Titanic (TV miniseries)

Infobox_Film
name = Titanic


caption =
director = Robert Lieberman
writer = Ross LaManna
Joyce Eliason
starring = George C. Scott
Marilu Henner
Peter Gallagher
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Tim Curry
producer = Rocky Lang
music = Lennie Niehaus
cinematography = David Hennings
editing = Tod Feuerman
distributor = RHI Entertainment
released = November 17, 1996
runtime = 173 min.
country = Canada/United States
language = English
budget = $13,000,000 (estimated)
amg_id = 1:174347
imdb_id = 0115392

"Titanic" was a made-for-TV movie that premiered in 1996. "Titanic" follows several characters on board the RMS "Titanic" when she sinks on her maiden voyage in 1912. The miniseries was directed by Robert Lieberman. The original music score was composed by Lennie Niehaus.

Taglines:
* "They all said she was unsinkable. When she sank, it was unthinkable."
* "The story so few lived to tell."

Plot summary

"Titanic" has three different storylines. Mrs. Isabella Paradine is traveling on the "Titanic" to join her husband. On the "Titanic", she meets Wynn Park, her former lover. She falls in love with him again, sending her husband a telegram saying that they can't be together anymore. When the ship starts sinking, Isabella must reluctantly leave Wynn.

Also in first class is the Allison family, a real family who traveled on the Titanic, returning home to Montreal with their two small children and new nurse, Alice Cleaver. They notice something wrong with her; a maid asks her if she had been in Cairo the previous month but soon realizes that she remembers her from the highly-publicized trial where Alice was accused of throwing her baby off a train. When the "Titanic" starts sinking, Alice Cleaver panics and quickly boards a lifeboat with Trevor, the Allisons' infant son. The parents are unaware that the baby is safe and refuse to leave without him, which in the end costs them their lives.

In third class, Jamie Pierce steals a ticket to get on board. He manages to become friends with the ship's purser Simon Doonan, who is a robber. Jamie falls in love with Aase Ludvigsen and they spend time on board together. However, Aase is raped by Doonan and is no longer able to trust anyone. When the ship hits the iceberg, Jamie convinces Aase to get into a lifeboat and she leaves without him.

Historical inaccuracy

* Unlike the steerage bathroom seen during the rape scene, "Titanic's" 3rd class had only two bathtubs for all passengers. There were no shower stalls as seen in the film. Shower stalls were almost unknown in the UK at the time.
* Alice Cleaver was not a psychotic child murderer as portrayed. In this film, as elsewhere, she was confused with another woman of the same first and last names, Alice Catherine Cleaver, a common mistake when it comes discussing the "Titanic" survivors. (The children's nurse on board the "Titanic" was Alice Mary Cleaver.) The real Alice Cleaver became a recluse who rarely talked about the "Titanic" until her death in the 1970s. Miss Cleaver either had a roommate in the form of another servant and did not share a room with the Allison children at all, or she shared only with the infant Trevor. The film shows her sleeping in the same cabin as Lorraine.
* Alice Cleaver and Trevor Allison boarded lifeboat number 11, quite late into the sinking, not lifeboat 7, the first one launched.
* The real Lorraine Allison was barely two at the time of the sinking.
* The Allisons were portrayed in the film as Americans. In reality, they were Canadians.
* It is not known whether First Officer William Murdoch actually committed suicide, though this cannot technically be considered a "historical inaccuracy," because there are no survivors' accounts that speak of Murdoch's fate.
* Thomas Andrews, a person of major historical importance, was deleted from the series altogether, with parts of his involvement fused with the actions of Captain Smith and J. Bruce Ismay.
* Ismay did not participate in the final outfitting of the ship and was not in the boiler room (a location forbidden to passengers) at any time during the voyage.
* As in most films on the subject, Ismay's role in the tragedy is greatly exaggerated for melodramatic purposes. He did not, for example, force the ship's crew to run the liner at breakneck speed. He testified at the Senate hearings on the sinking that had the ship been traveling at its maximum speed, it would have arrived in New York in the middle of the night and would have had to wait up to eight hours for both a pilot and customs clearance.
* Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall did not go down with the ship. In fact, he went on to a successful career in the Royal Navy and the Cunard Line, White Star Line's rival company. He then became a technical adviser on "A Night to Remember" and one of the foremost authorities on the disaster.
* At one point Captain Smith complains that the rockets are white, when in fact they should be red for distress. White is the correct color for distress and Captain Smith, of all people, would have known that.
*The Morse code lamp was located on top of the bridge, but in the film its location is bizarrely shifted onto the front of the first-class promenade deck.
* The crew aboard the SS "Californian" are shown giving up on trying to achieve contact with the "Titanic" after a short while; the ship's Captain, Stanley Lord, calmly goes to bed. The actions of those aboard the "Californian" that night are a subject of great controversy among "Titanic" historians; however, most agree that the "Californian"'s wireless officer went to bed shortly before "Titanic" broadcast its distress call and that he did not power up his set again until early the next morning.
* The real Captain Lord and wireless operator Cyril Evans (both of the "Californian") were much younger than the actors chosen to portray them. Captain Lord was in his mid-thirties, while Evans was twenty.
* Margaret Tobin Brown was not referred to as "Molly" until the writers Gene Fowler and Carolyn Bancroft cast her as the subject of a number of highly-imaginative fictional folk tales, beginning in the year after her death. Far from the raving, oversexed hillbilly portrayed by Marilu Henner, Margaret Brown was an intelligent, well-mannered, social and political activist who spoke several foreign languages and contributed heavily to cultural and human rights causes. She was also much older and less attractive than as portrayed in this film, and she did not board the "Titanic" until Cherbourg.
* Margaret Brown did not spend any time gambling and drinking in the smoking room. The smoking room was a male-only preserve, and women would not have been allowed inside.
* The "Titanic" was not fully booked as indicated in the film. In fact, the majority of her first and second-class cabins were empty during the voyage. Just under half of her steerage berths were empty.
* There was no gate between the steerage and first class on A deck. The exit from steerage in that area led to B deck.
* The hallways leading to the first-class staterooms were not wood paneled. The walls there were actually painted white, with an array of paneling ranging from ornate to simple.
* The first-class grand staircase is shown without the glass dome but with two non-historical light fixtures on either side of the central clock and with much darker, heavy oak paneling.
* The first-class smoking room did not have a bar.
* Alhough "Titanic" had a Ritz-inspired restaurant, with an adjoining promenade cafe patterned after Parisian sidewalk establishments and two Palm Court Verandas, there was no gigantic two-story tea room with revolving doors and huge windows. In fact, one look at the superstructure at any point in the film should indicate that it was physically impossible for the ship to have room for such an establishment. This space could be a substitution for the first- class lounge, which is not shown in the film.
* John Jacob Astor IV did not say, "I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous!" It is an urban legend.
* During a sweeping crane shot of the port side of the ship, several mistakes in the design of the set are apparent, including but not limited to: an extra deck house on the poop and forecastle decks; the main mast facing the wrong direction; and the absence of 'B' Deck.
* The first-class dining saloon is shown in different scenes as being on 'A' Deck and the Boat Deck. In reality, it was located on 'D' Deck.
* Access to the dining saloon was gained through two sets of double doors leading from the reception room located at the bottom of the Grand Staircase. In the film, three large arched openings are shown.
* The actual first-class dining room was painted white, not peaches-and-cream as shown in the film.
* There are several errors during the Southampton scenes, such as having "Titanic" docked on her starboard side. The deck houses on the docks also appear to be from New York City.
* The "Titanic" was built and fitted out in Belfast, not Southampton as shown in the film.
* There were no press conferences held aboard the ship on the day before her maiden voyage. The speech Captain Smith gives the reporters about the art of ship building was, in reality, delivered by him five years earlier on another White Star liner, the "Adriatic".
* Chief Officer Henry Wilde, Third Officer Herbert Pitman and Sixth Officer James Moody are omitted.
* "Titanic's" first-class dining room was not fitted with a dance floor. However, a dance floor was added to "Titanic's" sister ship, "Olympic" later in her career.
* Contrary to the popular belief, there was no organized dancing in first class. In fact, the upper class at the time would have considered dancing during dinner to be socially inappropriate and improper.
* The tango (which some characters perform) originated in the bordellos of Argentina and would have been completely beneath the notice of the upper classes as well as considered shockingly suggestive. It was almost unknown as a ballroom dance until after World War I.
* The ship's lookouts did indeed have to work without binoculars but not because they had been taken to the bridge for use there. They had been misplaced back in Southampton.
*By 1912, the concept of "moving pictures" was nothing new, so it's hardly plausible that some of the characters would be astonished when told of the concept. However, Mary Pickford did not become a full-fledged movie star and a household name until 1917, so it was nearly impossible for Jamie Perse to have any idea who Miss Pickford was.
* Shortly after the ship collides with the iceberg, first-class passengers Molly Brown, John Jacob Astor and the fictional character of "Mr. Foley" (loosely based on Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, a real passenger) are shown emerging from the second-class entrance at the aft port side of the boat deck. Following this gratuitous error, the trio is then shown admiring the passengers who are tossing around the pieces of ice that have fallen onto the deck, even though the ship hit the berg with her starboard side at the bow. The iceberg never fully reached A-deck, which was a level below the boat deck.
* The characters played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Peter Gallagher both visit a service window to receive and send out wireless telegrams. Such a window did not exist on the "Titanic"; first class passengers sent and received telegrams via steward, rather than first-hand contact with the Marconi operators.
* The "Carpathia's" deck was not littered with corpses. In fact, only one body was found by the rescue ship and buried at sea shortly afterwards. One passenger, William Hoyt, died after being rescued. The majority of the bodies recovered were found by the cable ship "Mackay-Bennett", which was chartered by the White Star Line for this purpose.
* The davits seen on the film's RMS "Carpathia" were first developed in 1926.
* At the very end of the film, a caption reads that "all attempts to raise the "Titanic" have failed." No such attempt has ever been made. The wreckage is so fragile that experts believe it would be impossible to raise even a small section.

Cast

Trivia

* Originally intended as a remake of the 1979 television film "S.O.S. Titanic".
* The film was released to home video soon after the release of James Cameron's blockbuster film.
* Steven Spielberg was inspired to hire Catherine Zeta-Jones after seeing her in this mini-series and the visual effects company Vision Crew Unlimited contributed miniatures to James Cameron's version of "Titanic" as well as to this miniseries.
* Despite its various inaccuracies, this film "was" the first to show "Titanic" breaking in two as she sank.

External links

*
*