A Night To Remember (book) - Screen Adaptations

Screen Adaptations

The book has been adapted twice for the screen. The first production was staged as a live adaptation screened on 28 March 1956 by NBC TV and sponsored by Kraft Foods as part of the Kraft Television Theatre strand. It has been described as "the biggest, most lavish, most expensive thing of its kind" attempted up to that point, with 31 sets, 107 actors, 72 speaking parts, 3,000 gallons of water and costing $95,000 ($812,093 at present-day prices). George Roy Hill directed and Claude Rains provided a narration – a practice borrowed from radio dramas which provided a template for many television dramas of the time. It took a similar approach to the book, lacking dominant characters and switching between a multiplicity of scenes. Rains' narration was used "to bridge the almost limitless number of sequences of life aboard the doomed liner", as a reviewer put it, and closed with his declaration that "never again has Man been so confident. An age had come to an end." The production was a major hit, attracting 28 million viewers, and greatly boosted the book's sales. It was rerun on kinescope on 2 May 1956, five weeks after its first broadcast.

The second adaptation was the classic 1958 British drama film A Night to Remember starring Kenneth More, which is still widely regarded as "the definitive cinematic telling of the story." The film came about after its eventual director, Roy Ward Baker, and its producer, Belfast-born William MacQuitty both acquired copies of the book – Baker from his favourite bookshop and MacQuitty from his wife – and decided to obtain the film rights. MacQuitty had actually seen Titanic being launched on 31 May 1911 and still remembered the occasion vividly. He met Lord and brought him on board the production as a consultant. The film diverges from both the book and the NBC TV adaptation in focusing on a central character, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, played by More. Its conclusion reflects Lord's world-historical theme of a "world changed for ever" with a fictional conversation between two survivors, Lightoller and Colonel Archibald Gracie, sitting on an overturned lifeboat. Lightoller declares that the disaster is "different ... Because we were so sure. Because even though it's happened, it's still unbelievable. I don't think I'll ever feel sure again. About anything."

After Lord died in 2002, he bequeathed to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich his huge collection of manuscripts, original letters and Titanic memorabilia, which he had gathered during his life and used to write A Night to Remember. MacQuitty also donated items from his own collection of material related to the film. Items from the collection are on display at the museum and can be accessed by researchers.