Review of Lifeboat (1944) by Byron B — 23 Jun 2013

The title boat holds a microcosm of WWII personalities. Steinbeck wrote the short story for a magazine. On all the marketing materials I've seen Hitchcock and Steinbeck are promoted as the authors of the picture.

Jo Swerling received the official screenplay credit though and Ben Hecht assisted in changing the ending. The opening credits appear over the smokestack of the sinking steamship on which most of the lifeboat passengers were traveling.

This hot, steaming, pressurized thing is a good symbol for the drama in store for us amongst the survivors. Slowly we are introduced to the company. Tallulah Bankhead is Constance Porter, the opinionated, world traveling journalist, who is used to the finer things in life.

John Hodiak is Kovac, a crewman on the ship from a lower-class background. Hume Cronyn is Stanley "Sparks," a ship engineer, who with Mary Anderson as Alice, a British military nurse, assists injured William Bendix as Gus, another crewman from the ship, aboard the lifeboat.

Stanley and Alice are the youngest couple and they form a romantic bond. Henry Hull is the extremely wealthy and democratically minded Brit "Ritt." Canada Lee is Joe, the porter, who most everyone mistakenly thinks is named George.

Joe helps save the traumatized Heather Angel as Mrs. Higgins along with her already deceased baby. Finally, Walter Slezak climbs aboard as Willy, a survivor from one of the German submarines that sunk the steamship.

This random bunch of survivors face death, power struggles, the elements, and their own best and worst selves. I have read a number of Steinbeck's novels and have long thought that he has quite a knack with dialog, so I'm surprised he didn't write more often for the stage or screen.

As I alluded to earlier, I'm not really sure if Steinbeck's famous name was a marketing ploy, or if he really holds responsibility for the conversations and conflicts between the passengers. The effects make you believe they are stuck on this small boat and though it is not one of Hitchcock's more sinister suspense plots, there are plenty of thrills.