerie Leslie .... assembly cutter

Music Department
Muir Mathieson .... conductor

Plot:

Based on a true story, the luxury cruise liner the SS Crescent Star strikes a discarded land mine in the South Atlantic and sinks in the ensuing explosion. Of the ship's 1,156 passengers, few survive. Among them is Executive Officer Alec Holmes (Tyrone Power), who clings to the flotsam of the ruined vessel. There are others clinging to the wreckage. Then, Alec sees ship's nurse Julie White (Mai Zetterling ), with whom he is in love, foundering in the water, he swims out to save her. From a lifeboat in the distance, Will McKinley (Stephen Boyd), one of the ship's officers, beckons to Alec and Julie to join them. Alec abandons the survivors on the wreckage and swims toward Julie. When Alec and Julie get to the boat, Alec realizes that the boat, built to hold nine passengers, is in danger of capsizing. Once Alec is onboard , the ship's fatally injured captain,passes his command and his cherished ring to Alec, admonishing him to "save as many as he can." After Darrow dies, Alec dons the captain's jacket, then orders his body cast over the side. Meanwhile, Frank Kelly (Lloyd Nolan) is critically injured and close to death. He is a friend of Alec's and was also an officer on the ship. Noland's performance is gut wrenching and outstanding.  There are several other crises and all 27 survivors have there own storyline in the movie. To add to the chaos, a shark is circleing the boat. Who will live and who will die? You will have to watch it to find out.

Costumes:

White nautical uniforms, Life Jackets, Wet Clothing,a tux and one formal dress.

Quotes:

Alec: "The Dog Stays, we can not eat human beings."  "We can eat a dog!"

Edith Middleton:  on Alec..... "Now there's a Man!"

Trivia:

Outside the U.S. it was titled Seven Waves Away.


Funny Scene (one you should not miss):

Watch the shark footage!  I thought it was a dolphin.  Also, the entire movie was shot in a tank. In reality, someone would have been the shark's dinner.

Review:

Two survivors are left for dead after Alec leaves the wreckage to swim toward the boat and Julie. There is even a dog floating on the wreckage. The movie does not clear up what happened to them. Did they live or die?  In spite of this, trust me you will enjoy this movie.  I think it was better than Lifeboat.

Character Actor Corner: Lloyd Nolan

This very familar face  played in 156 roles in all types of media. A cop,doctor,soilder or father are the roles that he was most cast in. The son of a San Francisco shoe factory owner, American actor Lloyd Nolan made it clear early on that he had no intention of entering the family business. Nolan developed an interest in acting while in college. He flunked out of Stanford because he spent most of his time in amateur theatricals. He then entered Santa Clara College. He then landed a job on a freighter. When the ship sank due to a fire, he headed for Hollywood.

 In 1927, he began studying at the Pasadena Playhouse, living on the inheritance left him by his father. Stock company work followed, and in 1933 Nolan scored a Broadway hit as vengeful small-town dentist Biff Grimes in One Sunday Afternoon (a role played in three film versions by Gary Cooper, James Cagney, and Dennis Morgan, respectively -- but never by Nolan). Nolan's first film was Stolen Harmony (1935); his breezy urban manner and Gaelic charm saved the actor from being confined to the bad guy parts he played so well, and by 1940 Nolan was, if not a star, certainly one of Hollywood's most versatile second-echelon leading men. As film historian William K. Everson has pointed out, the secret to Nolan's success was his integrity -- the audience respected his characters, even when he was the most cold-blooded of villains. The closest Nolan got to film stardom was a series of B detective films made at 20th Century-Fox from 1940 to 1942, in which he played private eye Michael Shayne -- a "hard-boiled dick" character long before Humphrey Bogart popularized this type as Sam Spade. In 1945, he appeared as Officer McShane in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. His role as Dr. Swain in Peyton Place is my favorite Noland role. Nolan was willing to tackle any sort of acting, from movies to stage to radio, and ultimately television, where he starred as detective Martin Kane in 1951; later TV stints would include a season as an IRS investigator in the syndicated Special Agent 7 (1958), and three years as grumpy-growley Dr. Chegley on the Diahann Carroll sitcom Julia (1969-1971). In 1953, Nolan originated the role of the paranoid Captain Queeg in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, wherein he'd emerge from a pleasant backstage nap to play some of the most gut-wrenching "character deterioration" scenes ever written. Never your typical Hollywood celebrity, Nolan publicly acknowledged that he and his wife had an autistic son, proudly proclaiming each bit of intellectual or social progress the boy would make -- this at a time when many image-conscious movie star-parents barely admitted even having children, normal or otherwise. Well liked by his peers, Nolan was famous (in an affectionate manner) for having a photographic memory for lines but an appallingly bad attention span in real life; at times he was unable to give directions to his own home, and when he did so the directions might be three different things to three different people. A thorough professional to the last, Nolan continued acting in sizeable roles into the 1980s; he was terrific as Maureen O'Sullivan's irascible stage-star husband in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Lloyd Nolan's last performance was as an aging soap opera star on an episode of the TV series Murder She Wrote. He died after  he completed filming, at age 83.

Coming Soon.... Character Actor Corner Post!

Part 3...To Sir with Love..I Could Go on Singing

Cast:

Judy Garland ... Jenny Bowman

Dirk Bogarde ... David Donne

Jack Klugman ... George Kogan

Gregory Phillips ... Matt

Aline MacMahon ... Ida

Pauline Jameson ... Miss Plimpton

Jeremy Burnham ... Hospital surgeon

and guests:

Russell Waters

Leon Cortez

Gerald Sim

Joey Luft ... extra on boat

Lorna Luft ... extra on boat

Crew:
Produced by: Stuart Millar and Lawrence Turman
Directed by: Ronald Neame
Assistant Director: Colin Brewer
Screenplay by: Mayo Simon
Story by: Robert Dozier

Title Song: "I Could Go On Singing," Music by Harold Arlen, Lyrics by E. Y. Harburg

Music by: Mort Lindsey
Musical Supervisor: Saul Chaplin
Music Director: Mort Lindsey
Production Designer: Wilfred Shingleton
Set Decorator: John Hoesli
Miss Garland's Costumes: Edith Head
Additional Costumes: Beatrice Dawson
Makeup: Harold Fletcher
Hair Stylist: Pearl Tipaldi
Sound: Buster Ambler, Red Law
Director of Photography: Arthur Ibbetson
Filmed in Panavision, Color by Technicolor
Editor: John Shirley

Review:

This is the final installment of my three part tribute to Dirk Bogarde. Judy Garland stars in the semi-autobiographical role of Jenny Bowman, Judy Garland gives an amazingly vulnerable performance. This was her last movie. The story has Jenny reuniting with her prepubescent son, Matthew, whom Jenny surrendered to her doctor lover David (Dirk Bogarde) after the two broke up. Raised as an adopted orphan, Matthew has no idea David is his real father, or that David's "friend" Jenny is his birth mother. When David reluctantly agrees to let Jenny spend one day with Matthew, their reunion quickly gets out of hand as they bond and she longs to become a part of his life again.

She's in great vocal and physical form for the musical numbers. The songs included in the movie are:

• I Could Go On Singing (sung by Judy Garland behind titles)
• I Am the Monarch of the Sea (sung by Judy Garland and Boys)
• Hello Bluebird (sung by Judy Garland in concert)
• It Never Was You (sung by Judy Garland in concert)
• By Myself (sung by Judy Garland in concert)
• I Could Go On Singing (sung by Judy Garland)

When shooting began she was difficult. Her erratic behavior was not prompted by any viciousness but by a consuming fear. She was terrified of being unable to produce what was required, and her self-imposed dieting, her dependence on pills, and custody battles with Sid Luft all added to it.  After this movie, her health really declined, and by 1968 she looked like a skeleton.

Judy liked the soap-opera plot: “This big, big star goes to London to do a concert and finds the man who got away . . . It’s about me. I guess someone read my lyrics.”

Her hospital scene with Dirk Bogarde, where she talks about the life of a performer, has so much subtle shifting between emotions that it takes one's breath away. That alone should have earned her an Academy Award for this performance. I do not think that Judy is acting. These are her feelings, (not Jenny Bowman's) written into the script.

Bogarde, always an excellent actor, holds his own against the force of nature that is Garland by playing yin to her yang. He showed infinite patience, re-writing scenes for her.

It has to be said that the whole film crew spontaneously applauded the finest dramatic scene in the picture, the one that Dirk Bogarde wrote for himself and Judy. Propped up in a hospital room, Judy moved from drunken humor to defiance, to a tearful breakdown, and recovery all in one six-minute ‘take’.

Jack Klugman gives a good performance as her manager. One memoriable scene shows Judy reving herself up for her performance, and Klugman is cheering her on. Great!

It also has some very good helicopter footage of London. Judy also takes a boat trip on the Thames.

Costumes:

Early 60’s conservative attire. You can not go wrong with Edith Head as your costume designer. Judy has an really cute black dress with a mink in the hospital scene.

Quotes:

David Donne: They are waiting.
Jenny Bowman: I don't care if they're fasting, you just give them their money back and tell them to come back next fall.
 
Trivia:

Joey and Lorna Luft are extras in the Boat Scene.

Final Thoughts:

This movie is good. It has been critized for not having a lot of dialog. Dirk Bogarde is known for his stoic silence between lines. Dirk looks commanding and disapproving (especially icy in the early scenes), and the young actor playing her son manages to do it without being too cute. Neither tries to upstage Garland.

Just sit back and enjoy a travelogue of London with Judy!!! Remember, it’s not HAMLET!

I just added some tunes to my blog. Scroll down and click on the player!

Tips on Tables...Vintage NY Nightclub reviews and info

Vintage nightclub and restaurant reviews from the 1940's and 1950's mostly from the New York City area,

 http://www.tipsontables.com/