40 Fun Facts About A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember reused shots from a 1943 Titanic film made as propaganda in which country?

Germany made its wartime Titanic to pin the disaster on British plutocrats. Four of its clips, showing the ship at sea and a flooding engine-room walkway, were reused in the 1958 film.

A Night to Remember (1958) opens with which launch ceremony that the real Titanic never received?

A christening was never White Star Line practice, so the real ship slid into the water without one. Popular lore later blamed the missing ritual for the Titanic's bad luck.

Which lucky toy did Edith Russell carry off the Titanic, a story retold in A Night to Remember?

A musical pig, a papier-mâché music box that played a dance tune when its tail was twisted, went into Lifeboat 11 with her. Russell wound it up to calm the frightened children around her.

Charles Lightoller, hero of A Night to Remember, later took his yacht to which wartime evacuation?

Dunkirk drew the retired Lightoller across the Channel in his motor yacht Sundowner. In a boat licensed to carry 21 passengers, he and his crew brought home about 130 servicemen.

Four actors with small parts in A Night to Remember each later played which James Bond character?

Q was played in 17 Bond films by Desmond Llewelyn, seen here as a steward holding a gate shut against steerage passengers. Peter Burton, Geoffrey Bayldon and Alec McCowen also took the role.

How does A Night to Remember (1958) show the Titanic going down, as most experts then believed?

Sinking in one piece was the accepted version for decades, although some of those rescued swore the hull had split. Only the discovery of the wreck on the seabed settled the argument in their favour.

Which British star plays Second Officer Lightoller, the central figure of A Night to Remember?

Kenneth More had recently played fighter ace Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky. When extras balked at jumping into icy water on a November night shoot, he leapt in first and instantly regretted it.

Isidor Straus, who stays aboard with wife Ida in A Night to Remember, co-owned which famous store?

Macy's has a memorial plaque to the couple at its Manhattan flagship store. Ida refused to get into a lifeboat without Isidor, and neither of them left the ship.

Which director hired Walter Lord, author of A Night to Remember, to advise on a 1997 blockbuster?

James Cameron leaned on the historian while filming Titanic, four decades after the book came out. Lord had by then updated the story himself in a 1986 sequel, written after the wreck was found.

Which Titanic crewman in A Night to Remember (1958) turns to the bottle, yet survives the icy sea?

The chief baker, Charles Joughin, told the inquiry he trod water for about two hours after downing half a tumbler of liqueur. He had already given up his own lifeboat place.

Walter Lord, author of A Night to Remember, sailed as a boy on which sister ship of the Titanic?

Olympic carried the young Lord across the Atlantic from New York in the 1920s. He recalled decks that seemed to go on for miles, and hours spent with crayons trying to match the pinkish buff of her funnels.

What was Walter Lord's day job when he wrote A Night to Remember in his spare time?

Advertising copywriter was his trade at a big New York agency, although he held a law degree. The book sold so well that he was able to quit and write history full time.

Walter Lord followed A Night to Remember with Day of Infamy, a 1957 account of which attack?

Pearl Harbor had changed Lord's own life: he broke off his law studies to join the Army after the attack. He spent the war as a code clerk in London with the Office of Strategic Services.

Whose 1985 discovery of the Titanic wreck led Walter Lord to write a second book on the disaster?

Robert Ballard's find set off a new wave of public interest in the lost liner. Lord's answer, three decades after his first Titanic book, was a volume of second thoughts and fresh theories.

Which evidence, gathered four decades on, did Walter Lord chiefly use to write A Night to Remember?

Survivor interviews with 63 people who had been aboard gave the book its minute-by-minute detail. Lord also mined the memoirs and articles that those people had written.

The book A Night to Remember follows survivor Harold Bride in naming which tune as the band's last?

Autumn is the tune the wireless operator said he heard at the end. The 1958 film set the book aside on this point and used the hymn of popular legend instead.

Which future Goldfinger star plays first-class wife Liz Lucas in A Night to Remember (1958)?

Honor Blackman's character is a composite of several real wives who were parted from their husbands at the boats. Six years later she was cast as Pussy Galore.

Which future Man from U.N.C.L.E. star plays wireless operator Harold Bride in A Night to Remember?

David McCallum was 24 when the film was shot. Fame came in the 1960s as the Russian agent Illya Kuryakin, and four decades later as the medical examiner Ducky in NCIS.

Which American network staged A Night to Remember as a live play in 1956, two years before the film?

NBC showed it as part of Kraft Television Theatre to an audience of 28 million. With 31 sets and 107 actors, it was called the most complex live television show attempted up to then.

Which Casablanca actor narrated the live 1956 television version of A Night to Remember?

Claude Rains tied the play's many short scenes together with narration, a device borrowed from radio drama. He had first found film fame without showing his face, as The Invisible Man.

Which future director of The Sting staged A Night to Remember as a live television play in 1956?

George Roy Hill also co-wrote the script, and the two jobs brought him Emmy nominations for writing and directing. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was still thirteen years away.

Which future Avengers star played Thomas Andrews in the 1956 television play of A Night to Remember?

Patrick Macnee took the part five years before he first appeared as the secret agent John Steed. In the British film of 1958 the shipbuilder was played by Michael Goodliffe.

Which British director made A Night to Remember (1958) and later turned to Hammer horror films?

Roy Ward Baker found the book in his favourite bookshop and set out to secure the film rights. He had earlier spent three years in Hollywood, where he directed Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock.

Which spy novelist, author of The Mask of Dimitrios, scripted the film A Night to Remember?

Eric Ambler already had an Oscar nomination for scripting another story of the sea, The Cruel Sea. The director himself recommended him for the Titanic job.

A Night to Remember producer William MacQuitty saw the Titanic launched, aged six, in which city?

Belfast was his birthplace, and he remembered the scene at the Harland and Wolff yard vividly for the rest of his life. He decided to film the story after his wife gave him the book.

At which British studio was A Night to Remember filmed, on sets built from the Titanic's own plans?

Pinewood housed thirty sets copied from the shipbuilders' original drawings. When the tilting sets creaked, the director kept the noise in because it made the final scenes more realistic.

What record did A Night to Remember set among British films when it was shot in 1957 and 1958?

Highest budget in British film history to that point, at up to £600,000, did not buy a hit. Takings were modest, partly because the film underperformed in American cinemas.

Which American awards honoured A Night to Remember in 1959 as best English-language foreign film?

Golden Globes voters gave it the Samuel Goldwyn International Award. Reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic praised the film, even though its box office disappointed.

Tucker McGuire plays which Denver socialite, one of the few Americans in A Night to Remember?

Molly Brown survived a script that dropped most of the American passengers or turned them British. The director's defence was that it was a British film made by British artists for a British audience.

In A Night to Remember, which ship's captain sleeps while the Titanic fires rockets ten miles away?

Californian had stopped for the night at the edge of the ice, with her wireless operator off duty. Her captain objected to being shown in pyjamas in his cabin: he had been dozing in uniform in the chart room.

Which Cunard liner races 58 miles to pick up the survivors at the end of A Night to Remember?

Carpathia needed about four hours to reach the scene, far too late for anyone left in the water. Her captain, Arthur Rostron, is played in the film by Anthony Bushell.

On what does Charles Lightoller ride out the night after the ship sinks in A Night to Remember?

An upturned lifeboat, Collapsible B, had fallen onto the deck upside down and floated clear as the ship went under. The real Lightoller spent the night balancing on its hull with a crowd of other men.

Where does shipbuilder Thomas Andrews wait alone for the end in A Night to Remember (1958)?

The smoking room in first class is where a steward reportedly last saw the real Andrews, arms folded and his lifebelt on a nearby table. Other accounts have him leaving again to help with the evacuation.

Whose daughter was overcome on the A Night to Remember set by an actor's likeness to her father?

Captain Smith's daughter Helen met Laurence Naismith in costume and was struck by how closely he resembled her father. The producers had gone out of their way to cast actors who looked like the real people.

Which millionaire, played by Harold Goldblatt in A Night to Remember, met his end in evening dress?

Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet took off their lifebelts and sweaters and reappeared in evening clothes. He sent word to his wife in New York that he had done his duty.

Why does A Night to Remember (1958) turn the Duff-Gordons into Sir Richard and Lady Richard?

To avoid legal action, the film-makers renamed a couple whose lifeboat, built for 40, had left with only 12 aboard. Gossip that they bribed its crew had dogged them since 1912, although the inquiry cleared them.

A Night to Remember (1958) never names White Star boss J. Bruce Ismay, calling him only what?

The Chairman is all the script ever calls him, although Frank Lawton plays him unmistakably. He steps into one of the last boats to leave, just as Ismay did.

Which surviving Titanic officer worked as a technical adviser on the film A Night to Remember?

Joseph Boxhall, the fourth officer, seldom spoke about that night and had to be talked into the job by an old friend. His ashes were later scattered at the position he had calculated for the sinking.

Where in Britain did Walter Lord leave the Titanic papers and relics behind A Night to Remember?

National Maritime Museum curators in Greenwich received his manuscripts, original letters and memorabilia after his death in 2002. The film's producer added items from his own collection.

Which London swimming spot stood in for the icy Atlantic in A Night to Remember (1958)?

Ruislip Lido hosted the shoot at two o'clock on an icy November morning, because the studio had no tank big enough for the survivors struggling into the lifeboats.