In first class, 83.4 percent of the children (5 of 6) and 97 percent of the women made it out alive, while only 33 percent of the men did. In 3rd class: 46 percent of the women made it to New York, together with 34 percent of the children and 16 percent of the men. MacQuitty said: “’Women and children first’ was interpreted inaccurately by Lightholler as ‘only women and children.’”Ĭonsider the figures for the 2nd class passengers: all of the children (there were 24) and 86 percent of the women survived, whereas 92 percent of the men died. There were enough lifeboats for about half the people on board, yet two out of every three – more than 1,500 – perished. premiere of the British film in New York in December 1958. Survivor Elizabeth Dowdell attended the U.S. The 4th Officer Joseph Boxhall was the technical advisor, and Lightholler’s widow visited the set. When “A Night to Remember” was made, the tragedy of April 14-15, 1912, was still fresh in the memory of some (the equivalent now would be a film about an event in 1966). In the second group were those playing the Titanic’s radio operators – David McCallum, still going strong in the CBS series “NCIS,” and the late Kenneth Griffith, who made the banned documentary about Michael Collins in the 1970s.

His name was twice the size of the next 25 actors in the opening credits, which in turn were twice the size of the third batch, in cinematic steerage as it were. The movie’s main star was the sympathetic Kenneth More as 2nd Officer Charles Lightholler. For MacQuitty, it was a story about arrogance.Īs proof that the world truly did change in the years after 1912, he said that the Belfast Titanic commemoration listed people in order of importance whereas the 1914-18 war memorial had the dead in simple alphabetical order.

There weren’t enough lifeboats for steerage passengers, he added, and yet the first-class passengers were lowered in their best evening clothes. The steerage passengers paid £12 and the stateroom passengers paid £875 for a five-day trip.” It’s been made before.” (Indeed, there was a 1953 Hollywood movie called “Titanic.”) MacQuittey recalled his reply in a 1993 interview: “This is an end of an era. But the studio executive at the Rank Organization said: “Bill, this is just another shipwreck movie. After he read the exciting and meticulously researched book of that name by the American Walter Lord (a lowly writer in a Madison Avenue advertising firm by day), he was determined that it would get the film treatment.

TITANIC MEMORIES by William MacQuitty