S.O.S. Titanic

First Class passengers include a May–December couple, multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor IV (David Janssen) and his new wife Madeleine Talmage Force (Beverly Ross); their friend, Molly Brown (Cloris Leachman); another pair of honeymooners, Daniel and Mary Marvin (Jerry Houser and Deborah Fallender); and Benjamin Guggenheim (John Moffatt), returning to his wife and children after a scandalous affair.

One plot line relates the tentative shipboard romance of two schoolteachers, Lawrence Beesley (David Warner, later appearing in the James Cameron 1997 film Titanic) and the fictional Leigh Goodwin (Susan Saint James).

In steerage, the plot focuses on the experiences of eight Irish immigrants, who are first depicted approaching the ship from a tender in the harbor of Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland. These characters, all based on real people, include Katie Gilnagh (played by Shevaun Bryers), Kate Mullens, Mary Agatha Glynn, Bridget Bradley, Daniel Buckley, Jim Farrell, Martin Gallagher, and David Chartens. During the voyage, Martin Gallagher falls for an unnamed "Irish beauty."

The cast also includes Helen Mirren in a small role (as Mary Sloan, a real-life surviving Titanic stewardess)[2] early in her career.

One of the film's major themes is class distinctions. Second Class passengers Beesley and Goodwin discuss their ambiguous position "in the middle" and debate whether class distinctions are uniquely British. Goodwin briefly encourages Beesley to pursue his apparent attraction to a young Irish beauty in Third Class, but he rejects this advice. The Third Class passengers, mostly from poor backgrounds, do not show any resentment at their meager accommodation—Katie Gilnagh comments that sleeping four-to-a-room is far more comfortable than the situation she experienced in her overcrowded childhood home—but on the night of the sinking, they struggle to evade the efforts of ship's personnel to keep them below decks and away from the lifeboats. Led by Jim Farrell, they successfully sneak up to the First Class restaurant, where Farrell persuades the Master-at-Arms to allow the women—but only the women—to pass up to the boat deck.

Another major theme is the happy, hectic atmosphere aboard ship. Young Mary Marvin comments that many of the First Class passengers are honeymooners, and that she does not want to land, but simply to go on sailing and dancing forever. In much simpler surroundings, the Third Class passengers also engage in music, dancing, winning, and whirlwind romances. Meanwhile, Beesley and Goodwin toy with the possibility of embarking on an illicit affair in an empty cabin but decide not to. Goodwin comments that shipboard romances, like shipboard friendships, are meant to end with the voyage.

A third theme is who deserved, or accepted, responsibility for the wrecking of the RMS Titanic. Captain Edward Smith, a veteran White Star captain nearing retirement, is depicted as a masterful leader who nevertheless failed to slow down in spite of being well aware that he was traveling into ice-laden waters. Shipbuilder Thomas Andrews radiates an almost saintly quality, seeing to the final details of construction and repairs himself, tenderly looking after passengers and crew, and even conversing with a young stewardess about their common hometown of Belfast. He fully understands the implications of the collision, and his knowledge that he cannot save the ship clearly breaks his heart. Meanwhile, White Star Line director J. Bruce Ismay wavers between a stance of command and an unwillingness to take responsibility for the sinking. Identifying himself as a passenger, he defiantly boards a lifeboat, only to experience a nervous breakdown later aboard the R.M.S. Carpathia rescuing ship. Ismay is the only one of these three men who survives, and it is clear that he will never fully recover from the psychological effects and blow to his reputation from the fabled sinking.

The film includes roles on the RMS Carpathia (particularly the radio operator, Harold Cottam) and shows this ship more fully than other film versions. It shows survivors going onto the Carpathia. The seascape is shown heavy with ice floes.

Rather than the sacred "Nearer, My God, to Thee", the ship band plays jaunty, secular ragtime tunes by Scott Joplin.

Survivors discuss the silence of the disappearance of the ship and absence of screaming. Several philosophise regarding their losses.

• David Janssen as John Jacob Astor IV
• Beverly Ross as Madeleine Astor
• Cloris Leachman as Margaret "Molly" Brown
• Susan Saint James as Leigh Goodwin
• David Warner as Lawrence Beesley (who also appears in the 1997 version, Titanic)
• Geoffrey Whitehead as Thomas Andrews
• Ian Holm as J. Bruce Ismay
• Helen Mirren as Stewardess May Sloan
• Harry Andrews as Captain Edward J. Smith
• Robert Pugh as James Farrell (Irish Traveller in steerage)
• Jerry Houser as Daniel Marvin
• Deborah Fallender as Mary Marvin
• Shevaun Briars as Katie Gilnagh
• Catherine Byrne as Bridget Bradley
• Nick Brimble as Olaus Abelseth
• Norman Rossington as Master-at-arms Thomas King
• Ed Bishop as Henry B. Harris
• Christopher Strauli as Harold Cottam
• John Moffatt as Benjamin Guggenheim
• Aubrey Morris as the steward
• Nancy Nevinson as Ida Straus
• Gordon Whiting as Isidor Straus
• Peter Bourke as Harold Bride
• Kate Howard as the Countess of Rothes
• Madge Ryan as stewardess
• Philip Stone as Arthur Rostron, the captain of RMS Carpathia

The film was greenlit by Bernard Delfont of EMI Films, at the same time as Delfont's brother, Sir Lew Grade, was making a film based on Raise the Titanic.[3]

Producer William Filmore called it the "thinking man's disaster film".[4]

Locations

The RMS Queen Mary, which in the movie was partly used as the RMS Titanic

Several of the scenes on the exterior decks, as well as those in the ship's wheelhouse, were filmed on board the later British ocean liner from the 1930s, the retired RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.[4]

Some interior scenes were filmed at the Waldorf and Adelphi historic hotels in London and Liverpool, respectively. The town of Peel on the Isle of Man served as the Queenstown backdrop. Some external shots were filmed aboard, and of, the TSS Manxman which also appears as the R.M.S. Carpathia in some of the opening sequences and as the R.M.S. Titanic in a few shipboard scenes.

• S.O.S. Titanic was originally broadcast as a television film on ABC on September 23, 1979. It ran for 3 hours, or approximately 144 minutes, excluding commercials. Although this version was shown on TV occasionally and bootleg copies sometimes surfaced on the internet, it was never commercially released until making its debut on home video from Kino Lorber on October 13, 2020, as both a Blu-ray and a 2-disc DVD set along with the European theatrical version.[5][6]
• In 1980, the film was edited to 103 minutes and released theatrically in Europe. This version has been released on DVD globally, including in the UK in April 2012 by distributor Studio Canal.[7] In the shorter version, some storylines were completely cut.
• Most 1980s and 1990s VHS video releases were edited to 98 minutes.

• List of films about the RMS Titanic

• S.O.S. Titanic at IMDb
• S.O.S. Titanic at AllMovie
• S.O.S. Titanic at the TCM Movie Database