The Last Voyage

Infobox Film
name = The Last Voyage (1960)
imdb_id = 0054016
producer = Andrew L. Stone
Virginia Stone
director = Andrew L. Stone
writer = Andrew L. Stone (screenplay)
starring = Robert Stack
Dorothy Malone
George Sanders
Woody Strode
Edmond O'Brien
music = Rudy Schrager
cinematography = Hal Mohr
editing = Virginia L. Stone |
distributor = Metro Goldwyn Mayer
released = February 19, 1960
runtime = 91 min.
language = English

"The Last Voyage" is a 1960 American action-adventure melodrama film.

The plot of the film concerns the sinking of fictional aged ocean liner "SS Claridon" in the Pacific Ocean and focuses on Laurie and Cliff Henderson, who are relocating to Tokyo, Japan with their daughter. The ship's faulty boilers explode, and Laurie is trapped under wreckage in their stateroom. Most of the action revolves around Cliff's efforts to free her before the vessel sinks.

Other key characters are Captain Robert Adams, a rather arrogant and clueless man who likes to impress his passengers and intimidate his crew and officers, Second Engineer Walsh, who lost his father on the RMS "Titanic" and has a premonition that the "Claridon" will meet a similar fate, and crewman Hank Lawson, who helps rescue the endangered couple.

Andrew L. Stone directed his own screenplay. The cast includes Robert Stack as Cliff, Dorothy Malone as Laurie, George Sanders as Adams, Edmond O'Brien as Walsh, and Woody Strode as Lawson.

The ship used in the film was the legendary French luxury liner "SS Ile de France", which had been in service from 1926 until 1959, when it was sold to a Japanese scrapyard by her owners, who were appalled when they discovered the ship had been leased to MGM as a floating prop. The ship was towed to shallow waters, where her forward compartments were flooded (so she appeared to be sinking by the bow). Her forward funnel was sent crashing into the deckhouse and her Art Deco interiors were destroyed by explosives and/or flooded. According to William H. Miller, American maritime historian, The French Line thereafter forbade any use of the ships they sold for scrap to be used for anything other than scrapping.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects.

The film marked the third and final pairing of Malone and Stack. They previously had co-starred in "Written on the Wind" (1956) and "The Tarnished Angels" (1958), both times with Rock Hudson.

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054016/ Internet Movie Database listing]