Lifeboat (film) - Production

Production

At the time that Lifeboat went into production, Alfred Hitchcock was under contract to David O. Selznick. Twentieth Century-Fox obtained the director's services in exchange for that of several actors and technicians, as well as the rights to three stories that Fox owned. Hitchcock was to direct two films for the studio, but the second was never made, apparently because Fox was unhappy with the length of time taken to finish production on Lifeboat.

It was Hitchcock who came up with the idea for the film. He approached A.J. Cronin, James Hilton and Ernest Hemingway to help write the script, before giving the project to John Steinbeck, who had previously written the screenplay for the 1941 documentary The Forgotten Village but had not written a fictional story for the screen. It was Steinbeck's intention to write and publish a novel and sell the rights to the studio, but the story was never published, as his literary agents considered it "inferior". Steinbeck received $50,000 for the rights to his novella. A condensed version of the film story appeared in Collier's magazine on November 13, 1942, credited to Hitchcock and writer Harry Sylvester, with Steinbeck credited with the "original screen story". Other writers who worked on various drafts of the script include Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville, MacKinlay Kantor, Patricia Collinge, Albert Mannheimer and Marian Spitzer. Hitchcock also brought in Ben Hecht to rewrite the ending.

Lifeboat was originally planned to be filmed in Technicolor with an all-male cast, many of whom were going to be unknowns. Canada Lee, who was primarily a stage actor with only one film credit at the time, was the first actor cast in the film.

Hitchcock pre-planned the camera angles for the film using a miniature lifeboat and figurines. Four lifeboats were utilized during shooting. Rehearsals took place in one, separate boats were used for close-ups and long shots, and another was in the studio's large-scale tank, where water shots were made. Except for background footage shot by the second unit around Miami, in the Florida Keys and on San Miguel Island in California, the film was shot entirely in the Twentieth Century-Fox studio on Pico Boulevard in what is now Century City.

Lifeboat was in production from August 3 through November 17, 1943. Illnesses were a constant part of the production from the beginning. Before shooting began, William Bendix replaced actor Murray Alper when Alper became ill, and after two weeks of shooting, director of photography Arthur Miller was replaced by Glen MacWilliams because of illness. Tallulah Bankhead came down with pneumonia twice during shooting, and Mary Anderson became seriously ill during production, causing several days of production time to be lost. Hume Cronyn suffered two cracked ribs and nearly drowned when he was caught under a water-activator making waves for a storm scene. He was saved by a lifeguard.

The film is unique among Hitchcock's American films for having no musical score during the narrative; the Fox studio orchestra was only utilized for the opening and closing credits.