Word: lifeboat
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Tallulah Bankhead heard that among the 20-odd reporters gathered in honor of her role in Lifeboat (see p. 94) was a young woman from New York City's crusading newspaper PM, "My God, if I'd known," seethed Tallulah. "Of all the filthy, rotten, Communist rags . . . that is the most vicious ['clenched fists up to ear level,' dutifully noted the PM reporter], dangerous . . . hating paper . . . cruel . . . unfair ... I loathe it ... Darling, I hope I haven't hurt you." To PM's editor, a few days later, Tallulah wrote a note: ". . . Convey my thanks...
Another passenger is a German (Walter Slezak), captain of the destroyed U-boat which sank the lifeboat's ship. His life is saved when Shipbuilder Rittenhouse insists on democratic procedure and the observance of international law. When a dance-hall addict (William Bendix) develops gangrene, it is the German captain, an ex-surgeon, who amputates the gangrened leg. As the passengers grow weaker, the German takes charge and rows, hour after hour, comforting the derelicts by singing Lieder...
...Lifeboat (20th Century-Fox] is one of the most ambitious films in years. It begins with a close-up of a foundering ship's funnel that might stand for the end of an era. Then the camera closely meditates a dissolving frieze of floating debris, and lifts its eye to frame, in the light of predawn, its compact symbol of our time: a damaged boat, its compass smashed, its sole occupant a trullish photojournalist who has lived through so much that she calls herself "practically immortal." Further survivors clamber aboard, masked and anonymous with floating oil. As the little...
...idea for Lifeboat first occurred to Director Alfred Hitchcock. John Steinbeck wrote the idea into a story (still unpublished). With Hitchcock's help, Scripter Jo Swerling wrote the story into a screen play. The cinematic problems involved in keeping nine characters and their story dancing for two hours upon the pin point of one lifeboat were staggering. Result: a remarkably intelligent picture, almost totally devoid of emotion. Its characters are not so much real people, derelict upon a real sea, as they are a set of propositions in a theorem. Their story is an adroit allegory of world shipwreck...
...symbol of postwar Germany, clutches the lifeboat, is hauled aboard. Cinemactresses Mary Anderson and Tallulah Bankhead rush to help him. "Kill him!" cry the men - among whom only the gentle radio operator (Hume Cronyn) has any doubt. As the trembling boy holds them at bay with his water-soaked pistol, the Negro disarms him. They debate whether or not to kill him. Tallulah Bankhead recalls the man the German captain drowned and a young mother (Heather Angel) who was pulled aboard the lifeboat, later jumped over board after her dead baby. When Lifeboat ends, they are still debating, like...