- Cuckoo in the nest: This underrated, underseen Hitchcock will blow you out of the water!
- WWII-set drama with nine-strong ensemble cast is one of his grimmest and very best films
- Nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Director, Best Story and Best Cinematography
- But box office chances sunk by controversial characterisation of Nazi submarine commander
- Deaf ears: Critics objected to his stark portrayal as a strong and more than capable adversary
Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.
Lifeboat: Writing on a Classic; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Shorts and controversies, Pt 3: Home video, Pt 4: Soundtrack and remakes
US half sheet poster
Contents
Synopsis
Original trailer | opening/continued | TCM intros, more
Tallulah Bankhead stars in a Hitchcock tour de force
A small band of men and women survive the sinking of an Allied freighter by a German U-Boat, only to find themselves dependent on a Nazi they pull out of the sea onto their lifeboat. With the help of a John Steinbeck script and bravura performances from a cast that includes Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Slezak and Hume Cronyn, Hitchcock transforms the cramped confines of the lifeboat into a bigger-than-life battlefield of good and evil. Lifeboat is a tour de force only the Master of Suspense could have created. – US Fox VHS (1988)
Hitchcock’s acclaimed World War II drama with Tallulah Bankhead.
Hitchcock’s riveting film of human strengths and frailties under extraordinary circumstances features a story by John Steinbeck and an all-star cast including Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak and Hume Cronyn. When an Allied freighter is torpedoed by a German U-Boat, eight survivors are left to fend for themselves on a small lifeboat – until they rescue a Nazi (Slezak) from drowning. Confined to their cramped quarters, the lives and personalities of these nine strangers provide a cross-section of society and an arena of pathos, humor, tyranny and compassion. This provocative World War II drama, “a masterpiece of pictorial elegance,” (Los Angeles Times) is considered a technical accomplishment by its legendary director. – US Fox VHS (1992)
Production
Studio records show that Hitch had the original idea for the scenario and considered asking A. J. Cronin or James Hilton to turn it into a screenplay before unsuccessfully approaching Ernest Hemingway, who was too busy. Eventually, Hitch enlisted Steinbeck who agreed on condition he could instead turn it into a novella which the author would later publish under his own name. Said novella was completed but to this day has never materialised in print as Steinbeck’s literary agents deemed it not up to his usual standard. So Hitch and regular Collier’s Weekly scribe Harry Sylvester condensed Steinbeck’s story and it was published in the magazine’s November 13, 1943 issue (p. 16-17/52-58).
Several incarnations of the screenplay then followed with at least five others, including Alma Reville, also having a hand in it, resulting in a film with the highest and most varied death rate of any Hitchcock. Though some elements of all these versions made it into the finished article, only Steinbeck received an onscreen story credit, along with Jo Swerling for his final screenplay. However, they in turn were written out, so speak, when fifty years later only Hitch and Sylvester were credited for the short story on which Lifepod, a sci-fi quasi-remake, was based.
In a further twist, immediately following Lifeboat’s release, playwright Sidney Easton filed a lawsuit alleging his unpublished play, Life Boat No. 13, had been plagiarised and in late 1947 Twentieth Century-Fox settled out of court for $9,000 dollars, equivalent to $127,500 in 2024. More recently, the play title itself has been homaged in two superb, award winning novels based on the tragic torpedoing of the SS City of Benares, a WWII child evacuee ship; I urge you to check them out.
- Lifeboat 12 and 5 (2019/2024) – Susan Hood
“Thanks to the heat, the light, the fake fog and the submersions followed by rapid drying-outs, I came up with pneumonia.” – Tallulah Bankhead (another)
Apart from some background footage filmed by the second unit in the Florida Keys and on California’s San Miguel Island, Lifeboat was shot entirely in 20th Century Fox’s former studio on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Despite this, it had a long and arduous production schedule during which several of the cast and crew suffered illnesses and injuries, largely due to being constantly soaked with water and oil. This led to several set shutdowns to allow for recovery. For instance, before shooting even began, William Bendix replaced actor Murray Alper, who got ill; likewise due to illness the original director of photography, Arthur Miller, was replaced by Glen MacWilliams after the first two weeks of filming.
Actress Mary Anderson also suffered a serious illness from which she was thankfully able to return after time off. Tallulah Bankhead contracted pneumonia twice during shooting, while in a storm scene Hume Cronyn suffered two cracked ribs and nearly drowned when he was caught under a wave-making machine before being saved by a lifeguard.
In the end, four full-size boats were used: one each for rehearsals, water tank shots, long shots and close-ups. Lifeboat was to have been made for Selznick, but he wasn’t keen on its premise and sold it, along with Hitch’s services, to 20th Century Fox.
Lifeboat – Interiors Journal
The cast are put through the wringer (another)
As it takes place entirely within the confines of a lifeboat, this is often described as the first of Hitchcock’s four ‘limited-setting’ films; the others being Rope, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. But such speculation, as ever, is US-centric and completely overlooks his British years; a similar case can be made for Champagne and Juno and the Paycock. Indeed, for 45 of its 64 minutes, Number Seventeen is enacted solely within a derelict house before moving on to a climactic train chase. A case could even be made for The 39 Steps’ variation on the theme, with its handcuffed protagonists. Then of course, there’s the mostly train-bound classic, The Lady Vanishes…
Accordingly, Lifeboat features what is perhaps Hitch’s most inventive cameo of all: in a before-and-after newspaper ad for “Reduco obesity slayer”, reflecting his recent real-life weight loss of over a third of his body weight, and purportedly prompting a flood of enquiries for the imaginary product. Via the logo of the Reduco Corporation, it was reprised in his similarly subtle appearance in Rope and was later imitated in Dial M for Murder. Fascinating stuff and somewhat more palatable to the censors than the original idea of having Hitch’s corpse floating past after the initial explosion, though the notion later, ahem, resurfaced during the marketing campaign for Frenzy.
John Hodiak and the notoriously dissolute Tallulah Bankhead contemplate their first commando raid. I do hope he didn’t sustain any serious injuries. (lobby card)
A Kiss Worthy of Cinema History – Ron Geraci – keep all tallulah refs together
Although she’d appeared in more than a dozen films prior to Lifeboat, Tallulah Bankhead was best known for her work on the stage but Hitch cast her as he wanted to use “the most oblique, incongruous person imaginable in such a situation.” One oft-repeated anecdote is that the famously uninhibited and outspoken star was fond of ‘going commando’ and putting on a show for the appreciative crew when she climbed the ladder in and out of the tank. When Hitch’s attention was brought to the fact that her lack of underwear rendered some takes unusable, his apparent reply was “I don’t know if this is a matter for the costume department, makeup, or hairdressing.” We are amused. Hitch himself often related another ribald anecdote from the production in a wide-ranging 1970 interview for the Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday magazine:
‘That was the occasion when Mary Anderson, a little girl who was under contract to Fox, I found stuffing Kleenex into her brassiere to fill herself out. She thought Fox was going to make her a big star. One day she sat in the back of the boat and preened herself. ‘Mr. Hitchcock, which is my best side do you think?’ I said, ‘Mary, you’re sitting on it.'” – reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews (2003, p.78)
Incidentally, Lifeboat turned out to be perhaps Anderson’s most significant big screen role, though she’d previously had bit parts in heavy hitters such as Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Song of Bernadette (1943). After being cast adrift at sea, she continued working steadily in B-movies and the lower half of bigger-budgeted bills while also carving out a respectable career on TV. But she seems to have done well on it all, only dying in 2014 at the ripe old age of 96.
This photo below is erroneously but routinely captioned as being “Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Lifeboat.” Though contemporary to shooting, it clearly isn’t on set – it’s outdoors and in a completely different, smaller boat – but where was it taken? Probably done for publicity purposes, there are at least two others from the same occasion, with one appearing a minute into “The Theater of War” featurette on all Lifeboat discs. Hitchcock expert Rick Senger plausibly suggests it might be at the Port of Los Angeles, close to the 20th Century Fox studio but any further info and the exact occasion would be welcome.
Lifeboat: Writing on a Classic; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Shorts and controversies, Pt 3: Home video, Pt 4: Soundtrack and remakes
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This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.
