Ocean Liners in Movies or Films at Sea (updated Nov 2017)

For liners and the shipping companies movies and films had been a top marketing tool

Movies or Films and liners at sea, had been intriguing me since I have read about in my youth in LUXUSLINER - BILDER EINER GROSSEN ZEIT by Lee Server (THE GOLDEN AGE OF OCEAN LINERS). But earlier, mot only since my first crossing, I was keen watching movies with liners in it, and disapointed, which was an understatement, when I realized the films have been made in a set ashore in some movie "factory". That was after my first crossing. 
by Earl of Cruise
an essay in progress

`Sabrina´, Humphrey Bogart in the office, while LIBERTÉ is sailing out of New York harbor - screenshot

Ocean liners, especially those of the luxury category, had been the location of dramas, love stories, thrillers, suspense and catastrophies sinde film was born, or nearly.
In this list, the most descriptions are taken from Wikipedia, as I guess no one can expect having seen all these films ... otherwise I would have squared eyes. The list I tried to do as chronological as possible. But avoiding the cruise ship films, the catastrophy and horror genre, so no Poseidon, Titanic Raising, Monster/Freak Waves and such. 
TV shows such as `Love Boat´, the German adaption `Das Traumschiff´ (German Wiki) and the far less well-known, even in Germany, `Das Ferienschiff´ aired 1968/69 at ZDF and staged onboard HANSEATIC 2, ex SHALOM. This TV show was, I dare say, the mother of the younger TV shows, I will present in a special article later.
This article/post will be updated with new movies and films, as it is quite a task getting them all at once.
For some time I am thinking of a list of films staging aboard liners, and don´t think about their short appearance as in `How to Marry a Millionaire´, 1953, with LIBERTÉ (German wiki) sailing into New York harbor in the opening scene, or leaving the Big Apple as in `Sabrina´. I am thinking of a list where the film location is the ship, or in major parts. I got my idea refueled by a post in the FB group The Ocean Liner Enthusiasts, where a number of films had been mentioned.

Liners and ships in general are ideal sets for romantic affairs ... in films but too in real life ...

`How to Marry a Millionaire´, LIBERTÉ sailing into New York - screenshot from the YouTube video

The heyday for shipboard films have been the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. But some early films have been made 1912, about the TITANIC desaster.
The first Film about a ship and partly filmed on was about the TITANIC desaster in April 1912.

Saved From The TITANIC (1912)

Director: Étienne Arnaud 

Saved from the TITANIC is a 1912 American silent motion picture short starring Dorothy Gibson, an American film actress who survived the sinkingof TITANIC on April 15, 1912. Premiering in the United States just 29 days after the event, it is the earliest dramatization about the tragedy.

`Saved From The TITANIC´ - Source: Wikipedia

Gibson had been one of 28 people aboard the first lifeboat to be launched from TITANIC and was rescued about five and a half hours after leaving the ship. On returning to New York City, she co-wrote the script and played a fictionalized version of herself. The plot involves her recounting the story of the disaster to her fictional parents and fiancé, with the footage interspersed with stock footage of icebergs, Titanic's sister ship OLYMPIC and the ship's captain, Edward Smith. To add to the film's authenticity, Gibson wore the same clothes as on the night of the disaster. The filming took place in a New Jersey studio and aboard a derelict ship in New York Harbor.
The film was released internationally and attracted large audiences and positive reviews, though some criticized it for commercializing the tragedy so soon after the event. It is now regarded as a lost film, as the last known prints were destroyed in an Éclair studio fire in March 1914. Only a few printed stills and promotional photos are known to survive. It is Gibson's penultimate film, as she reportedly suffered a mental breakdown after completing it.

Source: Wikipedia

La hantise (1912)

Director: Louis Feuillade

(English: The Obsession) is a 1912 short silent film directed by Louis Feuillade. The film stars Renée Carl and René Navarre. The film focuses on a woman who is told by a palm reader that one of her loved ones will die. The woman then tries to convince her husband not to board TITANIC, as she fears for his safety. The film is said to confront the fraud of palm reading, highlighting the suffering that obsessive belief in the supernatural can create.

Source: Wikipedia

In Nacht und Eis (1912)

Director: Mime Misu 

Cast:Waldemar Hecker, Otto Rippert, Ernst Rückert

(English: "In Night and Ice"), also called Der Untergang der TITANIC ("The Sinking of the TITANIC") is a 1912 German adventure-disaster drama film about the sinking of TITANIC. The filming began during the summer of 1912, and the film premiered that winter.

Film poster of `In Nacht und Eis´ - Source: Wikipedia 

The film starts out with the passengers boarding at Southampton. The lives of the passengers on board the ill-fated ocean liner are depicted. On 14 April, the Titanic strikes an iceberg, throwing the diners in the Café Parisien to the side. Panic strikes the passengers. The crew ready the lifeboats, despite the fact that there are not enough of them. Women and children are loaded, while the men are held back. The radio operators (who take up most of the sinking part of the film) send out an urgent SOS. Fire blows out of the funnels during the sinking and then the boilers explode. The radio room floods, and finally the operators and captain jump ship and the Titanic sinks. Some survivors make it to a lifeboat, where they are pulled in. The captain swims to the lifeboat but when he is offered a spot, he instead swims away and goes underwater to drown.

Source: Wikipedia

The Immigrant (1917)

also called Broke
Director: Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin’s Tramp character stars as an immigrant coming to the United States. The film begins aboard a steamer crossing the Atlantic Ocean and showcases the life onboard and the misadventures of the Tramp while trying to avoid seasick passengers. During the voyage he befriends a young woman traveling with her ailing mother, yet ends up being accused of theft.

A scene in which Chaplin’s character kicks an immigration officer was later cited as evidence of his anti-Americanism when he was exiled from the United States in 1952 during McCarthy´s witchhunt. I see too a harsh social criticism in this film such as in Modern Times.

`The Immigrant´, film poster, depicting the famed restaurant scene - Source: Wikipedia

The Immigrant (YouTube video) is a 1917 American silent romantic comedy short. The film stars Charlie Chaplin's Tramp character as an immigrant coming to the United States who is accused of theft on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, and falls in love with a beautiful young woman along the way. It also stars Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell.
The movie was written and directed by Chaplin.
According to Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's documentary series Unknown Chaplin, the first scenes to be written and filmed take place in what became the movie's second half, in which the penniless Tramp finds a coin and goes for a meal in a restaurant, not realising that the coin has fallen out of his pocket. It was not until later that Chaplin decided the reason the Tramp was penniless was that he had just arrived on a boat from Europe, and used this notion as the basis for the first half. Purviance reportedly was required to eat so many plates of beans during the many takes to complete the restaurant sequence (in character as another immigrant who falls in love with Charlie) that she became physically ill.
The scene in which Chaplin's character kicks an immigration officer was cited later as evidence of his anti-Americanism when he was forced to leave the United States in 1952. In 1998, The Immigrant was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film begins aboard a steamer crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and initially showcases the misadventures of an unnamed immigrant, the Tramp (Chaplin) who finds himself in assorted mischief while, among other things, playing cards, eating in a mess hall, and avoiding seasick passengers. Along the way, he befriends another unnamed immigrant (Purviance) who is traveling to America with her ailing mother. The two are robbed by a pickpocket who is losing in gambling. The Tramp, feeling sorry for the two penniless women, attempts to secretly place his winnings from his card game in the woman's pocket, but ends up being mistakenly accused of being a pickpocket. The woman manages to clear the Tramp's name. Upon arrival in America, the Tramp and the woman part company.

`The Immigrant´, film secene used for different promotions regarding immigration - family members collection

Later, hungry and broke, the tramp finds a coin on the street outside a restaurant and pockets it. He doesn't realize there is a hole in his pocket and the coin has fallen straight through and is back on the ground. He enters the restaurant, where he orders a plate of beans. There, he is reunited with the woman and discovers her mother is dead. The Tramp orders a meal for her.
As they eat, they watch the restaurant's burly head waiter (Campbell) and other waiters attack and forcibly eject a patron who is short 10 cents in paying his bill. The Tramp, intimidated by the waiter, checks and now realizes he has lost his coin. Terrified of facing the same treatment as the man he saw thrown out, the Tramp begins planning how he will fight the huge man. Soon, however, he finds the same coin fallen from the head waiter's pocket onto the floor and makes many failed attempts to retrieve it without notice. He finally retrieves the coin and nonchalantly pays the waiter only to be thunderstruck when the waiter reveals the coin to be fake. Once again, the Tramp prepares for the fight of his life. Just then, a visiting artist spots the Tramp and the woman and offers them a job to pose for a painting. The two agree. The artist offers to pay for the Tramp and the woman's meal, but the Tramp declines the offer several times for reasons of etiquette, intending to eventually accept the artist's offer; however, he's dismayed when the artist does not renew his offer to pay at the last moment. The artist pays for his own meal and leaves a tip for the waiter. The Tramp notices that the tip is enough to cover the couple's meal and, without the artist noticing, palms the tip and presents it to the waiter as his own payment for his and the woman's meal. As a final riposte, he lets the waiter keep the remaining change - one small coin - after paying his bill. The waiter thinks the artist himself has given no tip whatsoever, and is clearly upset at this supposed action.
Afterwards, outside a marriage license office in the rain, the Tramp proposes marriage to the woman, who is coy and reluctant until the Tramp physically carries her into the office while she waves her arms and kicks her feet in protest.

Source: Wikipedia

As if there is a certain lusting in the desaster of TITANIC, and the human drama(s), the next, fourth film depicting a liner, that is supposed to be the TITANIC drama. The sinking of TITANIC, seen by many as the beginning of the decline of the British Empire, and especially the end in believing in technology and its supremacy over nature.
Okay `Atlantic´ is making the illfated TITANIC only as the sample for the fictional liner ... The link to the real vessel was intended.

Atlantic / Atlantik (1929)

Director: Ewald André Dupont

Atlantic (1929) (also known as `TITANIC - Disaster In The Atlantic´ for its home video release) is a British black-and-white film, directed and produced by Ewald André Dupont and starring Franklin Dyall and Madeleine Carroll. Originally, two versions were made, the English and German-language version Atlantik were shot simultaneously. Subsequently, AS the voice-over technology in those did not exist, the production of a French version (Atlantis) began in spring 1930 using different footage and partially an altered storyline. The fourth version was released as a silent film.

`Atlantic´ - Source: Wikipedia

`Atlantic´ is a drama film based on the rms TITANIC and set aboard a fictional ship, called the Atlantic. The main plotline revolves around a man who has a shipboard affair with a fellow passenger, which is eventually discovered by his wife. The ship also has aboard an elderly couple, the Rools, who are on their anniversary cruise. Midway across the Atlantic Ocean, the Atlantic strikes an iceberg and is damaged to the point where it is sinking into the Atlantic. A shortage of lifeboats causes the crew to only allow women and children in (though the captain allows a few men to take to the last remaining boats as the disaster reaches its zenith) and many couples are separated. Mrs. Rool refuses to leave her husband and after the boats are gone all the passengers gather on the deck and sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the Atlantic sinks into the ocean. The final scenes depict a group of passengers saying the Lord's Prayer in a flooding lounge.

Source: Wikipedia

The film industry of those days, 1930s, produced scenes on board of passenger ships, that have been quite luxurious and made the audience known to and admiring the luxury.
It was the time when the New York Stock Exchange crash had been fully hitting the most of world economic.
The writers, screen play writers, impressarios, studio owners, actors, etc. had been regulars on the transatlantic liners and those vessels sailing other routes across the oceans and could do life studies on fellow passengers, which lead to accurate descriptions of onboard scenes, passengers behaviors and crew ...
Noël Coward f.e. wrote his "Intimacy" onboard a liner while crossing the Pacific. P.G. Woodhouse is setting mostly his slightly degenerated members of British aristocracy into adventures on board of liners. Somerset Maugham writes in `Mr. Knowall´ even tiniest details in his scenes, that one feels Maugham is totally known about. Evelyn Waugh´s `'Brideshead Revisited´ and the scenes on board a transatlantic liner, as well Katherine Ann Porter´s `Ship of 'Fools´ show their authors accurate knowledge of shipboard life. And the reader is getting this via his "head cinema".
And if a reader is known himself to the ocean liner life, even in later aeras, he feels if the writer is true or not.

Sin Takes A Holiday (1930)

Director: Paul L. Stein

Sin Takes a Holiday (YouTube video) is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy film, directed by Paul L. Stein, from a screenplay by Horace Jackson, based on a story by Robert Milton and Dorothy Cairns. It starred Constance Bennett, Kenneth MacKenna, and BasilRathbone. Originally produced by PathéExchange and released in 1930, it was part of the takeover package when RKO Pictures acquired Pathe that year; it was re-released by RKO in 1931.

`Sin Takes a Holiday´, Sylvia auctioning a bottle of champagne - screenshot, Source: YouTube video

The film starts in New York and after some time, when Sylvia is sent off to Paris, the liner apears at sea, and then the luxurious interior of this exterior quite unimprssive fictional liner.
Sylvia Brenner (Constance Bennett) is a plain secretary sharing an apartment with two other girls, one of whom is her friend Annie (ZaSu Pitts). Her economic condition is meager, but she makes do with what she has. She works for a womanizing divorce attorney, Gaylord Stanton (Kenneth MacKenna), who only dates married women; he has no intention of ever getting married and sees wives as safe, since they already have husbands. But Sylvia is secretly in love with Gaylord. When the woman he is fooling around with, Grace Lawrence (Rita La Roy), decides to leave her husband in order to marry Gaylord, he panics. In order to avoid having to deal with the matrimonial pursuits of any of his potential dalliances, he offers a business proposal to Sylvia whereby he will provide her with financial remuneration if she will marry him in name only. She agrees.

Constance Bennett staring the post for `Sin Takes A Holiday´ - Source: theblondeatthefilm.com

After the sham wedding, Sylvia is sent off to Paris by Gaylord, to get her out of the way so he can continue his nightly debauchery. In Paris, she uses her money to do a serious makeover of herself. While there, she also meets her boss's old friend, Reggie Durant (Basil Rathbone), who falls in love with her. Reggie is a sophisticated European, who introduces Sylvia to the enticements of the European lifestyle, to which she is attracted. When Reggie asks Sylvia to divorce Gaylord so that she can marry him, she is tempted, but confused, and returns home. Returning to the States, everyone takes notice of the transformed Sylvia.
Although there is a brief hiccup, as Grace puts forth a full-court offensive to win over Gaylord, Gaylord and Sylvia end up realizing that they are in love with each other.

Source: Wikipedia

Hollywood used to stage loveaffairs, infidelities or imagined infidelities on board of ocean liners, such as `One Way Passage´, `History is Made at Midnight´, `Dodsworth´, on liners. I get the impression about as such things only happen there. But this was creating beside the luxury image, a lazivous image amoung the prude audience. The peak of lazivousness was reached when `The French Line´ with Jane Russel was published. Prude America afterwarts was flodding LIBERTÉ to get a feeling of this lazivous atmosphere (Trailer).

Jane Russel in her oh so "scandalous" costume in `The French line´ - Source: moviemovieblogblog

Reaching for the Moon (1930)

ss L'AMERIQUE
Director: Edmund Goulding

Douglas Fairbanks (in one of his few talking roles) follows Bebe Daniels in `Reaching for the Moon´ aboard the art deco ocean liner, ss L'Amerique. And the not-yet-discovered Bing Crosby makes an appearance to sing Irving Berlin's "When The Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down."

 Screenshot from `Reaching for the Moon´ at YouTube

Reaching for the Moon is a 1930 American Pre-Code black and white musical film. Originally released at 91 minutes; surviving versions are usually cut to 62 minutes. A 74-minute version aired in 1998 on USA cable channel AMC. The DVD version runs just under 72 minutes. The film's working title was Lucky Break and is known as Para alcanzar la Luna in Spain. It is not to be confused with the Fairbanks silent film, Reaching for the Moon (1917)!
The film was originally intended to be a musical with songs written by Irving Berlin but problems soon developed. From the start, Berlin found Edmund Goulding, the director, difficult to work with. Also by mid-1930 the studio realized that the public’s demand for musicals had disappeared. So Goulding jettisoned many of Berlin’s songs from the score. Although just five Berlin songs had been recorded, the film, even in its scaled-down form, proved very expensive to make. By the time the filming was complete, the costs had come to about a million dollars, a huge budget for the times, and one that virtually ruled out the possibility of the film returning a profit.
The one song that was retained was `When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down´ introduced by Bing Crosby who had filmed it late at night after completing his work a Variety commented on this song specifically, saying: "None of the Berlin songs is left other than a chorus of hot numbers apparently named `Lower Than Lowdown´. Tune." It suddenly breaks into the running in the ship’s bar when Bing Crosby, of the Whiteman Rhythm Boys, gives it a strong start for just a chorus which, in turn, is ably picked up by Miss Daniels, also for merely a chorus, and then in an exterior shot to the deck where June MacCloy sends the lyric and melody for a gallop of half a chorus.
Wall Street wizard, Larry Day, new to the ways of love, is coached by his valet. He follows Vivian Benton on an ocean liner, where cocktails, laced with a "love potion", work their magic. He then loses his fortune in the market crash and feels he has also lost his girl.

Source: Wikipedia

Transatlantic (1931)

Director: William K. Howard
I once had the luck watching Transatlantic ... but please don´t ask where ... when? in my late teens, so long long time ago.
While researching for this article I found this film listed in IMBD, and remembered. Suddenly all the film came up from my stored memory. It was a fast paced movie, that may make you a bit breathless, fantastic cut and the plot intiguing.

Made in the early-morning of talking pictures, this belies any notion you might have of early talkies, with fast editing, a deleriously moving camera, and sharp script. Sets are magnificent, with the luxury liner where the action takes place assuming the atmosphere of some Byzantine palace. Best of all, it's capped off with a tour-de-force cat-and-mouse shoot-out through the vast engine room, which James Wong Howe's photography turns into a visual wonderland-maze of catwalks, huge machines and glossy steam. Script, story and playing are all top-notch.

critic from IMBD

opening of `Transatlantic´- screenshot

Transatlantic is a 1931 American Pre-Code drama film directed by William K. Howard. It won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by Gordon Wiles.

Essaying Transatlantic here, but the film’s final few moments, a gun-in-hand, cat-and-mouse chase over the catwalks and up and down the ladders of the steamy bowels of an ocean liner, is as vividly expressionistic as anything you’ve seen in the noir movies of the forties and fifties.

Practically unknown to a wider audience, Transatlantic, but it is not a forgotten film. Plenty of folks want or may want to see it, but just have not had the opportunity. It hasn’t been released on tape or disc, and, as far I know, it hasn’t aired on any of the classic movie channels, and it is conspicuously absent from those movie download sites on the Internet. But lucky me, I have seen the movie somewhere. You can purchased a copy. Transatlantic is an American film from William Fox. All of the spoken dialogue is in English, but I remember where the audience is shown a French newspaper page that helps develop the story, that was astonishing me back then. And perhaps I must have seen the movie in France, when visiting my aunt.

`Transatlantic´ movie poster - Source: IMBD

It’s a singularly a remarkable film. The movie hasn´t got for no reason an Oscar: Gordon Wiles took home the statuette for art direction, though if there had been a prize for film editing awarded at the 1931-1932 ceremony, this film and editor Jack Murray would have won it. (There were just a dozen competitive awards that year; the editing category was still two years away.) Easily as noteworthy as the art direction - and to contemporary sensibilities probably moreso - is the trendsetting deep-focus photography of James Wong Howe, by 1931 already a virtuoso of the movie camera. Transatlantic has some astonishing visuals effects.

`Transatlantic´ movie poster - Source: IMBD

There is very little dialogue in the opening sequence, though there is a cacophony of noise, as you might expect in a port of those days. The titular ocean liner is preparing to leave New York for England, and we are treated to the dizzying chaos surrounding departure, all characterized by a dazzlingly showy filmmaking. Five and a half minutes of crane shots, dolly shots, tracking shots, and zooms, high angles, low angles, long shots and close-ups, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, drunken, sober, elated, and in tears, steerage and first-class, passengers and crew, taxis and barking dogs. It’s a delightfully frenetic opening, compressing the entire hubbub of departure into a few superbly edited moments. And while such a pace can’t be maintained for long, the opening sets the expectation for a fast paced and exciting film, one book-ended with an expressionistic sequence that nearly matches it for sheer visual enjoyment.

`Transatlantic´ Greta Niessen, norwegian-born actress, movie still - Source: IMBD

No one can claim that Transatlantic drags, though it necessarily has to slow down through its center. In the wake of the ship’s departure we get to know and travel with the passengers central to the story. I will not summarize the plot, as it is too long ago, when watching. But the narrative concerns a group of unrelated travelers from assorted circumstances whose shipboard lives intertwine in unexpected ways. Yet unlike many other films of the period, this is not a particularly plot-heavy film. And although it barely surpasses an hour, its cast of characters are all surprising well drawn and free of cliché and meet and interact. But one does not have the impression initially that the film is moving inexorably towards some resolution of story, that out ultimate goal is to find out “what happened”. Following this, it is possible to think of this as a sort of Grand Hotel at sea, though Transatlantic is more consciously visual, less star-driven, and churns on mystery rather than melodrama.

`Transatalntic´, Edmund Lowe and Greta Niessen, movie still - Source: IMBD

The star is Edmund Lowe, who plays the mysterious, yet refined and tuxedoed Monty Greer. We assume he is a high stakes casino gambler or a gentleman thief, seemingly on the run. Also traveling are the Grahams (John Halliday and Myrna Loy). He is a wealthy financier and philanderer, she is the devoted, even if not so naïve wife. What she does not know, however, is that her husband’s bank just went belly-up, and he is absconding with the funds. The movie is set during the high tide of Grand Depression! The news of their misfortune catches up to them mid-voyage via the ship’s newspaper, sending into hysterics many of the ship’s other passengers, particularly the pedantic Mr. Kramer (Jean Hersholt), who heads for Graham’s cabin and a date with destiny…

`Transatlantic´ movie promotion postcard - Source: IMBD

There’s more to learn about the characters, but I cannot get into that. The movie builds up to the gem of a climax I mentioned earlier, where Lowe uses a handgun to tie up all of the story’s loose ends. It would be a crime to give the thing away, but this scene in particular is what I fealt let me get away with writing Transatlantic up here, as well the entrence sequence. Anyone who sees the sequence cannot deny that it must have been highly influential to the generation of filmmakers who would immerse themselves in the noir style. Taking place entirely within the mechanical confines of the ship’s darkest and most inaccessible spaces, the machine room, Lowe chases his quarry through a warren of pipes and pistons, up ladders and across narrow grates, around corners over ledges. And through the steam - what steam! - I thought of the heat, despite it is in Black-and-White,  billowing from countless valves seen and unseen, lit magnificently by countless well-hidden sources. It is tense, expressionistic, and highly stylized. The actors must have sweated off tremendously in the filming, and had a glorious time doing it.

Transatlantic is an ultra-chic ART DECO character mystery. It reminds us that film can be a frustratingly and wonderfully nebulous art form, and that we aren’t quite as certain as we think we are.

This is a movie that deserves a good remake! 

One Way Passage (1932)

ss Maloa
Director: Tay Garnett

There's much to like in this 24-day voyage across the Pacific from Hong Kong via Honolulu to San Francisco with William Powell and Kay Francis. Powell, aka the Thin Man, is perfect as the debonair murderer headed for San Quentin. And Francis plays the ill socialite. They fall in love, of course, and choose not to tell their secret. Powell and Francis did fit together as yin and yang!
Film set was a laid up old ship, the CALAWELL.
Nautical highlights: trip through the engine room, map of route with breadcrumb trail.

Screenshot from `One Way Passage´

OneWay Passage is a 1932 American Pre-Code romantic film starring William Powell and Kay Francis as star-crossed lovers, directed by Tay Garnett and released by Warner Bros. The screenplay was by Robert Lord and earned him the Academy Award for Best Story.
Dan Hardesty (William Powell) is an escaped murderer, sentenced to hang. In Hong Kong, he meets Joan Ames (Kay Francis), a terminally-ill woman, in a bar. They share a drink, then Dan breaks his glass, followed by Joan. Police Sergeant Steve Burke (Warren Hymer) captures Dan when he leaves (though out of sight of Joan) and escorts his prisoner aboard an ocean liner crossing the Pacific to San Francisco. On board, Dan jumps into the water in a bid to escape, dragging a handcuffed (and non-swimmer) Steve with him, but spots Joan among the passengers and changes his mind. Once the ship is underway, he persuades Steve to remove his handcuffs. Dan and Joan fall in love on the month-long cruise, neither knowing that the other is under the shadow of death.
By chance, two of Dan's friends are also aboard, thief Skippy (Frank McHugh) and con artist "Barrel House Betty" (Aline MacMahon), masquerading as "Countess Barilhaus". The countess distracts Steve as much as she can to help Dan. Just before the only stop, at Honolulu, Steve has Dan put in the brig, but he escapes with their help and goes ashore. Joan intercepts him and they spend an idyllic day together. When they drive back to the dock, Dan starts to tell her why he cannot return to the ship, only to have her faint. Dan carries her aboard for medical help, forfeiting his chance. Later, Joan's doctor tells Dan about her condition and that the slightest excitement or shock could be fatal.

Meanwhile, the "countess" has spent so much time with the policeman that a romance blooms between them. When they near the end of the voyage, he awkwardly proposes to her. She tells him her true identity, but he still wants to marry her. As Steve and Dan get ready to disembark, a steward overhears the grim truth and, when Joan comes looking for Dan, tells her. The two lovers part for the last time without letting on they know each other's secret, and Joan collapses after Dan is out of sight.
They had agreed to meet again on New Year's Eve, a month later. At the appointed time and place, a bartender is startled when two glasses on the bar break with no one around.

Source: Wikipedia

I cried so hard when the movie ended as I was so wishing they finally would come together ...

There is a US remake: Til We Meet Again (1940) featuring Merle Oberon and George Brent. Director: Edmund Goulding , Anatole Litvak

Luxury Liner (1933)

ss Germania, it is suggested the liner is one of the NORDDEUTSCHER LLOYS greyhounds
Director: Lothar Mendes
A NEW YORK TIMES reception. 
Interesting in this Hollywood production the set is to be in all classes of an ocean liner of those days, not only in the high society first class world.

Movie poster for Luxury Liner of 1933

Luxury Liner is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Lothar Mendes and starring George Brent, Zita Johann and Vivienne Osborne. It was based on a 1932 novel by Gina Kaus, and made by Paramount Pictures. Mendes worked on a number of films for Paramount during the era. Shortly after making the film, he went to Britain where he directed his most celebrated film Jew Süss.
The steamship Germania is setting sail from Bremen to New York, with a stop in Cherbourg. Dr. Veith is annoyed that he has been assigned to be the ship's doctor, as he would rather stay home with his family. His married friend and fellow ship's officer Baron von Luden tries to flirt with the ship's nurse, Morgan, but she is not interested. Veith says Morgan seems to have no friends and never leaves the ship when it is in port.
Dr. Veith meets his old friend Dr. Bernhard (George Brent), who is desperate to sail on the sold-out ship because his wife Sybil (Vivienne Osborne) is on board, running away with her lover, the financier Alex Stevanson (Frank Morgan). Veith arranges for Bernhard to take his place. To Bernhard's surprise, his wife's cabin is empty; a maid suggests that she might board at Cherbourg.
Milli Lensch (Alice White), a winsome young blonde who is traveling in third class, but eager to make her way up in the world, flirts with old Edward Thorndyke (C. Aubrey Smith). Thorndyke was once a wealthy textile manufacturer, but he was ruined by Stevanson and is now seeking to start over in America. Schultz, one of Thorndyke’s former employees and now a company owner, comes down from 2nd class to invite Thorndyke (and Milli) to take tea with him tomorrow. Thorndyke turns him down, but Milli is delighted to accept.
After the ship docks at Cherbourg, Bernhard goes to his wife's cabin, but she locks the door and refuses to see him. Bernhard is called away by a medical emergency before he can break the door down. Meanwhile, Stevanson is very pleased to encounter opera singer Luise Marheim (Verree Teasdale).
Stevanson sends a telegram ordering the purchase of German-American Steamship shares, causing other passengers to also rush to buy the stock. When the third-class passengers want to pool their meager funds to do the same, Thorndyke reluctantly offers to handle the transaction.
Milli enjoys dancing in second class, although she fails to persuade Schultz to buy her a present. When Schultz's business acquaintance, jewelry dealer Exl (Theodore von Eltz), comes along, she gets him to invite her up to first class. This disappoints an elevator operator (Barry Norton) who has fallen for her and promised to show her New York. After a fine dinner and champagne, Exl takes Milli to his cabin and tries to force himself on her in return for a diamond bracelet. She flees to the arms of her elevator operator and realizes that she prefers to be poor but honorable.
After Bernhard delivers a baby, he confronts his wayward wife. She tells him she never loved him. When Stevanson tries to intervene, Bernard punches him and leaves. Stevanson then has his things moved to another suite, much to Sybil's distress.
Sybil finds Stevanson dining with Luise. He tells Sybil their relationship is over and he will "write her a check" to be rid of her. In his stateroom, Sybil kills Stevanson with the pistol she stole from Bernhard's desk. Bernhard arrives moments afterwards and takes the blame. When Morgan cannot make him defend himself, she becomes greatly agitated and reveals that, five years ago, she had a husband and two children. After he left her for another woman, she tried to kill herself and her children. She was saved, but her babies died. Bernhard regrets that he did not meet her sooner. Sybil then jumps overboard, but not before leaving a note in which she admits killing Stevanson. Bernhard and Morgan decide to start a new life together as the ship pulls into New York.
With Stevanson dead, the value of German-American Steamship shares plummets. The third-class passengers fear they are penniless – until Thorndyke reveals that he never invested their money.

Source: Wikipedia

Dodsworth (1936)

rms QUEEN MARY
Director: William Wyler

There are three Atlantic crossings in Dodsworth, on QUEEN MARY, on AQUITANIA, and on REX.  But most of the story of Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton's failing marriage happens on land.

Nautical highlight:  QUEEN MARY is used as a filming location.

 Screenshot from `Dodsworth´

Dodsworth is a 1936 American drama film directed by William Wyler and starring Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor. Sidney Howard based the screenplay on his 1934 stage adaptation of the 1929 novel ofthe same name by Sinclair Lewis. Huston reprised his stage role.
The center of the film is a study of a marriage in crisis. Recently retired auto magnate Samuel Dodsworth and his narcissistic wife Fran, while on a grand European tour, discover that they want very different things out of life, straining their marriage.
The film was critically praised and nominated for several Academy Awards. Dodsworth was nominated for AFI's100 Years...100 Movies in 1997 and 2007.
In the Midwestern town of Zenith, Samuel "Sam" Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is a successful, self-made man: the president of Dodsworth Motors, which he founded 20 years before. Then he sells the company to retire. Although Tubby Pearson, Sam's banker and friend, warns him that men like them are only happy when they are working, Sam has no plans beyond an extended trip to Europe with his wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton), who feels trapped by their boring small-town social life.
While on the luxury liner to England, Sam meets Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), an American divorcee now living in Italy, who is sympathetic to his eagerness to expand his horizons and learn new things. Meanwhile, Fran indulges in a light flirtation with a handsome Englishman (David Niven); but when he suggests it become more serious, she hastily retreats and asks Sam not to spend time in England as planned, but go on directly to Paris.

Screenshot from `Dodsworth´

Once there, Fran begins to view herself as a sophisticated world traveler and tries to develop a high-class social life, also pretending to be much younger than she is. Sam says that people who would socialize with hicks like either of them are not really high-class, but she sees him as increasingly boring and unimaginative; he only wants to see the usual tourist sights and visit car factories. She becomes infatuated with cultured playboy Arnold Iselin (Paul Lukas), who invites her to Montreux and later Biarritz. She suggests Sam return home and allow her to spend the summer in Europe; feeling rather out of place in the urbane Old World, he consents.

Screenshot from `Dodsworth´

Back then, seeing the film as a youngster, I did not believe that such suites/rooms or cabins on board of Liners did exist ... But growing up and learning I learned to know better, till today I am learning. NORMANDIE had such installations, but not that open, the luxury appartments in the last third of the promenade deck.

The balconies had been loggias, integrated in the line of windows of the promenade deck of NORMANDIE, the windows could be opened - own collection

Sam is happily welcomed by his old friends as well as his daughter (Kathryn Marlowe) and new son-in-law (John Howard Payne), who have moved into his and Fran's mansion. Before long, though, Sam realizes that life back home has left him behind—and he is tormented by the idea that Fran might have, as well. He has a Dodsworth manager in Europe confirm that she is in fact seeing Iselin, and returns to Europe immediately to put a stop to it. Fran tries to deny the affair, but he has summoned Iselin to confirm everything, She breaks down and begs for forgiveness. He still loves her and agrees to patch up their marriage.
However, it is soon evident that they have grown far apart. In Vienna, news of the birth of their first grandchild arrives; although initially excited, Fran is displeased with the idea of being a grandmother. She eventually informs Sam that she wants a divorce, especially after the poor, but charming, young Baron Kurt von Obersdorf (Gregory Gaye) tells her he would marry her if she were free. Sam agrees.
Sightseeing aimlessly throughout the Continent while the divorce is being arranged, Sam encounters Edith by chance in an American Express office in Naples. She invites him to stay at her peaceful, charming Italian villa. The two rapidly fall in love. Sam feels so rejuvenated that he wants to start a new business: an airline connecting Moscow and Seattle via Siberia. He asks Edith to marry him and fly with him to Samarkand and other exotic locales on his new venture. She gladly accepts.
Meanwhile, Fran's idyllic plans are shattered when Kurt's mother (Maria Ouspenskaya) rejects his request to marry Fran. In addition to divorce being against their religion, she tells Fran that Kurt must have children to carry on the family line, and Fran would be an "old wife of a young husband". Kurt asks Fran to postpone their wedding until he can get his mother's approval; but Fran sees that it is hopeless, and calls off the divorce.
Feeling a duty to Fran, Sam reluctantly decides to sail home with her, leaving Edith. However, after only a short time in Fran's now critical and demanding company, Sam realizes their marriage is irrevocably over. "Love has to stop somewhere short of suicide", he tells her. At the last moment, he gets off the ship to rejoin Edith.

Source: Wikipedia

Spiel an Bord (1936)

The english Wiki is only displaying the characters and actors.

Spiel an Bord/Game on board is a German crime comedy and a mix-up play from 1936, which was made on board BREMEN during an Atlantic crossing to New York.

The film is an adaptation of Axel Ivers' 1935 stage play of the same name.

On 14 August 1936 BREMEN set sail out of Bremerhaven. As the passenger lists show, the following persons were on board: Director Selpin, Production Manager Martin Pichert, the actors Viktor Kowarzik (Viktor de Kowa), Carsta Löck, Mechthilde Reif (Susi Lanner), Alfred Abel (with his wife Elisabeth, 52, and their daughter Ursula, 21), Hans J. Bruno Suckau, whose profession is erroneously described as "actor" here), the cameraman Bruno Timm, the camera assistant Fritz Wunderlich, the cloakroom attendant Johannes Krämer (who is wrongly referred to as a cameraman on the passenger list), the recording director Erich Frisch (here wrongly named as "director") and Heinrich Landsmann (i. e. Heinz Landsmann, here wrongly called "director") and Heinrich Landsmann (Heinz Landsmann, here wrongly named as actor "actor". Further technicians and sound technicians.

The film, which is completely meaningless in terms of content, a subsidiary work of  Herbert Selpins, is particularly important because, almost half a century before  Das Traumschiff, it was created predominantly on board a passenger ship during a regular, one-week Atlantic passage. It is an interesting, documentary of impressions of life on a pre-war passenger transatlantic liner.

Spiel an Bord filmpromotion poster - Source: rarefilmsandmore.com

Embarked in Bremerhaven, on the Columbuskaie, lies the transatlantic liner BREMEN. Passengers enter the ship via the gangway to bring them to America. On shore music plays, and on board the ship combo tunes the folk song Muss i denn, must i then go out to the city. 

Spiel an Bord - screenshot

Meanwhile, young Viktor Müller is still screwing around on his oldtimer at the bottom of the pier until he and his elegant vehicle are hoisted on board the ship by means of a crane. Meanwhile, two elegantly dressed men, who are later to turn out to be swindlers and crooks, observe the passengers - quite obviously with the intention of spying out worthwhile loot. They, the Marquis de la Tours and the Baron of Western, also board the ship. Among other things, they also observe a somewhat confused and excited man, Secretary Black, who is looking for his boss in a hectic pace. This is the multi-million dollar Industrial Corner, an American who travels on board completely incognito under the harmless name of Miller.

No English version available, but very interesting: this Youtube copy is a based on a GDR television broadcast ... - Source: YouTube (1:09:19 min)

Viktor Müller travels to the USA as a stowaway, it seems. For this reason, he tries to find a suitable hiding place on board and not to attract attention. The two swindlers, Marquis de la Tours and Baron of Western, will soon be keeping an eye on the apparently wealthy Mr. Henning, who travels with his daughter Astrid. They smell easy prey and try to win his trust in order to rob him on occasion. De la Tours tells Henning, who wants to sell a valuable stamp collection, he knows Corner, the company's president, who is interested in Henning's brands. But de la Tours is in fact concerned with the commission he is hoping for after a possible deal between Corner and Henning.

Mr. Corner alias Miller and Viktor Müller make friends during the crossing, on the occasion of their similarity to each other. This soon leads to confusion, because de la Tour now believes that the poor miller is the rich Mr. Miller, of whom the crook knows that he is none other than the Tycoon Corner. One night, de la Tours sees the secretary Susanne Rauh talking to Viktor Müller and draws the wrong conclusions. He believes that she knows the real Mr. Corner alias Miller and can persuade the young woman to make contact with the alleged "company president Miller", for whom he thinks Viktor Müller is responsible. Susanne is, however, upset that Viktor Müller lied to her, as he is actually that Mr. Corner she has just heard from de la Tours.

Spiel an Bord, Sun Deck Restaurant - screenshot

Müller himself cannot quite interpret the confusion and Susanne's behaviour at first and tells his new friend Corner/Miller about it. A drink at the Schiffsbar now reveals Corners true identity. Slightly drunk, Viktor promises him to continue playing his own role as' President Müller/Miller' for the time being. After old Henning has handed over his stamp collection to him, the two crooks try to take it back from him, because they found out that Viktor Müller is not Mr. Miller alias Mr. Corner. To get rid of the stowaway, de la Tours and his accomplice try to throw him overboard. But Viktor, who now believes that Susanne must be the accomplice of the two men, can escape from the two at the last moment.

The following day, the Bremen arrives at the port of New York. De la Tour and Baron of Western are now in a hurry to get off the boat. But the supreme in-flight police officer, Miss Thistelmann, who travelled with her, incognito herself, has not fallen on her head and can arrest the two villains with the ship's own security personnel. And since it is currently in motion, she also wants to have the "stowaway" Viktor Müller, who has just returned his stamp collection to Mr. Henning, taken away. She is all the more surprised when he presents his first-class ticket to her. Then everything clears up: Müller is in reality a reporter on a business trip; he was supposed to write a report titled "As a stowaway across the ocean". Susanne, whose innocence is also proving to be quick, and he sinks into his arms.

The Princess Comes Across (1936)

ss MAMMOTH
Director:  William K. Howard

The Princess Comes Across 1936 - copy from a movie dvd

The Princess Comes Across is a 1936 mystery/comedy film directed by William K. Howard and starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, the second of the four times they were paired together. Lombard, playing an actress from Brooklyn pretending to be a Swedish princess, does a "film-length takeoff" on MGM's Swedish star Greta Garbo. The film was based on the 1935 novel A Halálkabin by Louis Lucien Rogger, the pseudonym of Laszlo Aigner and Louis Acze.

The Princess Comes Across 1936, Carol Lombard - still from the film

The Princess Comes Across, 1936, Carol Lombard and Fred Mc Murray - film promotion photo

The Princess Comes Across, 1936 - still from the film

Wanda Nash (Carole Lombard), an actress from Brooklyn, decides to masquerade as "Princess Olga" from Sweden in order to land a film contract with a big Hollywood studio. On board the liner Mammoth bound for New York, she runs into King Mantell (Fred MacMurray), a concertina-playing band leader with a criminal record in his past. Both are blackmailed by Robert M. Darcy (Porter Hall), and after Darcy is killed, they become two of the prime suspects for the murder, and must find the real killer before the five police detectives traveling on the ship can pin it on them.

The Princess Comes Across, 1936, Carol Lombard and Fred Mc Murray - still from the film

The Princess Comes Across, 1936, Carol Lombard posing like The Divine Garbo - still from the film

The Princess Comes Across - which began with the working title Concertina – was initially intended to pair Lombard with George Raft for the third time, but Raft walked out when the studio assigned Ted Tetzlaff to photograph the film. Raft felt that Tetzlaff had made Lombard look better than himself in their earlier film, Rumba, and did not want it to happen again.With Raft out of the picture, and temporarily suspended for his actions, the studio re-teamed Lombard and MacMurray, who had made the screwball comedy Hands Across the Table together in 1935.

The Princess Comes Across, 1936,Carol Lombard - photo by George Hurrell for Hollywood Glamour

They would be paired together twice more, in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and True Confession, made in the same year.Aside from casting concerns, filming was also delayed by the need for additional dialogue, which caused a change of directors from Harold Young to William K. Howard, and, after filming had begun in February 1936, by conflict between Howard and the producer's assistant.

The Princess Comes Across, 1936 - film promotion article

Both the film and the stars received good notices. Variety called her Garbo impersonation a "swell characterization and makes a highly diverting [comedy] contrast when the 'princess' lapses into her real self and unloads a line of Brooklynese." Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune praised Lombard's " assured and restrained portrayal - [which] is resourceful in exploiting its comic possibilities".

The Princess Comes Across, 1936, Fred Mc Murray playing his concertina - still from the film

The New York Post 's Thornton Delehanty called her Princess the " first role in which we have admired her since the early days of her picture career." Lombard herself liked the film because it "allowed her to do what she had first practiced in childhood days back in Indiana - mimic a figure from the silver screen." However, Frank S. Nugent in his New York Times review called the film a "mild-to-boresome comedy." 

Source: Wikipedia

Somehow, the MAMMOTH seems to reflect the interiors and splendours of NORMANDIE. A connaisseur easily recognizes the style of the most perfect and brilliant ocean liner.

 

Libeled Lady (1936)

ss Queen Anne
Director: Jack Conway

William Powell crosses in this screwball comedy the Atlantic twice in order to trap Myrna Loy into falling for him.  But first he is able to impress her father with his extensive knowledge of angling - thanks to the ship's vast library!  

William Powell serving himself a drink, he was drinking a lot in his films ... - screenshot from
Libeled Lady

Libeled Lady is a 1936 screwball comedy film starring Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy, written by George Oppenheimer, Howard Emmett Rogers, Wallace Sullivan, and Maurine Dallas Watkins, and directed by Jack Conway.
Libeled Lady was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was remade in 1946 as Easy to Wed with Esther Williams, Van Johnson, and Lucille Ball.
Wealthy Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) is falsely accused of breaking up a marriage and sues the New York Evening Star newspaper for $5,000,000 for libel. Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy), the managing editor, turns in desperation to former reporter and suave ladies' man Bill Chandler (William Powell) for help. His scheme is to maneuver Connie into being alone with him when his wife shows up, so the suit will have to be dropped. Chandler is not married, so Warren volunteers his long-suffering fiancée, Gladys Benton (Jean Harlow), over her loud protests.
Bill arranges to return to America from England on the same ocean liner as Connie and her father J. B. (Walter Connolly). He pays some men to pose as reporters and harass Connie at the dock, so that he can "rescue" her and become acquainted. On the voyage, Connie initially treats him with contempt, assuming that he is just the latest in a long line of fortune hunters after her money, but Bill gradually overcomes her suspicions.
Complications arise when Connie and Bill actually fall in love. They get married, but Gladys decides that she prefers Bill to a marriage-averse newspaperman and interrupts their honeymoon to reclaim her husband. Bill reveals that he found out that Gladys' Yucatán divorce was not valid, but Gladys states she got a second divorce in Reno, so she and Bill are actually man and wife. Fortunately, Connie and Bill manage to show Gladys that she really loves Warren.

Source: Wikipedia

Shall We Dance (1937)

ss Queen Anne, a name that did "never" intend any similarities ... or?
Director:  Mark Sandrich

With music provided by George and Ira Gershwin, Fred Astaire follows Ginger Rogers across the Atlantic on the SS Queen Anne in this 7th of 10 films together.

Nautical highlight: `Slap That Bass´ in the ship's art deco boiler room. And even this boiler room was inspired by NORMANDIE ... Fred Astaire was vsiting that room when aboard, crossing the pond.

Screenshot from `Shall we Dance´

YouTube video of the song and dance scene of `Slap that Bass´
 

Shall We Dance released in 1937, is the seventh of the ten Astaire-Rogers musical comedy films. The idea for the film originated in the studio's desire to exploit the successful formula created by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart with their 1936 Broadway hit On Your Toes. The musical featured an American dancer getting involved with a touring Russian ballet company. In a major coup for RKO, Pan Berman managed to attract the Gershwins – George Gershwin who wrote the symphonic underscore and Ira Gershwin the lyrics – to score this, their second Hollywood musical after Delicious in 1931.

Peter P. Peters (Fred Astaire), an American ballet dancer billed as "Petrov", dances for a ballet company in Paris owned by the bumbling Jeffrey Baird (Edward Everett Horton). Peters secretly wants to blend classical ballet with modern jazz dancing, and when he sees a photo of famous tap dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers), he falls in love with her. He contrives to meet her, but she is less than impressed. They meet again on an ocean liner traveling back to New York, and Linda warms to Petrov. Unknown to them, a plot is launched as a publicity stunt "proving" that they are actually married. Outraged, Linda becomes engaged to the bumbling Jim Montgomery (William Brisbane), much to the chagrin of both Peters and Arthur Miller (Jerome Cowan), her manager, who secretly launches more fake publicity.

Peters and Keene, unable to squelch the rumor, decide to actually marry and then immediately get divorced. Linda begins to fall in love with her husband, but then discovers him with another woman, Lady Denise Tarrington (Ketti Gallian), and leaves before he can explain. Later, when she comes to his new show to personally serve him divorce papers, she sees him dancing with dozens of women, all wearing masks with her face on them: Peters has decided that if he cannot dance with Linda, he will dance with images of Linda. Seeing that he truly loves her, she happily joins him on stage.

Source: Wikipedia

This film as well `Flying down to Rio´ and their popularity became the "fuel" for the successful two cruises of NORMANDIE to Rio Janeiro in 1937 and 1938. And for the two successful ones, RAYMOND WHITCOMB wanted to charter NORMANDIE again for 1939 for a third cruise to Rio. But the "European" war, very soon WWII counteracted these plans.

NORMANDIE anchoring in Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro - courtsey colouring Steve Walker

The Pearls of the Crown - Les Perles de la Couronne (1937), also known as Désiré

NORMANDIE
Director: Sacha Guitry

Sacha Guitry plays four roles in this multilingual whirlwind of pageantry that investigates the fate of three pearls missing from the royal crown of England. `Les Perles de la Couronne´, a 1937 French comedy film of historically-based fiction, rockets through four centuries of European history with imaginative, winking irreverence. Tracing the history of seven valuable pearls of the English Crown from the time of Henry VIII to the present day (1937). 

Writer Jean Martin (Sacha Guitry) attempts to track down three of the missing pearls by tracing their previous owners, with events seen in flashback, involving Napoleon, King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth amongst others. The historical scenes are overly decorated, but never the less correct. Many of the other performers, as Guitry, play multiple roles.

`The Pearls of the Crown´ - `Les Perles de la Couronns´ movie poster

The historian Jean Martin (Sacha Guitry) tells his young wife Françoise (Jacqueline Delubac) the fabulous story of a necklace composed of seven fine pearls, formerly offered by Pope Clement VII (Ermete Zacconi) to his niece Catherine de Medici (Paulette Elambert), a few months before the latter's marriage with the future Henri II ... 

NORMANDIE, where the story of Les Perles de la Couronne is starting - courtsey coloured by Daryl LeBLanc

Four of the pearls, handed to Elisabeth Ire (Yvette Pienne) shortly after the execution of Marie Stuart (Jacqueline Delubac) for the British royal crown, but the last three have mysteriously disappeared. Jean Martin decides to go in search of missing jewels, imitated in this by an officer of the Royal House of England (Lyn Harding) and a cameraman of the pope (Enrico Glori) ...  

Source: Wikipedia

NORMANDIE´s rail, where Guitry/Martin starts the historical par force ride about Les Perles de la Couronne

Love Affair (1939)

ss Napoli
Director: Leo McCarey
Irene Dunne's favorite film spurred pink champagne sales and a host of remakes: An Affair to Remember (1957), Love Affair (1994), and Mann (the 1999 Bollywood film).

`Love Affair´ - screen shot

Love Affair is a 1939 American romantic film starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer and featuring Maria Ouspenskaya. It was directed by Leo McCarey and written by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a story by McCarey and Mildred Cram French painter Michel Marnet (Charles Boyer) meets American singer Terry McKay (Irene Dunne) aboard a liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean. They are both already engaged, he to heiress Lois Clarke (Astrid Allwyn), she to Kenneth Bradley (Lee Bowman). They begin to flirt and to dine together on the ship, but his notoriety and popularity on the ship make them conscious that others are watching. Eventually, they decide that they should dine separately and not associate with each other. At a stop at Madeira, they visit Michel's grandmother Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya), who approves of Terry and wants Michel to settle down.
As the ship is ready to disembark at New York City, the two make an appointment to meet six months later on top of the Empire State Building. Michel chooses six months because that is the amount of time he needs to decide whether he can start making enough money to support a relationship with Terry. When the rendezvous date arrives, they both head to the Empire State Building. However, Terry is struck by a car right as she arrives, and is told that she may not be able to walk, though that will not be known for certain for six months. Not wanting to be a burden to Michel, she does not contact him, preferring to let him think the worst. Meanwhile, Terry recovers at an orphanage teaching the children how to sing.
Six months go by, and during Terry's first outing since the accident, the two couples meet by accident at the theater, though Terry manages to conceal her condition. Michel then visits her at her apartment and finally learns the truth. He assures her that they will be together no matter what the diagnosis will be.
Love Affair film was remade by McCarey in 1957 as An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the lead roles, using a very similar screenplay, and by Glenn Gordon Caron in 1994 as Love Affair, starring Warren Beatty, Annette Bening and, in her last feature film appearance, Katharine Hepburn. A 1999 Bollywood movie, Mann, was made based on the same storyline.

Source: Wikipedia

The Lady Eve (1941)

ss Southern Queen
Director: Preston Sturges

After spending a year on the Amazon River, the ophiologist Henry Fonda sails home on the SS Southern Queen where he meets and falls in love with the scam artist Barbara Stanwyck.

The liner that would be the fiction stage for `The Lady Eve´ - screenshot from the Dailymotion video

Nautical highlight: the outside dining area, that reminds me somehow of the dining area on deck 6 on former OLYMPIC EXPLORER. As the general view of the dining room with the buffet tables in the middle - similar to an advert of Moore McCormack. Within the first nine minutes we are shown a rather familiar happening aboard all ocean liners, when a well known rich barchelor is on on board ... 
In the heyday of liner travel, it was rather common, that unwedd ladies tried to find their match. Even when having to be pushed by their mothers or family ... Some made even for this purpose the voyage.
In min 23:25 appears QUEEN MARY on the screen ...

Screenshot from `The Lady Eve´ in the Al-Fresco area

The Lady Eve is a 1941 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges which stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The film is based on a story by Monckton Hoffe about a mismatched couple who meet on board an ocean liner.

In 1994, The Lady Eve was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Gambling and gamblers had been a great deal on board of all ocean liners, some played fair but a lot not - screenshot from `The Lady Eve´, source: Wikipedia

Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) is a beautiful con artist. Along with her equally larcenous father, "Colonel" Harrington (Charles Coburn) and his partner Gerald (Melville Cooper), she is out to fleece rich, naive Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), the heir to the Pike Ale fortune ("The Ale That Won for Yale"). Pike is a woman-shy snake expert Ophidiologist, just returning from a year-long expedition up the Amazon. Though surrounded by ladies desperate for his attention, Charles is putty in Jean's hands.
But even the best laid plans can go astray. First, Jean falls hard for Pike and shields him from her card sharp father. Then, when Pike's suspicious minder/valet Muggsy (William Demarest) discovers the truth about her and her father, Pike dumps her. Furious at being scorned, she re-enters his life masquerading as the posh "Lady Eve Sidwich", niece of Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith (Eric Blore), another con man who's been swindling the rich folk of Connecticut. Jean is determined to torment Pike mercilessly, as she explains, "I've got some unfinished business with him - I need him like the axe needs the turkey."
When Pike meets "Eve", he is so bewildered he constantly trips and falls over himself. Although Muggsy tries to convince him "she's the same dame", Pike reasons that Jean would never come close to his home without at least disguising herself, so he concludes the resemblance is only a coincidence. After a brief courtship, they marry, and on the train to their honeymoon, "Eve" begins to confess her past, dropping name after name after name of old boyfriends and lovers. Pike finally gets fed up and jumps off the train.
Now separated, Jean's con team urges her to close the deal, saying she's got him over a barrel and can make a killing in a settlement. While Charles' father and lawyers are on the phone with her pleading to settle quickly, Jean says she doesn't want any money at all, just for Pike to tell her it's over to her face. Pike refuses, and through his father Jean learns that he's departing on another ocean voyage. She arranges her own passage, and "bumps into" Pike, just as they met before. "Hopsie" is overjoyed to see Jean again, and they instantly dash to her cabin where they mutually affirm their love for each other. Charles confesses that he is married, and Jean replies tenderly, "So am I, darling."

Source: Wikipedia

Jean and Charles in the cabin of Jean, including the steamer truncks - screenshot from `The Lady Eve´

It is another depicting of great "open to the sea" accomodations with a loggia type balcony that I really love, as it is giving far more privacy than todays chicken sticks, that are called balconies

Cabins, the famous Leilani Suites, in that configuration could only be found on Mariposa, Monterey and Lurline built between 1930 and 1932 

`The Lady Eve´ got, as all the good films, a remake in 1956 with The Birds and the Bees.

Now, Voyager (1942)

no special liner, but scenes on board
Director: Irving Rapper

`Now Voyager´ opening screen - screenshot

Walt Whitman said, "The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted / Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find." Whitman's poem inspires Bette Davis to sail on a South American cruise to seek and to find. She sails to Rio and finds love. Bette likes this film because it became the biggest box office hit of her career.
I like this film because it is one film on this list that mentions a shipboard library. Further Bette Davis eyes are really "talking" to the audience.

`Now Voyager´ - screenshot

Now, Voyager is a 1942 American drama film starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, and directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Casey Robinson is based on the 1941 novel of the same name by Olive Higgins Prouty.
Prouty borrowed her title from the Walt Whitman poem "The Untold Want", which reads in its entirety,

The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,

Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

In 2007, Now, Voyager was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The film ranks #23 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions, a list of the top love stories in American cinema. Film critic Steven Jay Schneider suggests the film continues to be popular due not only to its star power but also the "emotional crescendos" engendered in the storyline. The film had a cameo appearance during the theatre scene in the movie Summer of '42.
Drab Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is an unattractive, overweight, repressed spinster whose life is brutally dominated by her tyrannical mother (Gladys Cooper), an aristocratic Boston dowager whose verbal and emotional abuse of her daughter has contributed to the woman's complete lack of self-confidence. It is revealed that Mrs. Vale had already brought up three sons, and Charlotte was an unwanted child born to her late in life. Fearing that Charlotte is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her sister-in-law Lisa (Ilka Chase) introduces her to psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), who recommends that she spend time in his sanitarium.
Away from her mother's control Charlotte blossoms, and at Lisa's urging the transformed woman opts to take a lengthy cruise instead of going home immediately. On the ship she meets Jeremiah Duvaux Durrance (Paul Henreid), a married man who is traveling with his friends Deb (Lee Patrick) and Frank McIntyre (James Rennie). It is from them that Charlotte learns of how Jerry's devotion to his young daughter Christine ("Tina") keeps him from divorcing his wife, a manipulative, jealous woman who does not love Tina and keeps Jerry from engaging in his chosen career of architecture, despite the fulfillment he gets from it.

`Now Voyager´ - screenshot

`Now Voyager´ - screenshot

`Now Voyager´ - screenshot

Charlotte and Jerry become friendly, and in Rio de Janeiro the two are stranded on Sugarloaf Mountain when their car crashes. They miss the ship and spend five days together before Charlotte flies to Buenos Aires to rejoin the cruise. Although they have fallen in love, they decide it would be best not to see each other again.

Now, Voyager in the tropical setting of Rio de Janeiro - screenshot

When she arrives home, Charlotte's family is stunned by the dramatic changes in her appearance and demeanor. Her mother is determined to once again destroy her daughter, but Charlotte is resolved to remain independent. The memory of Jerry's love and devotion help to give her the strength she needs to remain resolute.

`Now Voyager´ - screenshot

Charlotte becomes engaged to wealthy, well-connected widower Elliot Livingston (John Loder), but after a chance meeting with Jerry, she breaks off the engagement, about which she quarrels with her mother. During the argument, Charlotte says she didn't ask to be born, that her mother never wanted her, that it's "been a calamity on both sides." Mrs. Vale is so shocked that her once-weak daughter has found the courage to actually talk back to her, she has a heart attack and dies. Guilty and distraught, Charlotte returns to the sanitarium.
When she arrives at the sanitarium, she is immediately diverted from her own problems when she meets Jerry's lonely, unhappy 12-year-old daughter Tina (Janis Wilson) who has been sent to Dr. Jaquith. Tina greatly reminds Charlotte of herself; both were unwanted and unloved by their mothers. Shaken from her depression, Charlotte becomes overly interested in Tina's welfare and, with Dr. Jaquith's permission, she takes her under her wing. When the girl improves, Charlotte takes her home to Boston.
Jerry and Dr. Jaquith visit the Vale home, where Jerry is delighted to see the changes in his daughter. While he initially pities Charlotte, believing her to be settling in her life, he's taken aback by her contempt for his initial condescension. Dr. Jaquith has allowed Charlotte to keep Tina there with the understanding that her relationship with Jerry will remain platonic. She tells Jerry that she sees Tina as his gift to her and her way of being close to him. When Jerry asks her if she's happy, Charlotte finds much to value in her life, even if she doesn't have everything she wants: "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars," a line ranked #46 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotes in American cinema.

Source: Wikipedia

Most intrguing are the film scenes done with Rio de Janeiro as location. Quite a touristic promotion they have made in the film.
The film is showing the ship in its philosophic role as a vessel that enables transitions.

Across the Pacific (1942)

ss GENOA MARU, in this name is only a German hint lost, otherwise the name is showing the Axis Powers of WWII
Director: John Huston

Filmpromotion poster - courtsey Warner Bros.

Across the Pacific is a 1942 American spy film set on the eve of the entry of the United States into World War II. The film was directed first by John Huston, then by Vincent Sherman after Huston joined the United States Army Signal Corps. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet. Despite the title, the action of the film never progresses across the Pacific, concluding in Panama.

Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart on board the Japanese Genoa Maru - Source: Wikipedia

The title had been used before by Warner Brothers for a 1926 silent adventure film by the same name starring Monte Blue, who also has a small role in this film. However, the plots of the two films bear no resemblance to each other.
Initially, it was planned that the film would portray an attempt to avert a Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor. When the real-life Pearl Harbor bombing occurred, the script was quickly rewritten to change the location of the planned attack to Panama.
Director John Huston was called up to military service during filming; he claimed he left at the point near the end of the film in which Bogart is trapped in a house at gun-point. Vincent Sherman finished directing the film, minus the script which Huston took with him, explaining "Bogie will know how to get out". An implausible escape and plot wrap-up was shot, which Huston declared "lacked credibility".

Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor on board the GENOA MARU

In late 1941, Captain Rick Leland (Humphrey Bogart) is court-martialed and discharged from the U.S. Coast Artillery after he is caught stealing. He tries to join the Canadian Army, but is coldly rebuffed. He subsequently boards a Japanese ship, the Genoa Maru, in Halifax, apparently to make his way to China via the Panama Canal to fight for Chiang Kai-shek.
On board, he meets Canadian Alberta Marlow (Mary Astor) and Dr. Lorenz (Sydney Greenstreet), a professor of sociology who makes no secret of his admiration of the Japanese and is thus not popular in the Philippines, where he resides. Leland, in his turn, makes it clear to Lorenz that he has no loyalty toward his country and would fight for anyone willing to pay him.
During a stop in New York, Leland, revealed as a secret agent trailing Lorenz, reports to Colonel Hart (Paul Stanton), an undercover Army Intelligence officer. Lorenz is a known enemy spy, but Hart and Leland are uncertain about Marlow. Upon returning to the ship, Leland surprises a Filipino man (Rudy Robles) who is about to shoot Lorenz, thus gaining Lorenz's confidence. Second-generation Japanese-American Joe Totsuiko (Victor Sen Yung) embarks as a passenger. Lorenz attempts to gather details from Leland concerning the military installations guarding the Panama Canal. Meanwhile, Marlow and Leland engage in a light-hearted romance.
As they arrive in Panama, the captain announces that the ship has been denied passage through the strategically vital canal and will be forced to take a long detour around Cape Horn. Leland, Marlow and Lorenz disembark to wait for another ship. Several crates are unloaded addressed to a Dan Morton at the Bountiful Plantation. Lorenz asks Leland, who was once stationed in the area, to procure up-to-date schedules for the American planes that patrol the canal. Leland meets with his local contact, A. V. Smith (Charles Halton), and convinces him to provide the real schedules, as Lorenz could easily find out if he were given fake ones. The date is December 6, 1941 – the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Having delivered the schedules after haggling with Lorenz over their price, Leland is knocked out. He wakes up several hours later and finds out that both Lorenz and Marlow have left the hotel. He immediately calls Smith and warns him to change the patrol schedule, then, on a tip from an informer (Philip Ahn) inside a movie theatre, heads out to the Bountiful Plantation, where he sees a torpedo bomber being prepared. He is captured, however, and brought inside to Lorenz, Marlow, and Totsuiko. Marlow turns out to be the daughter of the plantation's owner, Dan Morton (Monte Blue), a drunk whose weakness was exploited to provide a base for espionage activities. To Leland's relief, Marlow's only stake in the affair is concern for her father.
Lorenz reveals that they killed Smith before he could have the schedule changed, and that they are planning to torpedo the Panama Canal Locks. After Lorenz leaves for the landing field, Leland overpowers Totsuiko after the latter shoots Morton. Leland makes his way to the field where he takes over a machine gun and shoots down the bomber aircraft, piloted by no less than an Imperial Japanese prince, as it is about to take off. Leland dispatches Lorenz's men in the ensuing firefight. Returning to the house, he finds a defeated Lorenz attempting to commit seppuku, but his nerve fails him and he begs Leland to shoot him in the head. Leland refuses, saying his prisoner has "a date with Army intelligence".

Source: Wikipedia

Song of the Thin Man (1947)

ss Fortune, a gambling cruise, not a real liner ...
Director: Edward Buzzell

Have you seen the Thin Man series with William Powell and Myrna Loy? They're delightful, especially the first one. But in the end, I love them all. Especially because of the "team" Powell - Loy. She the sophisticated lady, and the "street rogue" turned into a gentleman. The dogs character is reapearing in another crime series - Inspector Barnaby, as the family member of Barnaby´s brother in the second shows. Powell - Loy´s interacting was amazing. But they were running out of steam by the time they reached the sixth and last one in the series, but setting it on the ss Fortune was the perfect ending.

ss Fortune as depicted in `Song of the Thin Man´ - screenshot

Song of the Thin Man is a 1947 comedy-crime film directed by Edward Buzzell, the last of the six Thin Man films. Like the others, it stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Nick Jr. is played by Dean Stockwell. Patricia Morison, Keenan Wynn, Gloria Grahame and Jayne Meadows are featured in this story set in the world of nightclub musicians. 
A charity benefit sponsored by David Thayer is staged aboard the S.S. Fortune, Phil Brant's gambling ship. The entertainment is provided by a jazz band led by Tommy Drake and featuring singer Fran Page and talented but unstable clarinetist Buddy Hollis.
After a set, Drake informs a displeased Brant that he is quitting, having gotten a much better booking through Mitchell Talbin. However, Drake has a problem; he owes gangster Al Amboy $12,000. When Amboy (who is at the party) hears the news, he demands full payment that very night. Drake begs Talbin to give him an advance, but Talbin is unwilling to part with such a large sum. In desperation, Drake sneaks into Brant's office and opens the safe. However, he is shot from behind and killed.
Brant and socialite Janet Thayer elope, since her father David disapproves of Brant's lower-class background. The next morning, they show up at Nick and Nora Charles's apartment, having learned that Brant is the prime suspect in the murder. When a bullet narrowly misses Brant, Nick turns him in to the police, having decided it is safer for all concerned. Then Nick starts investigating.
Sneaking aboard the Fortune, Nick discovers on the back side of a sheet of music a receipt signed by Amboy acknowledging that Drake's debt had been paid. Nick then runs into Drake's band, allowed back on board to collect their instruments. When he questions them, he learns that the bandleader had many enemies, among them Buddy Hollis. Musician Clarence "Clinker" Krause agrees to help Nick track Buddy down, but they have no luck.
Nick and Nora visit a hostile Janet. The bullet that killed Drake likely came from an antique gun, and Nick knows Janet's father is an avid collector. Sure enough, he finds one gun missing from Mr. Thayer's collection. Janet leaves after getting a telephone call. Nick and Nora follow her to Fran's apartment. There they find Fran's body; she was stabbed in the back very recently. Janet claims Fran called to sell her some information, but that she got there after Fran was killed.
Nick finds a matchbook from a hotel in Poughkeepsie. That eventually leads him to a rest home where Buddy is undergoing treatment. The musician is too badly shaken up to answer Nick's questions, though Nora's presence seems to calm him down. When Nora sneaks back later by herself, Buddy becomes agitated, confesses to the murder, pulls out the antique gun, and tries to shoot Nora. Fortunately, he misses. Nick does not believe the deranged man's confession; Drake was slain by a well-aimed shot.
Nick decides to gather all the suspects together by arranging a party on the reopened Fortune and announcing that Buddy has fully recovered and will reveal the real murderer's identity that night. It is Nora who notices the vital clue. Amboy's wife shows up wearing a valuable necklace that matches the earrings of Mitchell Talbin's wife Phyllis. Sometime later, the necklace mysteriously reappears on Phyllis's neck. When Nick confronts Mitchell, Phyllis reveals that it was she who paid off her lover Drake's debt using the necklace. As Nick prompts Buddy to finger the killer, Mitchell finally confesses to both killings and pulls out a gun. An enraged Phyllis shoots him first, but her husband is only wounded. Then, despite Nick's pleas, she fires again and again, finishing the job.

Source: Wikipedia

Romance on the High Seas (1948)

ss Southern Queen, this name must have been somehow intriguing in Hollywood those days ...
Directors:  Michael Curtiz, Busby Berkeley

In Doris Day's very first film, she travels via Havana to Rio, two cities that are still on my bucket list. Before docking at the first port of her months-long voyage to South America, she falls in love with the detective who has been hired to follow her, as she is acting as the woman that is xxx in the mind of her jealous husband. Romance, the high seas, some high jinks, and Doris Day - what more could you want?      

ss Santa Paula (later ss Akropolis) of Grace Line, second of four sister ships (the others being Santa Elena, Santa Lucia and Santa Rosa) are the fictional stage of `Romance on the High Seas´

Romance on the High Seas, known in the United Kingdom as It's Magic, is a 1948 American Technicolor musical romantic comedy film directed by Michael Curtiz, and starred Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore and Doris Day in her film debut. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Original Song for "It's Magic" (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn), and Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Ray Heindorf).
Elvira Kent (Janis Paige) and her husband Michael (Don DeFore) suspect each other of cheating. For their wedding anniversary, Elvira books an ocean cruise to Rio de Janeiro but her husband claims that unexpected business will prevent him from going. Seeing an opportunity, Elvira pretends to take the trip alone, but in fact sends singer Georgia Garrett (Doris Day), a woman she'd met at the travel agency, in her place and under her name. By secretly staying behind, Elvira hopes to find out if Michael is indeed sneaking around behind her back. Michael, however, is suspicious over Elvira's supposed willingness to go on the trip alone, and so hires private detective Peter Virgil (Jack Carson) to see if she is sneaking around behind his back.

Doris Day, Mrs "Saubermann" with film partner Jack Carson - screenshot

Peter joins the cruise and, as part of his job, becomes acquainted with Georgia. Georgia, following the instructions of the real Elvira, keeps up the ruse by pretending to be Elvira to everyone, including Peter. Georgia and Peter are attracted to each other and gradually fall in love, which causes conflict for both of them.
During one of the cruise stops, Georgia's friend, Oscar Farrar (Oscar Levant), comes on board. Oscar is in love with Georgia despite Georgia's lack of interest in him, and when Peter spots them together, he thinks he has discovered the identity of Elvira's lover.
The film's third act is set in a Rio hotel, where all the principal characters converge and ride a merry-go-round of mistaken identities. Sorting out their true identities, resolving the crossed love plots, concludes the picture.
Originally conceived as a star vehicle for Betty Hutton, the film had to be recast when Hutton became pregnant, and thus unavailable. Other established stars like Judy Garland and Jane Powell were briefly considered, before Michael Curtiz was talked into auditioning Doris Day, a well-known band vocalist, but hitherto not considered an actress, despite some early appearances in 1940–1941 in a number of soundies. Her personal life was in some turmoil at the time, as her second marriage, to musician George Weidler, was ending, and this, combined with her evident nervousness, led her to deliver a notably teary, emotive version of Embraceable You at the audition. Impressed by her singing ability and fresh-faced good looks, Curtiz signed her to a film contract and cast her in the leading role of Georgia Garrett. Despite the change in star and the late casting of Janis Paige, the film was financially successful.

Source: Wikipedia

Luxury Liner (1948)

a cross over from REX and CONTE DI SAVOIA with a hint of QUEEN MARY
Director: Richard Whorf
The trailer to MGM´s `Luxury Liner´ looks like a promotion for a cruise ... The same model ocean liner will be re-used in a short sequence in Royal Wedding.

MGM´s `Luxury Liner´

MGM´s `Luxury Liner´

MGM´s `Luxury Liner´

The ocean liner depicted in the pictures above, as the stage for the film set - screenshots

This ship model will be seen later a the liner for Royal Wedding ... ships are expensive even for Hollywood ...

Luxury Liner is a 1948 romantic musical comedy film made by MGM in Technicolor. It was directed by Richard Whorf, and written by Richard Connell, Karl Kamb and Gladys Lehman. It was originally titled Maiden Voyage.
An earlier film with the same title Luxury Liner (1933), starred George Brent and Zita Johann, and was directed by Lothar Mendes.

A captain of cruise ships, Jeremy Bradford use a brief leave to visit Polly, his teenaged daughter. He takes her to see the opera Aida, where she is entranced by the singing talents of Olaf Eriksen and Zita Romanka.

On learning that Olaf and Zita will be passengers on her dad's voyage to Rio de Janeiro, she begs to come along, but Capt. Bradford says no. He is furious when he finds out that Polly is on board as a stowaway, and puts her to work in the ship's kitchen.

Also on board is a jilted bride, Laura Dene, and her fiance Charles, who is still thinking things over. Polly strikes up a friendship with Laura, who isn't aware at first that the girl is the captain's daughter. Polly is forgiven by Capt. Bradford, who permits her to sing a duet with Olaf aboard ship. Polly is equally pleased when her dad develops a romantic interest in Laura, which turns out to be mutual.

Source: Wikipedia

Royal Wedding (1951) 

a fictional ocean liner, the model is a mix of REX and CONTE DI SAVOIA
Director: Stanley Donen
Trailer

Fred Astaire and Jane Powell travel by ship to London at the time of Princess Elizabeth's wedding. The Atlantic crossing isn't nearly long enough (less than a half hour screen time), but Astaire makes up for it by dancing on the walls and ceiling of his London hotel room.And the liners interior is a reminiscence to the glorious NORMANDIE.

The pure fictional ocean liner for Royal Wedding, REX DI SAVOIA - screenshot

Royal Wedding (YouTube video) is a 1951 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical comedy film starring Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. The film was directed by Stanley Donen; it was his second film and the first he directed on his own. It was released as Wedding Bells in the United Kingdom.

Royal Wedding singing and dancing in the ART DECO a-like main salon of the fictional, not named, ocean liner

The story is set in London in 1947 at the time of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh. Astaire and Powell are siblings in a song and dance duo, echoing the real-life theatrical relationship of Fred and Adele Astaire.
Royal Wedding is one of several MGM musicals that lapsed into public domain on their 29th anniversary due to failure to renew the copyright registration.
The story sees brother and sister Tom and Ellen Bowen as stars of a show Every Night at Seven, a Broadway success. They are persuaded to take the show to London, capitalizing on an imminent royal wedding.

Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

On the ship, Ellen meets and quickly falls in love with the impoverished but well-connected Lord John Brindale. Whilst casting the show in London, Tom falls in love with a newly engaged dancer, Anne Ashmond. Tom assists Anne to reconcile her estranged parents and also asks his agent to locate Anne's supposed fiancé in Chicago - only to discover that he's married.
Carried away by the emotion of the wedding, the two couples decide that they will also be married that day.

Source: Wikipedia

A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

ss Victoria
Director:  Andrew L. Stone

Four films made in 1953 (A Blueprint for Murder, Dangerous Crossing, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Titanic) were all filmed on the same sets. Sets?! How disappointing to discover the films were not made on a ship! In this film, Joseph Cotten follows the suspected murderess Jean Peters onto a ship bound for England.

This Hollywood liner model was used in several films as the ship where the story is staging - screenshot from A Blueprint for Murder

 These are as far as I got them: Dangerous Crossing, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the here mentioned A Blueprint for Murder. 

A Blueprint for Murder is a 1953 thriller film noir starring Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, and Gary Merrill. Andrew L. Stone wrote and directed the film.
Whitney "Cam" Cameron (Joseph Cotten) arrives at a hospital to be with his widowed sister-in-law Lynne (Jean Peters), whose stepdaughter Polly has died under mysterious circumstances. A doctor cannot determine the cause of the child's death.

The 19th century dining room of Victoria in `A Blueprint for Murder´ - screenshot from Dailymotion

Cam has great affection for his young nephew Doug (Freddy Ridgeway). He begins to fear for the boy's life when Maggie Sargent (Catherine McLeod), the wife of his lawyer, Fred (Gary Merrill), mentions that the dead girl's symptoms sound suspiciously as if she had been poisoned.
Fred reveals that the will of Cam's brother, who also died from unspecified causes, put all money into a trust for the boy. Lynne would inherit it all if anything happens to Doug.
Police, prodded by Cam, exhume the girl's body. Poison is found and Lynne is brought to court, where a judge dismisses the charges for a lack of evidence against her.
A desperate Cam can't think of any way to keep Doug safe, particularly once Lynne decides to take the boy away to Europe for at least a year. Cam surprises them by turning up on the ocean voyage. He begins romancing Lynne, all the while plotting to poison her.
He slips a tablet from her belongings into a cocktail. Lynne goes to great lengths to castigate Cam for his suspicions and demonstrate that the tablet contained nothing but aspirin. Cam leaves her stateroom, but a few minutes later, Lynne's life is saved by the ship's doctor, proving that she did indeed possess poison. A court soon sentences Lynne to prison for life.

Source: Wikipedia

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Director: Joseph M. Newman 

In this film noir classic, newlyweds board a trans-Atlantic ocean liner in New York City, but the husband goes missing and the crew doesn't believe there ever was a husband.
The dining room seems a bit out of time and 19th century alike.
Nautical highlight: a trip through the engine room.

In the film appear in the opening several liners after the steam whistle/typhone was blowing, ÎLE DE FRANCE, QUEEN MARY and NORMANDIE

Dangerous Crossing is a 1953 black-and-white film noir mystery film, directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Jeanne Crain and Michael Rennie, based on the 1943 play Cabin B-13 by John Dickson Carr. The plot of the film centers on the gaslighting of a female protagonist aboard a transatlantic liner.
Attractive newlywed Ruth (Stanton) Bowman (Jeanne Crain) joyously starts a honeymoon cruise to Europe with her husband John (Carl Betz), only to have him go missing shortly after they check into their room on board. Compounding her confusion, Ruth finds that she is registered solo under her maiden name in a different cabin and that none of the crew members who could have seen her husband on the ship remember him. These include the ship's purser, (Gayne Whitman), stewardess Anna Quinn (Mary Anderson), and second officer Jim Logan (Max Showalter). When she talks to the captain (Willis Bouchey), he notices that Ruth isn't even wearing a wedding ring, and the crew begins to suggest that she is mentally unbalanced.
That night, John calls Ruth with a cryptic warning not to trust anyone. A divorcee traveling solo (Marjorie Hoshelle) and the stewardess take an interest in Ruth. And Dr. Manning (Michael Rennie) spends time with her, assuming a clinical demeanor and getting her to open up about the recent death of her father, a wealthy steel executive.
Ruth decides to put on an act and agrees that she's been foolish, but mysterious things continue to happen. Ruth and Dr. Manning get closer, and a man who walks with a cane seems to stalk her.
Then the stewardess is revealed as conspiring with someone (by phone) to make Ruth seem unstable. Dr. Manning confronts Ruth over the fact that her marriage was either secret or non-existent. She explains that John wanted it to be quick and quiet and talks about an uncle who might scheme to get her inheritance.
John calls again and asks to meet Ruth on deck but runs into the fog when he hears others approach. When Ruth escapes from the ship crew chasing her, ending up in the dance room where she is trapped and making a scene of despair, the captain demands that she be locked in her cabin. She is sedated and a strict nurse prevents her from demanding anything.
Then John is revealed to be Barlowe, the third mate, under Dr. Manning's care all along for a claimed illness. When he learns Ruth has been locked in, he asks the stewardess to enable her escape. When they meet again, John attempts to throw Ruth overboard (mentioning the money of the inheritance he would get as a motive) but is stopped by Dr. Manning, who has followed her. It is John who goes overboard in the fight.
Later, Dr. Manning comforts Ruth, and the captain apologizes in the name of all who didn't believe her and explains that the stewardess confessed.

Source: Wikipedia

The film ends with QUEEN MARY sailing ahead ...

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes  (1953)

ss ÎLE DE FRANCE
Director: Howard Hawks

The ss Ile de France is famous for her ART DECO interiors and carrying passengers from the ANDREA DORIA in 1956 after the liner collided quite questionable with the STOCKHOLM. After, ÎLE DE FRANCE was nicknamed Saint Bernhard of the Seas.
In `Gentlemen Prefer Blondes´, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell sing and dance their way across the Atlantic, and in Paris a court trial, on a liner that should be ÎLE DE FRANCE. They fall in love, seeking their fortunes, wear dazzling fashions, and in this scene - point out, being astonished, the round windows.
And again Marilyn Monroe is used by Hollywood as the stupid, simple minded, sex idol and nasty fantasies covering model - how frustrating for Marilyn ...

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Unfortunately the Liner despicted in the beginning is no way looking like ÎLE DE FRANCE ... And the indoor pool scene, where Jane Russel is thrilled by the film US Olympic swim team, is reflecting slightly the antique style of the indoor pool (YouTube video, low sound quality) of LIBERTÉ.

 This Hollywood liner model was used in several films, also in Fangerous Crossing, as the ship where the story is staging - screenshot from `Gentlemen Prefer Blondes´

Decades later, 1981, this model resufaced as the Goliath in `Goliath Awaits´ I know shipmodels are quite expensive ...

The model is a mix from QUEEN MARY and TITANIC, if someone does see a further vessel in the model, please contact me

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a 1953 American musical comedy film of the 1949 stage musical, released by 20th Century Fox, directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe with Charles Coburn, Elliott Reid, Tommy Noonan, George Winslow, Taylor Holmes and Norma Varden in supporting roles.
Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) are American showgirls and best friends. Lorelei has a passion for diamonds, believing that attracting a rich husband is one of the few ways a woman can succeed economically. She is engaged to Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan), a naïve nerd willing to do or buy anything for her. However, Gus is under the control of his wealthy, upper-class father. Dorothy, on the other hand, is looking for a different kind of love, attracted only to men who are good-looking and fit.
Lorelei plans to wed Gus in France, but Esmond, Sr. stops his son from sailing, believing that Lorelei is bad for him. Although Lorelei's job requires that she travel to France with or without Gus, before she leaves, Gus gives her a letter of credit to cover expenses upon her arrival, and promises to later meet her in France. However, he also warns her to behave, noting that his father will prohibit their marriage if rumors of misdeeds make their way to Esmond, Sr. Unbeknownst to both of them, Esmond, Sr. has hired a private detective, Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid), to spy on Lorelei.
During the Atlantic crossing, Malone immediately falls in love with Dorothy, but Dorothy has already been drawn to the members of the (male-only) Olympic athletics team. Lorelei meets the rich and foolish Sir Francis "Piggy" Beekman (Charles Coburn), the owner of a diamond mine, and is attracted by his wealth; although Piggy is married, Lorelei naively returns his geriatric flirtations, which annoys his wife, Lady Beekman (Norma Varden).
Lorelei invites Piggy to the cabin she shares with Dorothy, whereupon he recounts his travels to Africa. While Piggy demonstrates how a python squeezes a goat by hugging Lorelei, Malone spies on them through the window and takes pictures of the two, but is caught by Dorothy as he walks away nonchalantly. She tells Lorelei, who fears for her reputation. They come up with a scheme to intoxicate Malone and then search him to recover the incriminating film while he is unconscious. They find the film in his pants, and Lorelei promptly prints and hides the negatives. Revealing her success to Piggy, she persuades him to give her Lady Beekman's tiara as a thank you gift. However, Malone reveals he had planted a recording device in Lorelei's cabin, and has heard her discussion with Piggy about the pictures and the tiara. Malone implies that Lorelei is a golddigger and, when Dorothy scolds him for his actions, admits that he himself is a liar. However, Dorothy reveals to Lorelei she is falling for Malone, after which Lorelei chastises her for choosing a poor man when she could easily have a rich man.
The ship arrives in France, and Lorelei and Dorothy spend time shopping. However, the pair are then kicked out of their hotel and discover Lorelei's letter of credit has been cancelled due to the information Malone shared with Esmond, Sr. When Gus shows up at their show, Lorelei rebuffs him, after which she performs Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, the musical number whose lyrics explain why and how women need to pursue men with money. Meanwhile, Lady Beekman has filed charges regarding her missing tiara, and Lorelei is charged with theft. Dorothy persuades Lorelei to return the tiara, but the pair discover it is missing from her jewelry box. Piggy tries to weasel out of his part in the affair when Malone catches him at the airport.
Dorothy stalls for time in court by pretending to be Lorelei, disguised in a blonde wig and mimicking her friend's breathy voice and mannerisms. When Malone appears in court and is about to unmask "Lorelei" as Dorothy, she reveals to Malone in covert language that she, Dorothy, loves him but would never forgive him if he were to do anything to hurt her best friend, Lorelei. Malone withdraws his comments, but then reveals Piggy has the tiara, exonerating Lorelei.
Back at the nightclub, Lorelei impresses Esmond, Sr. with a speech on the subject of paternal money, and also makes an argument that if Esmond, Sr. had a daughter instead of a son, he would want the best for her, to which he agrees and consents to his son's marriage to Lorelei. The film closes with a double wedding for Lorelei and Dorothy, who marry Esmond and Malone, respectively.

Source: Wikipedia

The fifths film - ? somehow I lost track - about TITANIC´s inaugural crossing ... a theme that will haunt us for some time ...

TITANIC (1953)

rms TITANIC 
Director: Jean Negulesco

This is for me the final and last mentioning of a film about the illfated, and in my opinion totally overrated, TITANIC.
The only music heard during the film is played by the musicians aboard the ship. No background music is played which gives the film a stage play character - my point of view. The drama on board includes Barbara Stanwyck leaving her husband and a 23-year-old Robert Wagner (a Purdue tennis player) falling in love with Stanwyck's daughter.But unfortunately he died ... we will see this "theme" later again in Camron´s epos, when Leonardo Di Caprio is freezing away.

Screenshot from the YouTube video TITANIC

Titanic is a 1953 American drama film directed by Jean Negulesco. Its plot centers on an estranged couple sailing on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the TITANIC, which took place in April 1912.
At the last minute, a wealthy American expatriate in Europe, Richard Sturges (Clifton Webb), buys a steerage-class ticket for the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic from a Basque immigrant. Once aboard he seeks out his runaway wife, Julia (Barbara Stanwyck). He discovers she is trying to take their two unsuspecting children, 18-year-old Annette (Audrey Dalton) and ten-year-old Norman (Harper Carter), to her hometown of Mackinac, Michigan, to raise as down-to-earth Americans rather than rootless elitists like Richard himself.
As the ship prepares for departure, her captain, E. J. Smith (Brian Aherne), receives a hint from the shipping company representative that a record-setting speedy passage would be welcomed.
Other passengers include a wealthy woman of a working-class origin (based on a real-life Titanic survivor Molly Brown), Maude Young (Thelma Ritter); social-climbing Earl Meeker (Allyn Joslyn); a 20-year-old Purdue University tennis player, Gifford "Giff" Rogers (Robert Wagner); and George S. Healey (Richard Basehart), a Catholic priest who has been defrocked for alcoholism.
When Annette learns her mother's intentions, she insists on returning to Europe with her father on the next ship as soon as they reach America. Julia concedes that her daughter is old enough to make her own decisions, but she insists on keeping custody of Norman. This angers Richard, forcing Julia to reveal that Norman is not his child, but rather the result of a one-night stand after one of their many bitter arguments. Upon hearing that, he agrees to give up all claim to Norman. Richard joins Maude, Earl, and George Widener in the lounge to play contract bridge with them. The next morning, when Norman reminds Richard about a shuffleboard game they had scheduled, Richard coldly brushes him off.
Meanwhile Giff falls for Annette at first glance. At first she repulses his brash attempts to become better acquainted, but eventually she warms to him. That night, Giff, Annette and a group of young people sing and play the piano in the dining room, while Captain Smith watches from a corner table.

Second Officer Lightoller (uncredited Edmund Purdom) expresses his concern to Captain Smith about the ship's speed when they receive two messages from other ships warning of iceberg sightings near their route. Smith, however, assures him that there is no danger.
That night, however, a lookout spots an iceberg dead ahead. Although the crew tries to steer clear of danger, the ship is gashed below the waterline and begins taking on water. When Richard finds the captain, he insists on being told the truth: the ship is doomed. He tells his family to dress warmly but properly; then they head outside. Richard and Julia have a tearful reconciliation on the boat deck, as he places Julia and the children into a lifeboat. Unnoticed by Julia, Norman gives up his seat to an older woman and goes looking for his nominal father. When one of the lines becomes tangled, preventing the lifeboat from being lowered, Giff climbs down and fixes the problem, only to lose his grip and fall into the water. His unconscious body is dragged into the boat.

The TITANIC sinking in `Titanic´ - screenshott

Meeker disguises himself as a woman to get aboard a lifeboat but Maude Young notices his shoes and unmasks him in front of the others in the lifeboat. At the other end of the spectrum of courage and unselfishness, George Healey heads down into one of the boiler rooms to comfort trapped crewmen.
As the Titanic is in her final moments, Norman and Richard find each other. Richard tells a passing steward that Norman is his "son" and then tells the boy that he has been proud of him every day of his life. Then they join the rest of the doomed passengers and the crew in singing the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee". As the last boiler explodes, the Titanic's bow plunges, pivoting her stern high into the air while the ship rapidly slides into the icy water. The remaining survivors are last seen waiting in the lifeboats for help to come as dawn approaches.

Source: Wikipedia

As allways a ship is like a stage of mankind, humanity, and reflects all kinds of personalities in a small, closed comunity of destiny ... This film is depicting all shades of human behavior ...
And it will not be the last time TITANIC is sinking with drama on screen ...The Nazi Propaganda film I left out. But here a list of all TITANIC films, movies, documentatries and spin offs.

Theatrically released cinema dramas and documentaries - Source: Wikipedia

Year	Title	Director	Cast	Notes
1912	Saved From The Titanic	Étienne Arnaud	Dorothy Gibson Alec B. Francis	Co-written by and starring Titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson and released only twenty-nine days after the sinking. Now a lost film following a studio fire in which the last known prints were destroyed.
1912	La hantise	Louis Feuillade	Renée Carl René Navarre	("The Haunting") French silent film
1912	In Nacht und Eis	Mime Misu	Waldemar Hecker Otto Rippert Ernst Rückert	("In Night and Ice"), also called Der Untergang der Titanic ("The Sinking of the Titanic"). Silent film produced in Germany; believed to be lost until a collector discovered in 1998 that he had a copy.
1929	Atlantic / Atlantik	Ewald André Dupont	Franklin Dyall Madeleine Carroll	A highly fictionalized account, retitled Titanic: Disaster in the Atlantic in American home video releases. This is the first sound film made about the disaster, and was a pioneering sound-on-film release, being produced in three languages: English, German, and French (and silent versions). The German version was the first full-length German sound film and was a major hit there.
1943	Titanic	Werner Klingler Herbert Selpin	Sybille Schmitz Hans Nielsen E.F. Fürbringer	A 1943 German Nazi propaganda film (personally overseen by Joseph Goebbels) casting a fictitious German First Officer on the Titanic as the hero and the British as villains. The first film to use singularly the name Titanic and intermix fictional subplots and characters with historical persons on board the ship. Filmed on board the German liner CAP ARCONA which was later mistakenly sunk by the RAF with civilian loss of life greatly exceeding that of the TITANIC.  But naming the CAP ARCONA the "Nazi TITANIC" is denouncing the victims of the RAF blow!
1953	Titanic	Jean Negulesco	Clifton Webb Barbara Stanwyck Robert Wagner Audrey Dalton	American dramatic film centered on an estranged couple sailing on the maiden voyage of the TITANIC
1958	A Night to Remember	Roy Ward Baker	Kenneth More Ronald Allen Robert Ayres Honor Blackman	British docudrama based on the book by Walter Lord starring Kenneth More as the ship's Second Officer Charles Lightoller. Regarded as one of the most historically accurate Titanic disaster films, with the exception of not featuring the ship breaking in half. (There was still doubt about the fact she split in two when the book and film were produced.) Some effects scenes were 'borrowed' from the 1943 German film.
1964	The Unsinkable Molly Brown	Charles Walters	Debbie Reynolds Harve Presnell Ed Begley	American musical film about the life of Molly Brown, which culminates in her voyage aboard the Titanic. The screenplay by Helen Deutsch is based on the Richard Morris book of the 1960 musical.
1980	Raise the Titanic	Jerry Jameson	Jason Robards Richard Jordan David Selby Anne Archer Alec Guinness	Although adapted from Clive Cussler's popular novel Raise the Titanic!, this movie was poorly received by critics and proved to be a box office bomb, failing to recover its $40 million budget.
1992	Titanica	Stephen Low	Leonard Nimoy	95-minute IMAX documentary film about the Titanic narrated by Leonard Nimoy. Two survivors are featured: Frank Goldsmith's recollections (1977 clip), and Eva Hart is interviewed. 40 min. edited version released in 1995, narrated by Cedric Smith.
1997	Titanic	James Cameron	Leonardo DiCaprio Kate Winslet Billy Zane Kathy Bates Frances Fisher Gloria Stuart	This American romantic epic film is the best known film about the Titanic disaster. The main characters are fictional, but some portrayals of the ship's passengers and crew are based on historical figures. The film became one of the most expensive films ever made, costing approximately US$200 million, and also topped the list of highest-grossing films for twelve years. The film won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Re-released in 2012 in formats which include IMAX 3D; often billed as Titanic in 3D.
1997	The Chambermaid (on the Titanic)	Bigas Luna	Aitana Sánchez-Gijón Olivier Martínez Romane Bohringer	French-Spanish-Italian romantic film about a stevedore who falls in love with one of the Titanic's chambermaids. From the French novel by Didier Decoin La femme de chambre du Titanic (also original title of film).
1999	The Legend of The Titanic	Kim J. Ok Orlando Corradi	Jane Alexander Sean Patrick Lovett Francis Pardeilhan Gregory Snegoff	Italian animated fantasy tale about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. This family-friendly retelling of the most notable maritime disaster of all time spawned a rival and a sequel (see below).
2000	Titanic: The Legend Goes On	Camillo Teti, Kim Lox	Lisa Russo M. Thompson-Ashworth Gisella Matthews Kenneth Belton Gregory Snegoff	A Spanish-Italian animated film about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Also released as Titanic: The Animated Movie.
2003	Ghosts of the Abyss	James Cameron	Bill Paxton James Cameron Dr. John Broadwater Dr. Lori Johnston	3-D IMAX documentary film released by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media. Features deep-sea exploration of the wreckage.
2004	In Search of The Titanic[13]	Kim J. Ok	Jane Alexander Rodolfo Bianchi Fabio Boccanera	A sequel to the Italian animated film The Legend of the Titanic. Also known as Tentacolino (Italian).
2010	Titanic II	Shane Van Dyke	Bruce Davison Brooke Burns Shane Van Dyke Marie Westbrook	Set in 2012, 100 years since the sinking of the RMS Titanic, a new luxury liner, the Titanic II, embarks on her maiden voyage, and is threatened by the same fate as her namesake.
2012	The Last Signals'	Thomas Lynskey	Jacob Swing Thomas Lynskey Robert Bagdon	Independent short film (42 min). Depiction of Titanic's assistant telegraph operator Harold Bride's story.

Television movies and notable episodes - Source: Wikipedia

Year	Title	Director	Cast	Notes
1956	"A Night to Remember" Kraft Television Theatre	George Roy Hill	Bradford Dillman Neil North	Live TV adaptation of Walter Lord's 1955 book of the same name; narrated by Claude Rains. The movie did so well in the ratings that it was rebroadcast the following week.
1957	"The Unsinkable Molly Brown" Telephone Time	Erle C. Kenton	Cloris Leachman	Short segment (using stock footage from the German film of 1943) from the TV version of John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series. Leachman would again play the role of Molly Brown in S.O.S. Titanic (1979).
1959	"Night of April 14th" Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond	John Newland	Patrick Macnee Barbara Lord Isobel Elsom	Purported docudrama relating stories of premonitions and nightmares preceding the disaster. The footage of Titanic hitting the iceberg is from History Is Made at Night.
1961	"I Heard You Calling Me" Way Out	Daniel Petrie	Constance Ford Neil Fitzgerald Anthony Dawson	A woman planning to elope with a married man is invited on a free ocean cruise — by the ghost of the man's mother, who died on the Titanic.
1966	"Rendezvous With Yesterday" The Time Tunnel	Irwin Allen	James Darren Robert Colbert	In the first episode of the series, the time travelers arrive on board the Titanic one day before the pending disaster. They try to warn the captain, but he has them locked up and they narrowly avoid going down with the ship.
1971	"Lone Survivor" Night Gallery	Gene Levitt	John Colicos Torin Thatcher Hedley Mattingly	This story in the anthology series was written by Rod Serling. A survivor in a Titanic lifeboat is discovered — three years after the event, by the Lusitania.
1973	"Miss Forrest", "A House Divided" Upstairs, Downstairs	Bill Bain; Christopher Hodson	Rachel Gurney Patsy Smart Meg Wynn Owen David Langton Simon Williams Gordon Jackson Jean Marsh	The series' 3rd season opens with "Miss Forrest" where it is learned that two main characters are aboard the Titanic. Mistress Lady Marjorie Bellamy Death (Gurney) and her maid, Miss Roberts (Smart) are both presumed dead. In the next episode, "A House Divided" (commonly referred to as the "Titanic episode") it is learned that the maid survives, but is in emotional shock. Eventually she relates how her mistress died on the Titanic.
1979	S.O.S. Titanic	William Hale	David Janssen Cloris Leachman	Depiction of the doomed 1912 voyage from the perspective of three distinct groups of passengers in First, Second, and Third Class. Shorter version released theatrically in Europe. (*This was the first Titanic film in color shown to the public. Raise the Titanic was the first Titanic color made as it was filmed in 1978 and released in 1980.) The scenes of the ship sinking are colorized footage from A Night to Remember.
1983	"Ah! The Eyelid of Mother" Urusei Yatsura	Mamoru Oshii	Toshio Furukawa Fumi Hirano Yuko Mita	Flashback of Ryuunosuke's father at age 15 meeting and falling in love with a woman named Yukie while on board the ship. They both ended up being washed away to Florida after the ship hit an iceberg and sank.
1983	"Voyagers of the Titanic" Voyagers!	Winrich Kolbe	Jon-Erik Hexum Meeno Peluce	Bogg and Jeff find themselves aboard the doomed Titanic. Although failing to prevent the disaster, they are able to save the Mona Lisa from being lost with the ship. Features footage from Raise The Titanic cut from the theatrical release.
1984	Titanic - Nachspiel einer Katastrophe	Lutz Büscher	Hans Korte Volkert Kraeft Arthur Brauss	English translation of the title: Titanic - Aftermath of a disaster Well researched German TV movie about the United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic under William Alden Smith. Several technical aspects (e.g. watertight compartments, wireless telegraphy) and particular involvements are discussed (e.g. Charles Lightoller, J. Bruce Ismay, Harold Bride).
1996	Titanic	Robert Lieberman	Peter Gallagher George C. Scott Catherine Zeta-Jones Tim Curry	This two-part miniseries was the first depiction to show the Titanic splitting in two.
1996	No Greater Love	Richard T. Heffron	Kelly Rutherford	Romance in which a young woman takes charge of her young siblings, upon losing her fiancé and parents in the disaster. Based on the Danielle Steel novel of the same name. The scenes of the ship sinking include footage from S.O.S. Titanic.
1998	"Titey" Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse cartoon[19][20]	David Wachtenheim	Jason Alexander Whoopi Goldberg Gilbert Gottfried Molly Ringwald Robert Smigel	2 minute animated parody stylized as a trailer for an upcoming Disney animated feature film about an anthropomorphic ship named Titey and his adventures on the sea.
1999	"A Flight to Remember" Futurama	Peter Avanzino	Billy West Katey Sagal John DiMaggio	The Planet Express team take a cruise on the largest spaceship ever built: the Titanic, which is torn in half by a black hole on its maiden voyage.
2005	Titanic: Birth of a Legend	William Lyons	Charles Dance Gordon Langford Rowe Charles Lawson Damian O'Hare Christopher Wright	A 70-minute docu-drama. The story focuses on the lives of the men who built Titanic and her sister ship OLYMPIC.
2005	"Fu and Tell" American Dragon: Jake Long	Christian Roman	Tia Carrere John DiMaggio	Yan Yan and Fu Dog cause the Titanic to hit the iceberg during their various fights throughout history.
2007	"Voyage of the Damned" Doctor Who	James Strong	David Tennant Kylie Minogue	A luxury space cruiser called the Titanic, a pastiche of the ocean liner, crashes into the TARDIS. The Doctor works with a waitress named Astrid Peth to prevent an imminent collision with Earth.
2008	"The Cursed Tuba Contingency" The Middleman	Jeremiah Chechik	Matt Keeslar Natalie Morales	To avert dire consequences, the Middleman (Kesslar) and Wendy (Morales) must prevent a tuba from the Titanic from being played. In a flashback of the ship's sinking, footage from the 1943 film is used.
2010	"The Mutants Are Revolting" Futurama	Raymie Muzquiz	Billy West Katey Sagal John DiMaggio	In the sewers of New York, the crew discover the wreckage of the Land Titanic, the largest land-faring vessel ever built, which sailed down 5th Avenue in 2912 until it struck a mail box and sank into the ground.
2010	"Episode One" Downton Abbey	Brian Percival		The first series opens with news of the Crawley family heir's death aboard the Titanic.
2011	"My Heart Will Go On" Supernatural	Phil Sgriccia	Jared Padalecki Jensen Ackles Misha Collins	An angel changes history by averting the sinking of the Titanic, with unforeseen consequences.
2012	Saving The Titanic	Maurice Sweeney	David Wilmot Ciarán McMenamin Owen McDonnell	90-minute PBS docu-drama. The story of the selfless engineers who worked tirelessly to keep the Titanic's essential electricity running during the tragedy. Renamed as Heroes of the Titanic for UK broadcast on History.[22]
2012	Titanic	Jon Jones	Linus Roache Geraldine Somerville	Four-part drama based around characters present on the ship during its sinking. Shows the Titanic splitting in two at a much shallower angle, in accordance with the new breakup theory.
2012	Titanic: Blood and Steel	Ciaran Donnelly	Neve Campbell Derek Jacobi	12-part drama, telling the story of the construction of the ship.
2014	"Yo-Kai Titanic" Yo-Kai Watch	Yoichi Kato	Haruka Tomatsu Tomokazu Seki	Keita and his friends are forced to act out a Yōkai themed Titanic sinking.
2016	"Catula" Bunnicula	Matt Whitlock	Chris Kattan Sean Astin Brian Kimmet Kari Wahlgren	In the scene in where there's a picture in a photo album with Bunnicula on a lifeboat with the ship sinking behind him.

Anything Goes (1956)

ss LIBERTÉ

Director: Robert Lewis

Anything Goes is a 1956 American musical film directed by Robert Lewis, screenplay by Sidney Sheldon and starring Bing Crosby, Donald O'Connor, Zizi Jeanmaire, and Mitzi Gaynor.Adapted from the 1934 stage play Anything Goes by Cole Porter, Guy Bolton, and P.G. Wodehouse, the film is about two entertainers scheduled to appear in a Broadway show together who travel to Paris, where each discovers the perfect leading lady for the female role - each promising the role to the girl they selected without informing the other. On the return voyage, with each man having brought his leading lady along, the Atlantic becomes a stormy crossing when each man must tell his discovery that she might not get the role.

Mitzi Gaynor and Donald O'Connor in the musical number `It's De Lovely´ from the 1955 movie "Anything Goes" - Source: YouTube

Seeing the deck arragements, I got the impression the decorator had no clue about ... and then the missing wind ... okay it is a set ... 

The book was drastically rewritten for this second film version, which was also released by Paramount. Although this version again stars Bing Crosby (whose character was once more renamed), Donald O'Connor, and comedian Phil Harris in a cameo appearance, the film almost completely excises the rest of the original characters in favor of a new plot. The film features almost no similarities to the play or the stage production, apart from some songs and the title.

LIBERTÉ the obvious stage for Anything Goes at sea - screenshot from YouTube

Showbiz partners Bill Benson and Ted Adams each travel to Paris to sign a dancer to star in their new show. The problem? There is only one role, and the men have unknowingly cast two dancers, Patsy Blair and Gaby Duval. It is up to the men to sort out their mess on the cruise back to America.

Source: Wikipedia

In the end the liner film setting is giving a different appearance than the original liner was. And for someone who knows about liners may be disapointed. But these films did not want to be nautical correct, but entertain their audience. So things have been overdrawn.
But this film was a wonderful promotion for COMPAGNIE GÉNÉRALE TRANSATLANTIQUE as in all scenes on board the "boat" their logo was to be seen. Today it is named productplacement.

The Birds and the Bees (1956)

ss Southern Queen
Director: Norman Taurog

A remake of The Lady Eve (1941), this film stars George Gobel as the ophiologist and Mitzi Gaynor as the scam artist. In this version, Gobel returns from the Congo River instead of the Amazon River, but EVERYTHIG else is the same with slapsstick added - just not as good. Such as the copied water spitting whistle of the tender, and the slapsstick entering that tender is a low joke ...

Screenshot from `The Birds and the Bees´ - YouTube video

This time ss Southern Queen transformed into the CGT liner FLANDRE, but could be too the ANTILLES, which never sailed to the Congo - screenshot from the film

The Birds and the Bees is a 1956 screwball comedy film with songs, starring George Gobel, Mitzi Gaynor and David Niven. A remake of Preston Sturges' 1941 film The Lady Eve, which was based on a story by Monckton Hoffe, the film was directed by Norman Taurog and written by Sidney Sheldon. The costumes for the film were designed by Edith Head.
George "Hotsy" Hamilton (George Gobel), a very eligible but naive vegetarian heir to a meat-packing fortune, returns home to Connecticut by luxury cruise ship, accompanied by Marty Kennedy (Harry Bellaver), his valet, guardian and best friend, after spending three years together on a scientific expedition in the Belgian Congo looking for a rare snake. On board, the woman-shy George attracts a lot of attention from the opposite sex, despite being the consummate milque-toast, but the one he can't avoid is Jean Harris (Mitzi Gaynor), a beautiful con artist travelling with her equally larcenous father, Colonel Patrick Henry "Handsome Harry" Harris (David Niven), and his partner-in-crime Gerald (Reginald Gardiner).
The three con artists are out to fleece George of a small fortune, but even the best laid plans can go astray. First, Jean falls hard for George and shields him from her card sharp father. Then, when Marty discovers the truth about her and her father and tells George about them, he dumps her. Furious at being scorned, she re-enters his life masquerading as the posh "Countess Louise", the cousin of "Jacques Duc de Montaigne" (Hans Conreid), who is actually Frenchie, another con man who's swindling the rich folks of Connecticut. Jean is determined to get back at George, so she sets out to seduce him, again.
George's domineering father (Fred Clark) throws a party in honor of the visiting French royalty, and George is completely taken in by Jean's masquerade. Soon her hapless victim is so confused and bothered he doesn't know which way is up, but, in the end, after all the twists and turns, deceptions and lies, true love wins out.

Source: Wikipedia

Sometimes a remake is just a remake, the money used could have done better. But sometimes a remake creates something new out of the old.

An Affair to Remember (1957)

ss CONSTITUTION
Director: Leo McCarey

Of course, this film with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr is the shipboard film everyone talks about and rightly so. It is the first remake of `Love Affair´ (1939) and the best of all versions.

ss CONSTITUTION the liner the fiction is staging - own collection

An Affair to Remember is a 1957 American romance film starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, directed by Leo McCarey and filmed in CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film is considered one of the most romantic movies of all time, according to the American Film Institute. The film was a remake of McCarey's 1939 film Love Affair, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer.
Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant), a well-known playboy and dilettante in the arts, meets Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) aboard the Transatlantic ocean liner COSTITUTION en route from Europe to New York. Each is involved with someone else. After a series of chance meetings aboard the ship, they establish a friendship. When Terry joins Nickie on a brief visit to his grandmother when the ship anchors near her home at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, she sees Nickie with new eyes and their feelings blossom into love. During their visit, it is revealed that Nickie has had a talent for painting, but has dropped said trait due to his critical attitude towards his own art. As the ship returns to New York City, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in six months' time, if they have succeeded in ending their relationships and starting new careers.

The supporting actor in `An Affair to Remember´ - screenshot

On the day of their rendezvous, Terry, in her haste to reach the Empire State Building, is struck down by a car while crossing a street. Gravely injured, she is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, Nickie, waiting for her at the observation deck at the top of the building, is unaware of the accident and, after many hours, finally concedes at midnight that she will not arrive, believing that she has rejected him.

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr on board the CONSTITUTION in `An Affair to Remember´ - promotion picture

After the accident Terry, now unable to walk, refuses to contact Nickie, wanting to conceal her disability. Instead, she finds work as a music teacher. Nickie has pursued his talent as a painter and has his work displayed by an old friend, an art shop owner. Six months after the accident, she sees Nickie with his former fiancée at the ballet, which she herself is attending with her former boyfriend. Nickie does not notice her condition because she is seated and only says hello as he passes her.
Nickie finally learns Terry's address and, on Christmas Eve, makes a surprise visit to her. Although he steers the conversation to make her explain her actions, Terry merely dodges the subject, never leaving the couch on which she sits. He gives her a shawl that his grandmother left for Terry after she died. As he is leaving, Nickie mentions a painting that he had been working on when they originally met, and that it was just given away at the art shop to a woman who liked it but had no money. He is about to say that the woman was in a wheelchair when he pauses, suddenly suspecting why Terry has been sitting unmoving on the couch. He walks into her bedroom and sees his painting hanging on the wall, and a wheelchair concealed there. He now knows why she did not keep their appointment. The film ends with the two in a tight embrace, each realizing that the other's love endures. In closing, Terry says, "If you can paint, I can walk; anything can happen, don't you think?"

Source: Wikipedia

Paris Holiday (1958)

ss ÎLE DE FRANCE
Director: Gerd Oswald

Paris Holiday movie poster

Paris Holiday is a 1958 comedy film starring Bob Hope, which was directed by Gerd Oswald, and written by Edmund Beloin, who was Hope's attorney, and Dean Riesner from a story by Hope. The film also features French comedian Fernandel, Anita Ekberg and Martha Hyer, and a rare appearance by writer/director Preston Sturges. The film was shot in Technirama and Technicolor in Paris and in the French village of Gambais.

 Screenshot of Paris Holiday, a not that busy New York port

 Screenshot of Paris Holiday

ÎLE DE FRANCE is only shown in the opening, and what is seen in the film is a set ... a mock up of an ocean, someone thought it would be.

Popular American comedian Bob Hunter (Bob Hope), star of stage, movies and television, boards the luxury liner Île de France to travel to France, only to find his French counterpart, Fernydel (Fernandel) is on the ship as well. Also on board are elegant blonde diplomat Ann McCall (Martha Hyer), whom Bob would like to get to know better, and stunning Zara Brown (Anita Ekberg), the agent for a French criminal organization which suspects that Bob is carrying an incriminating manuscript. While Bob pursues Ann, with Fernydel's help, Zara repeatedly searches Bob's stateroom, causing problems when Ann sees her leaving after a search.

1948 Delahaye 135 MS Cabriolet Faget-Varnet - movie still

Anita Eckberg is driving this Art Deco beauty in the film.

When he reaches Paris, Bob visits Serge Vitry (Preston Sturges), a writer whose script Bob has come to purchase, but is told that Vitry is no longer interested in comedy: he is writing a true-life drama which he is going to produce himself. Bob pleads for a look, and is told where he can get a translated copy. A series of suspicious accidents and mishaps then leads to Bob being arrested as a suspect in the murder of Serge, but he is rescued by the American ambassador (André Morell) and Inspector Dupont (Yves Brainville), who tell him that Serge used his manuscript to reveal the identities of counterfeiters who had infiltrated their way into high offices in the French government, which is why he was murdered. The two men ask Bob to serve as bait to flush out the criminals. Bob agrees, but only because Ann's life is also in danger. Helped by Ann, Fernandel, and villainess-turned-heroine Zara, Bob is chased all over Paris by the underworld, at one point winding up in a mental asylum for safekeeping. It all ends with an escape by helicopter piloted by Fernandel (actually John Crewdson) reading a book of flight instructions, capture of a group of assassins, then a parade for Bob, Fernandel and Ann, who are heroes.

Source: Wikipedia

Drillinge an Bord (1959)

ss HANSEATIC, ex EMPRESS OF SCOTLAND, ex EMPRESS OF JAPAN
Director: Hans Müller

A light hearted German comedy with slapstic elements. The dialogues are living from the word settings of Heinz Erhardt, who had been a brilliant master of. These are not easy to translate into any language.
The outdoor scenes on board had been film onboard HANSEATIC, while the interior scenes had been made in a set ... Realizing this, I was more than disappointed, as HANSEATIC was my first liner having been on sailing the pond.

HANSEATIC, 1, after adding the latice domes - courtsey Louis M. Coreia

Triplets on Board (German: Drillinge an Bord) is a 1959 West German comedy film directed by Hans Müller and starring Heinz Erhardt, Ann Smyrner , Trude Herr and Ingrid van Bergen. Three identical brothers all go on the same cruise using only one ticket. 

Heinz Bollmann wins with his composed song `Charming Boy´, sung by Paul Kuhn, at a song contest. His tripplet brothers Eduard and Otto are angry because Heinz has used a melody by Eduard (according to Otto, but strongly sounds similar to a polka by Johann Strauss) and used a perfume advertising by Otto´s text. Heinz wins a cruise, which his brothers also want to take part in. Heinz goes on board, as he believes, without his brothers. These also smuggle on the ship, which leads to confusion on board. On board is the detective Fred Larsen with his fiancée Rita, who is also his colleague at the same time. He is the only one who realizes that Heinz Bollmann is really a drummer, but considers this to be a popular gangster trio. Conversely, the true gangsters (Emilio, Mac, and Bobo) hold Heinz Bollmann for a detective who is searching for them, but are driven mad by their triple existence. They finally got trapped in the cooling room of the ship. On board, Heinz gets to know her table neighbor, Lady Zocker and falls in love with her during the film.

Source: Wikipedia

HANSEATIC will appear 1961 in another German film `Geliebte Hochstaplerin´ 

The Last Voyage (1960)

ss Claridon, filmed with ÎLE DE FRANCE, which was sold for scrap in Japan

Directed by Andrew L. Stone
Normally I would not have mentioned this movie here, but this movie has been cited that offen in FB groups ... so I had to.

Seeing this film all nerves had been on allert, as nothing, really nothing in this third class movie is real, or is telling reallity. Including the hysteric crying child ... I guess that girl got the Academy Award for the best screaming. When the former pride of France is halfway sinking, the set was something like a barge or so, on which the film crew errected something out of paper, that moved with the slightest move of water ... but should despict a massive part of the superstructure. The exploding funnel, halfway knowing about shipconstruction you could see where the funnel had been wanted to be parted. Then the acting in general. Had these actors seen something like an actors school or so ... or did they come just from the woods?

And for the  ÎLE DE FRANCE I just was wishing really to sink, to get away from this "film".

`The Last Voyage´ movie poster

The Last Voyage is a 1960 American disaster film written and directed by Andrew L. Stone. It stars Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone.
The screenplay centers on the sinking of an aged ocean liner in the Pacific Ocean following an explosion in the boiler room. There are some plot similarities to the disaster involving the Italian liner ANDREA DORIA, which sank after a collision four years earlier.

The film begins with a view of the ss Claridon, as the narrator (George Furness, who also plays Third Officer Osborne in the film) states, "The ss Claridon, a proud ship, a venerable ship, but as ships go, an old ship. A very old ship. For 38 years she's weathered everything the elements could throw at her. Typhoons, zero-zero fogs, the scorching heat of the tropics. Now she is scheduled for only five more crossings. Then a new ship, a posh, streamlined beauty, will take her place. It is then that the Claridon will pass into oblivion. She has an appointment with the scrapyard. But it's an appointment she'll never keep. For this is her last voyage."

ÎLE DE FRANCE - Claridon start sinking - screenshot

Cliff and Laurie Henderson and their daughter, Jill, are relocating to Tokyo and decide to sail there on board the ship. A fire in the boiler room is extinguished quickly, but not before a boiler fuel supply valve is fused open. Before Chief Engineer Pringle can manually open a steam relief valve, a huge explosion rips through the boiler room and the many decks situated above it, killing him and some of the passengers and trapping Laurie under a steel beam in their stateroom, in addition to causing widespread panic and opening a huge hole in the side of the ship.
Cliff runs back to their stateroom and finds that he can't get Laurie out alone. He then finds Jill trapped on the other side of the room. He tries to use a shattered piece of the bed to get to the other side, but it falls through the huge hole caused by the explosion. Third Officer Osborne believes that the crew should start loading passengers into the lifeboats, but Captain Robert Adams is reluctant, as he never lost a ship. He tries to reassure them that they are in no immediate danger but this doesn't help calm them. Cliff finally manages to rescue Jill by using a board to have her crawl across the hole on. Down in the boiler room, Second Engineer Walsh reports to Captain Adams that a seam to the bulkhead has broken away. Cliff tries to get the help of a steward, but to no avail. A passenger states that he overheard his conversation, and wants to help.

ÎLE DE FRANCE - Claridon sinking - screenshot

Osborne reports that the boiler room is now half-full. The Claridon then begins to transmit an SOS, on orders of Captain Adams. Cliff and a few other men return to the stateroom to try to help free Laurie, but find they need a torch.
The carpenter reports to the crew that the boiler room is now two-thirds full. To make matters worse, Walsh doesn't know how long the bulkhead will last. Captain Adams makes an announcement to the passengers to put on their life jackets. This is more reason to panic. They then begin loading and launching the lifeboats.
Cliff finds a torch and tries to rush back to Laurie with the help of crewman Hank Lawson, but they still need an acetylene fuel tank. Walsh reports that if one more strut breaks, the ship will sink. On instruction from Cliff, Lawson puts Jill in a lifeboat, and asks him to return with an acetylene tank. The boiler room then floods, causing the ship to sink lower. On top of that, a second explosion occurs on the boat deck.
Captain Adams is looking at his promotion letter to commodore of the line while Laurie holds a piece of a shattered mirror in her hand, contemplating suicide to free Cliff from risking his life to save her. She chooses not to die and tosses it away.
When Cliff and Lawson are down in the dining room, it also floods, causing water to burst through the large windows. Captain Adams returns to his office to retrieve the ship's logbook and papers but is killed when the forward smokestack falls on him. Meanwhile, Cliff finally gets Laurie out from under the steel beam with the help of Lawson and Walsh. They get up to the boat deck along with Walsh. As they proceed to the stern where a lifeboat is standing by, Walsh jumps off the ship and swims away from it. Cliff, Laurie, Osborne, Ragland and Lawson jump into the water and find a lifeboat just as the ship sinks. Cliff personally helps Lawson aboard, in thanks for his devotion to assisting Laurie's rescue, and the narrator concludes with, "This was the death of the steamship Claridon. This was her last voyage."

Source: Wikipedia

Geliebte Hochstaplerin (1961)

also ... und wer küßt mich?
ss HANSEATIC, ex EMPRESS OF SCOTLAND, ex EMPRESS OF JAPAN
Director: Ákos Ráthonyi

Geliebte Hochstaplerin, originally a Boulevard Comedy is film that is lacking any depth, except for the exterior scene, which had been made on board HANSEATIC. Interior again in a set.

Promotion poster for `Geliebte Hochstaplerin´

Geliebte Hochstaplerin is a 1961 German comedy film directed by Ákos Ráthonyi and starring Nadja Tiller, Walter Giller, Elke Sommer and Dietmar Schönherr. It is based on a play by Jacques Deval. 
Nadja Tiller and Walter Giller had been married at the time of filming and had till the death of Walter one of the longest lasting marriage in show bizz. Elke Sommer may be known to US citizens and cineasts as the Fräulein Wunder from Hollywood. 
The Berlin guy Robert Bolle smuggles himself as a stowawy on an ocean liner, which sails from Hamburg to New York. On board is also his lover Barbara Shadwell, whom he wants to marry, but at the request of her mother, the syrup millionaire Ceila Shadwell, the oatmeal millionaire David Ogden is to marry. The supposedly rich Martine Colombe, whose double cabin had been rented twice in the tourist class, was lodged in the cabin, which Robert secretly inhabited. Martine quickly finds the man under her bed. Robert, on the other hand, realizes that Martine is not a fine lady, but a mannequin stolen from the current collection of a designer and hoping to marry a millionaire in America. They arrange themselves, as one knows the secrets of the other - they sleep in and under the bed.

Walter Giller and Nadjy Tiller in `Geliebte Hochstaplerin´

Martine clings to David Ogden's heels, and she is thrilled when she appears with the same dress as his mother at dinner, giving her the first time in her life. He falls in love with them, which has increasingly delirious-crazy consequences: David becomes insane when he is in love. Since there are constantly three monitors around him, which should prevent a connection with Martine, it soon comes to a palpable dispute. When David has to think that Martine really loves him for his sake and not for his money, he gives away the family fortune to foreign passengers and is finally locked up by his inspectors.
Martine has arranged a meeting between Robert and Barbara. She quickly realizes that Robert and Martine are closer than she would ever be to Robert. Finally, she pretends to have used Robert as a prize in poker and lost it. He gives them the cards as a souvenir and goes.In the end, Martine sees that she no longer has a craving for a millionaire. She crawls to Robert under the bed and both consider how Robert can go ashore in New York and what Barbara is supposed to be in the city. They decide on a card game and Robert finds a note from Barbara: She has paid for both the suite for the New York - Hamburg crossing and wishes them both that they love each other.

Source: Wikipedia

Both previous mentioned films had been, despite the different qualities of the films, a brilliant marketing tool for Axel Bitsch Christensen and the then HAMBURG ATLANTIK LINIE

Carry on Cruising (1962)

ss Happy Wanderer, using stock footage of ORIENT LINES (ORIENT STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY) ships ORCADES of 1948, ORONSAY of 1951, and ORSOVA 1954
Directors: Gerald Thomas,

According to IMDB, the ss Happy Wanderer was a life-size mock-up, complete with all the features of a real cruise ship. IMDB also reports that even though the cruise ship docks at several ports (Spain, Italy, North Africa), it always moors against the same quayside with the same tree standing on it. I  noticed ... hm.

In general, as the Carry on series of films, this movie too is playing with the British pruderie of the 1950s and 1960s. Remember the Profumo affair ... or the movie `A Very British Sex Scandal´.

To love this movie you have to love the very British humor, otherwise you better leave the movie.

`Carry on Cruising´ P&O ORIENT LINES

Carry On Cruising is the sixth in the series of Carry On films to be made and was released in 1962. It was the first in the Carry On series to be filmed in colour and was based on an original story by Eric Barker. P&O - Orient Lines were thanked in the credits. Regulars Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor appear in the movie whereas Joan Sims and Charles Hawtrey do not. Sims took ill shortly before filming began and was replaced by Dilys Laye, making her Carry On debut, at four days' notice. Hawtrey was dropped for demanding star billing, but returned for the next entry while Sims returned two years later in Carry On Cleo. Liz Fraser notches up the second of her four appearances here. Lance Percival makes his only appearance in the series in Carry On Cruising, playing the ship's chef, the role originally designated for Hawtrey.

Captain Crowther (Sid James) has five of his crew replaced at short notice before a new cruise voyage begins. Not only does he get the five most incompetent crew men ever to sail the seven seas, but the passengers turn out to be a rather strange bunch too.

The SS Happy Wanderer is the cruise ship and after this voyage, Crowther hopes to get a job as captain on a transatlantic ship, promising the crew members their jobs will be safe under the new captain. Starting off from England, the Happy Wanderer calls at unnamed ports in Spain, Italy and North Africa before going home again.

`Carry on Cruising´ movie poster

Single ladies Gladys (Liz Fraser) and Flo (Dilys Laye) take the cruise, with Flo hoping to find a husband. Bridget (Esma Cannon) is her usual dotty and entertaining self, and one unnamed passenger (Ronnie Stevens) never disembarks but always goes straight to the bar to drink, to forget an unidentified woman. The crew and passengers settle in as the ship leaves port and head chef Wilfred Haines (Lance Percival) finds out he is seasick. Mario Fabrizi makes a quick appearance as one of the cooks under Haines. Ed Devereaux, best known for the part of Matt Hammond in the Australian TV series 'Skippy', appears as a Young Officer.

Gladys and Flo fall for the PT instructor Mr Jenkins but nothing comes of it, especially when Flo turns out to be hopeless in the gym. Meanwhile, the new men try to impress Crowther but disaster follows disaster with him getting knocked out and covered in food at a party.

Meanwhile, ship's doctor Dr. Binn (Kenneth Connor) has fallen for Flo, but she wants nothing to do with him so he serenades her with a song after leaving Italy (Bella Marie, sung by Roberto Carinali), which she does not hear as she is asleep. Gladys, who has heard the song, realises that Flo is in love with Binn and with the help of First Officer Marjoribanks (Kenneth Williams) arranges a plot for Binn and Flo to get together. It works and the confident Binn finally confesses his feelings to a gobsmacked Flo, who returns his affections.

Crowther lets the five newcomers know that they have improved since the cruise began, simply by doing their jobs and not by trying to impress him. They learn that the Captain has been in charge of the Happy Wanderer for ten years and decide to hold a surprise party for him, with the passengers. Haines bakes him a many-flavoured cake and the barman cables the former barman for the recipe of the Captain's favourite drink, the Aberdeen Angus.

The party goes well and Crowther gets his telegram telling him he has the captaincy of the new ship. He turns it down as he recognises it does not have the personal touch of a cruise ship, and prefers the company of his own crew.

Source: Wikipedia

Bon Voyage! (1962)

UNITED STATES
Director: James Neilson

`Bon Voyage!´ Bon voyage party on deck of ss UNITED STATES - screenshot

Bon Voyage! is a 1962 WALT DISNEY film directed by James Neilson and released by BUENA VISTA DISTRIBUTION Company. Following their practice of the time, it was also issued as a comic book and an adaptation appeared in the comic strip Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales. It stars Fred MacMurray, Jane Wyman, Deborah Walley, Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran as the Willard family on a European holiday. The family crossed the Atlantic Ocean on ss United States which survives today, stripped and moored at Pier 82 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The character actor James Millhollin appears in the film as the ship's librarian.

`Bon Voyage!´ ss UNITED STATES embarked at her in New York - screenshot from YouTube trailer

The film was based on a 1956 novel by Joseph and Merrijane Hayes. Joseph Hayes had written The Desperate Hours and Bon Voyage! was his second book; he and his wife wrote it after taking a trip across the Atlantic. Film rights were bought by Universal before the book had even been published for $125,000 and it was announced the film would be produced by Ross Hunter and written by the Hayes'. Esther Williams was originally announced as star. Then James Cagney was going to play the lead. Filming dates were pushed back then Bing Crosby was linked to the project.In early 1960, it was announced Disney had optioned the novel. Disney said it was likely Ken Annakin would direct with Karl Malden, James MacArthur and Janet Munro to star. Later Robert Stevenson was announced as director."It's far out for us," said Disney, "but still Disney. I'm really a gag man and missed the kind of pictures Frank Capra and Harold Lloyd used to make. Since nobody else wanted to do them, I decided to make them myself."Eventually Fred MacMurray, Jane Wyman and Tommy Kirk firmed as the three leads. However casting the daughter proved more difficult. "You must build a picture," said Walt Disney. "You don't write it all - only part of it. And it's the light and comic picture that's toughest of all to build.

"Michael Callan was cast from the play of West Side Story. Deborah Walley was cast on the basis of her performance in Gidget Goes Hawaiian." 

Filming began on 15 August 1961. It took place partly on location on a genuine ocean cruiser travelling across the Atlantic and in France. Walt Disney accompanied the film on location.Tommy Kirk did not get along with Jane Wyman: 

"I thought Jane Wyman was a hard, cold woman and I got to hate her by the time I was through with Bon Voyage. Of course, she didn't like me either, so I guess it came natural. I think she had some suspicion that I was gay and all I can say is that, if she didn't like me for that, she doesn't like a lot of people."

The title song was written by DISNEY staff songwriters, Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman. Bon Voyage! was the tenth most popular film of 1962, grossing $11,000,000.

Source: Wikipedia

And for the comic ... there has a comics series of Sophie, and in one there is UNITED STATES despicted, as the comic is set onboard.

Above and below, Sophie et le Rayon KA and UNITED STATES - copy from my own book

Sophie et le Rayon KA and UNITED STATES

Gendarme in New York (1965)

ss FRANCE

Director: Jean Girault

For quite some time I was loving the films of and with Louis de Funès, and this film depicted FRANCE, another liner I had the luck crossing the pond with, so I was loving watching this film a few times ... when it was premiered in France, later on TV, later when broadcasted in German TV broadcast system. Le Gendarme à New York is the second installment of Gendarmes series.
But with the time it is getting strenous watching Funès films ... so with and despite FRANCE, this film. But those loving watching the original interior of FRANCE should watch.

FRANCE sailing into New York harbor - own collection

Gendarme in New York (French: Le gendarme à New York) is the sequel to the French comedy film Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez. It stars Louis de Funès as the gendarme. With Michel Galabru, Christian Marin, Grosso and Modo, Alan Scott.

Fighting with the lifewests, a bit over the top, but well observed ... some passengers have to fight during the safty drill - screenshot

The gendarmes of St. Tropez are invited to New York City to a law enforcement conference. They are supposed to travel alone without spouses or children but Cruchot's daughter Nicole wants to go to New York as it may be her only chance. Cruchot forbids her to go because disobeying an order may hurt his career. As Cruchot travels to Le Havre by plane and train, Nicole gets a ride from her friend and sneaks onboard FRANCE and travels to America as a stowaway. During the journey Cruchot sees her hiding among the lifeboats but his captain convinces him that he is imagining things.

Louis de Funès onboard FRANCE entering New York - still from the film

When the ship arrives at New York, Nicole is caught by an immigrations officer. She has no passport, visa or money so the immigrations officer decides to deliver her to the French embassy. Nicole is saved by a newspaper reporter who plans on running a cycle of romantic articles about a French orphan girl and her dreams. He houses her in a YWCA hotel and takes her to a live TV show where she sings live. During her stay she meets an Italian gendarme who already tried to win her over while on the ship. The Italian takes her to his relatives soon after Cruchot who has seen her performance on TV chases her out of the YWCA hotel and gets arrested.
Cruchot is released with a warning and a suggestion to visit a psychiatrist. After a Freudian episode with a psychiatrist Cruchot is relieved of his perceived visions. The captain sends him to find a real good cut of beef in order to make a proper French meal. Fumbling as usual, during a West Side Story parody scene he manages to help capture a wanted criminal and is honoured by a newspaper article the following day. While reading the article he notices a photograph of Nicole in an article about her romantic involvement with the Italian gendarme. He forces the Italian to reveal Nicole's whereabouts and proceeds to find her in the deli belonging to the Italian gendarme's family. He manages to take her away but they are both chased by the Sicilians who believe that Nicole was kidnapped. Cruchot and Nicole manage to escape by hiding in Chinatown and dressing as local Chinese couple.
Meanwhile, the Italian gendarme sollicits the help of the NYPD and other gendarmes present at the congress to help him find his lost love. Cruchot transports Nicole to the airport by taxi in a luggage chest. He fails to arrive because of a small traffic incident and is forced to release Nicole from her confinement. Through a series of incidents Cruchot and Nicole manage to evade the NYPD and Cruchot's captain at a construction site and return to their abandoned taxi, which takes them to the airport.
At the airport Cruchot agrees to meet Nicole in the bar. When he arrives there she meets him dressed as an Air France flight attendant. She places him before a choice: either take the plane she will be flying on, thus risking discovery by the captain or make sure that they are late for their flight. Cruchot sabotages the gendarme's luggage making them late for the flight, while the captain sees a girl resembling Nicole fumbling with the airplane door. Cruchot manages to convince him that he is imagining things.
The movie cuts to Saint Tropez where the gendarmes are welcomed by the townsfolk, their wives and Nicole. The movie ends with the captain discovering that Nicole is wearing a dress that Cruchot bought for her in America. He confronts Cruchot with his insubordination.

Source: Wikipedia

Ship of Fools (1965)

ss Vera
Director: Stanley Kramer

In Vivien Leigh's last film, the German ocean liner Vera sails from Veracruz, Mexico via Cuba and Spain to Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1933. Like the Katherine Anne Porter novel, this is a sad story of the passengers - some oblivious, some concerned, some happy - to be headed toward a Nazi-rising Germany.
The story is based on Porter´s own experiences, she made on a similar trip in 1931.
What the most impressing to me was, is the filming in Black-and-White, which is making the film the more impressive and uncomfortable opressive. My neck lined up seeing the film. During my time in the German Gymnasium (5th to 13th grade, where are the last three years a preparation for the university - not really comparibale to High School). In 11th grade we had to read the Porter novel and watched the film ... later we worked on Shakespeare ... 
Although both acclaimed critically and well received by audiences, Ship of Fools was looked at by some reviewers as a Grand Hotel afloat, the 1932 film that was often aped. "Preachy and melodramatic" was another criticism, although the cast was universally praised. 
Seeing Ship of Fools as a Grand Hotel afloat is for my opinion far to shortsighted. And perhaps these critics have not made any experience in observing such a travelling company, nor made any experience in learning about Nazi terror against its own people. 
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times saw the film as much more, "... Stanley Kramer has fetched a powerful, ironic film ... there is such wealth of reflection upon the human condition in Ship of Fools and so subtle an orchestration of the elements of love and hate, achieved through an expert compression of the novel by Mr. Kramer and his script writer, Abby Mann, that it is really not fair to tag it with the label of any previous film. It has its own quiet distinction in the way it illuminates a theme." He also singled out the work of Oskar Werner. In a similar vein, Variety noted, "Director-producer Stanley Kramer and scenarist Abby Mann have distilled the essence of Katherine Anne Porter’s bulky novel in a film that appeals to the intellect and the emotions."

Ship of Fools - screenshot

Ship of Fools is a 1965 drama directed by Stanley Kramer, which recounts the stories of several passengers aboard an ocean liner bound to Germany from Mexico in 1933. It stars Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, José Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Oskar Werner, Werner Klemperer, Michael Dunn, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, José Greco, Charles Korvin, and Heinz Rühmann. It was to be Vivien Leigh's last film and Christiane Schmidtmer's first U.S. production.
Ship of Fools was highly regarded, with reviewers praising the cast's performance but also noted the movie's overlong runtime. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1966, including for Best Picture, Best Actor for Oskar Werner and Best Actress for Simone Signoret, and won for Best Art Direction, Black-and-White and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.
The characters board a German ocean liner in Veracruz, Mexico, for a voyage to Bremerhaven, Germany, along with 600 displaced workers in steerage, being deported from Cuba back to Spain, and a not-so-exotic band of entertainers, for whom the voyage is just a job. Some are happy to be bound for a rising Nazi Germany, some are apprehensive, while others appear oblivious to its potential dangers.
The ship's doctor, Schumann (Oskar Werner) (with dueling scar), takes a special interest in La Condesa (Simone Signoret), a countess from Cuba who has an addiction to drugs and is being shipped to a Spanish-run prison on Tenerife. Her sense of certain doom is contrasted by the doctor's determination to fight the forces of oppression, embodied by his insistence that the people in steerage be treated like human beings rather than animals. The doctor himself has a secret, a terminal heart condition, and his sympathy for the countess soon evolves into love.
Several passengers are invited to dine each night at the captain's table. There, some are amused and others offended by the anti-Semitic rants of a German businessman named Rieber (José Ferrer) who – although married - is beginning an on-board affair with a busty blonde (Christiane Schmidtmer). The Jewish Lowenthal (Heinz Rühmann) is invited instead to join a dwarf named Glocken (Michael Dunn) for his meals, and the two bond over their exclusion. Eventually a passenger named Freytag (Alf Kjellin) seems shocked to find himself ostracized when Rieber learns that his wife is Jewish.
Others aboard include a young American couple, David (George Segal) and Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley), who bicker because David is unhappy at his lack of success with painting. A divorcée, Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh), drinks and flirts, on a quest to recapture her youth in Paris. Bill Tenny (Lee Marvin) is a former baseball player disappointed in the way his career never quite took off. They are distracted by the music and the professional dancers, whose flirtations seem to skirt the edges of solicitation, or dive right in to the seedy side of oblivion.
When the passengers disembark, two are no longer with them – the countess, who has been taken to an island prison, and the doctor, who has died.

Source: Wikipedia

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

ss PRESIDENT WILSON
Director: Charlie Chaplin

Except a few scenes showing PRESEIDENT WILSON the film stage in the massive suite of to be ambassadoe Ogden, the salons and dining room that should depict the interior of PRESIDENT WILSON, built in Pinewood Studios.

One scene definitely was filmed onboard an AMERICAN PRESIDENT LINES vessel ... when Sophia Loren is jumping from the ship into the water of the port.

PRESIDENT WILSON depicted in Hong Kong for A Countess from Hong Kong - screenshot

A Countess from Hong Kong is a 1967 British comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and starring Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Tippi Hedren and Sydney Earle Chaplin, Chaplin's third son. It was the last film directed, written, produced and scored by Chaplin, and one of two films Chaplin directed in which he did not play a major role (the other was 1923's A Woman of Paris), as well as his only color film. Chaplin's cameo marked his final screen appearance. Charlie Chaplin makes two brief appearances as an aged ship's steward.

The story is based loosely on the life of a woman Chaplin met in France, named Moussia Sodskaya, or "Skaya" as he calls her in his 1922 book, My Trip Abroad. She was a Russian singer and dancer who "was a stateless person marooned in France without a passport". The idea, according to a press release written by Chaplin after the movie received a negative reception, "resulted from a visit I made to Shanghai in 1931 where I came across a number of titled aristocrats who had escaped the Russian Revolution. They were destitute and without a country, their status was of the lowest grade. The men ran rickshaws and the women worked in ten-cent dance halls. When the second World War broke out many of the old aristocrats had died and the younger generation migrated to Hong Kong where their plight was even worse, for Hong Kong was overcrowded with refugees."

`A Countess form Hng Kong´ dancing in the film set salon of PRESIDENT WILSON
The young lady is throwing herself, trying to do, in the arms of Ogden ... it gets hilarious when she is shaking her necklace ...

It was originally started as a film called Stowaway in the 1930s, planned for Paulette Goddard, but production was never completed. This resulting film, created nearly 30 years after its inception, was a critical failure and grossed US$2,000,000 from a US$3,500,000 budget. However, it did prove to be extremely successful in Europe and Japan. In addition, the success of the music score was able to cover the budget.

Critics such as Tim Hunter and Andrew Sarris, as well as the poet John Betjeman and the director François Truffaut viewed the film as being among Chaplin's best works. Actor Jack Nicholson is also a big fan of the film.

The film's theme music, written by Chaplin, became the hit song "This Is My Song" for Petula Clark - a UK no. 1 and US no. 3.

Ambassador-designate to Saudi Arabia Ogden Mears (Marlon Brando) sails back to America after touring the world. He meets Natascha, a Russian countess (Sophia Loren), in Hong Kong after she sneaks aboard in evening dress to escape her life at a dance hall for sailors. A refugee, she has no passport and is forced to stay in his cabin during the voyage.

Ogden dislikes the situation, being a married man, although seeking a divorce, and worries how it might affect his career if she is found. But he reluctantly agrees to let her stay. They then have to figure out a way to get her off the ship, and it is arranged that she marry his aged valet, Hudson (Patrick Cargill).

Although it is only a formality, Hudson wishes to consummate the relationship, a wish she does not share. Natascha avoids him and, before docking at port, jumps off the ship and swims ashore.

Ogden's wife (Tippi Hedren) then joins the cruise, having just missed Natasha. Ogden's lawyer friend Harvey (Sydney Earle Chaplin), who helped arrange the marriage, meets Natascha ashore and tells her that the immigration officers have accepted her as Hudson's wife. Ogden's wife then confronts him about Natasha, speaking rather roughly about her and the life she led. He then asks if his wife would have done as well under such circumstances.

The film ends with Ogden and Natascha meeting in a hotel's cabaret, where they begin dancing, since he has left the ship and his wife behind.

`A Countess form Hng Kong´ in the by Ogden used suite of PRESIDENT WILSON - movie still

This was Chaplin's first film in ten years, after 1957's A King in New York. He had written a draft of the script in the late 1930s under the working title "The Stowaway", as a starring vehicle for his then-wife Paulette Goddard.

He originally wanted Rex Harrison or Cary Grant to play the lead but eventually Marlon Brando was cast. Both Brando and Sophia Loren agreed to play their parts without reading a script. Shooting began on 25 January 1966 at Pinewood Studios; it was frequently interrupted by Brando arriving late and then being hospitalised with appendicitis, Chaplin and Brando having the flu, and Loren remarrying Carlo Ponti. Filming wrapped on 5 January 1967.

This is Tippi Hedren's first feature film after her break with director Alfred Hitchcock. She had high hopes for the film, until she received the script. When she realised that she had a small part as Brando's estranged wife, she asked Chaplin to expand her role. Although Chaplin tried to accommodate her, he could not, as the story mostly takes place on a ship, which Hedren's character boards near the end of the film. In the end, she remained in the film and later said that it was a pleasure working for him. For Tippi Hedren it was a release having been casted by Chaplin, as she refused Hichkock´s advances, that destroyed her career.

PRESIDENT WILSON depicted in Honolulu for A Countess from Hong Kong - screenshot

Chaplin's three eldest daughters appeared in the film: Geraldine (at minutes 46 and 1:05), Josephine and Victoria Chaplin (at minute 1:32).

It was filmed entirely at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, just outside London, in 1966. The film was the second of Universal's European unit, following Fahrenheit 451.

Source: Wikipedia

The Impostors (1998)

ss Intercontinental
Director: Stanley Tucci

Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt are just two of the impostors in this Laurel-and-Hardy kind of comedy set, with quite an uncountable citings of scenes from other films, on an ocean liner sailing from New York to Paris in the 1930s. The opening silent sequence is my favorite part. My least favorite part is the line dance during the closing credits, starting on the ship and dancing through the soundstage. I did not need/want to have the ship illusion destroyed.

The Impostors, depicting a former More McCormack liner - screenshot

The Impostors is a 1998 American farce motion picture directed, written and produced by Stanley Tucci, starring Oliver Platt, Tucci, Alfred Molina, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, and Billy Connolly.

The film, in which Oliver Platt and Stanley Tucci play a Laurel and Hardy-like odd couple of out-of work actors, is set in the depression-era 1930s; indeed, the retro style of the film is a recreation of 1930s screwball comedy. The opening silent sequence harks back to the golden days of silent film. Although the plotting is light, the film is a warm-hearted and charming tribute to the early days of film comedy, fuelled by the eclectic mix of characters, who (as the title suggests) all turn out to be impostors of some kind; but the very diversity of the ensemble turns out to be the film's central point.

The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
In New York City, 1938 Arthur (Tucci) and Maurice (Platt) scrape a living by petty swindles, practicing their acting technique whenever they can. Following a drunken confrontation with pretentious and dreadful Shakespearean actor Sir Jeremy Burtom (Alfred Molina), they are forced to hide as stowaways on an ocean liner.

`The Imposters´ dancing on deck - screenshot

Unfortunately for the duo, Burtom himself turns out to be a passenger on the ship, along with a vividly diverse ensemble of larger-than-life characters: a suicidal crooner named Happy Franks (Steve Buscemi) sobs through a song; Mr. Sparks (Billy Connolly), an aging gay professional tennis player; the first mate Voltri (Tony Shalhoub), who is also a mad bomber with his own language; and many more.
Mistaken identities, pratfalls, slapstick, outrageous dialogue, and general mayhem ensue.

Source: Wikipedia

The Legend of 1900 (1998)

ss TheVirginian
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Computer animated 3D renderings made it happen, that a liner from the beginning of 20th century is staging in this film. For the historical correctnes I have to state; the 1907 LUSITANIA / MAURETANIA habe been the model for this liner ... a bit too advanced for 1900 ... (Exterior shots are the inspired blueprints of LUSITANIA, according to IMDB. 
The nitpicker in me found not enough vents installed on deck and the foremast was a bit too much 1950/60s US cargo liner styled, but the Edwardian interior was quite a looker - despite the higher than usual cielings in those days. 
1900 is the name given to an infant born in that year and abandoned by his immigrant parents on a transatlantic liner.  Adopted by a stoker, 1900 grows up on the ship. Tim Roth plays the adult 1900, a gifted pianist and composer of music inspired by his fellow passengers. The piano duel between 1900 and Jelly Roll Morton is one of the highlights of the film, but this is the ship movie that made me cry.

`The Legend of 1900´ ss Virginian - screenshot

The Legend of 1900 (Italian: La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano, The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean) is a 1998 Italian drama film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and starring Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Mélanie Thierry. It was Tornatore's first English-language film. The film is inspired by Novecento, a monologue by Alessandro Baricco. The film was nominated for a variety of awards worldwide, winning several for its soundtrack.

`The Legend of 1900´ movie poster

The story is told in medias res as a series of flashbacks. Max Tooney, a musician, enters a secondhand music shop just before closing time, broke and badly in need of money. He has only a Conn trumpet, which he sells for less than he had hoped. Clearly torn at parting from his prized possession, he asks to play it one last time. The shopkeeper agrees, and as the musician plays, the shopkeeper immediately recognizes the song from a broken record matrix he found inside a recently acquired secondhand piano. He asks who the piece is by, and Max tells him the story of 1900.
1900 was found abandoned on the four stacker oceanliner ss Virginian, a baby in a box, and likely the son of poor immigrants from steerage. Danny, a coal-man from the boiler room, is determined to raise the boy as his own. He names the boy Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900 (a combination of his own name, an advertisement found on the box and the year he was born) and hides him from the ship's officers. Sadly, a few years later, Danny is killed in a workplace accident, and 1900 is forced to survive aboard the Virginian as an orphan. For many years, he travels back and forth across the Atlantic, keeping a low profile.

`The Legend of 1900´ ss Virginian - screenshot

The boy shows a particular gift for music and eventually grows up and joins the ship's orchestra. He befriends Max in 1927, but never leaves the vessel. Apparently, the outside world is too "big" for his imagination at this point. But he stays current with outside musical trends as passengers explain to him a new music trend or style, and he immediately picks it up and starts playing it for them.
His reputation as a pianist is so renowned that Jelly Roll Morton, of New Orleans jazz fame, on hearing of 1900's skill comes aboard to challenge him to a piano duel. After hearing Jelly Roll Morton's first tune 1900 plays a piece so simple and well known ("Silent Night") that the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz feels mocked. As Morton becomes more determined to display his talent, he plays an impressive tune ("The Crave") that brings tears to 1900's eyes. 1900 calmly sits down at the piano and plays from memory the entire tune that Morton had just played. 1900's playing fails to impress the crowd until he plays an original piece ("Enduring Movement") of such virtuosity that the metal piano strings become hot enough for 1900 to light a cigarette. He hands it to Morton, who has lost the duel.

`The Legend of 1900´ 1900 playing piano - screenshot

A record producer, having heard of 1900's prowess, brings a primitive recording apparatus aboard and cuts a demo record of a 1900 original composition. The recorded music is created by 1900 as he gazes at a woman (The Girl) who has just boarded and whom he finds attractive. When 1900 hears the recording, he takes the master, offended at the prospect of anyone hearing the music without his having performed it live. He then tries to give the master to The Girl who inspired it, but is unable to and breaks the matrix into pieces.

`The Legend of 1900´ immigrants seeing Amerika for the first time - screenshot, above and below

`The Legend of 1900´ immigrants getting joyious seeing Lady Liberty - screenshot

The story flashes back to the mid-1940s periodically, as we see Max (who leaves the ship's orchestra in 1933) trying to lure 1900 out of the now-deserted hull of the ship. Having served as a hospital ship and transport in World War II, she is scheduled to be scuttled and sunk far offshore. Max manages to get aboard the ship with the recording 1900 made long ago and plays it, hoping to attract 1900's attention. When it does, Max attempts to convince 1900 to leave the ship. But he is too daunted by the size of the world. And feeling that his fate is tied to the ship, 1900 cannot bring himself to leave the only home he has known. Max feels useless that he couldn't save his friend.

`The Legend of 1900´ crowsa cheering ss Virginian - screenshot

The shopkeeper asks Max how the record got into the secondhand piano. Max indicates that he put it there, and the shopkeeper tells him that he wasn't so useless after all. Then, as Max is leaving the store, the shopkeeper gives him the trumpet and says, "A good story is worth more than an old trumpet," and Max walks out as another customer walks in.

Source: Wikipedia

Voyager (1991)

ss Pegasus (filmed aboard QUEEN MARY)
Director: Volker Schlöndorff

An unsettling movie, as the original novel, to be sure, Voyager is worth watching for the shipboard scenes alone. Plane lovers, will adore the Super Constellation. Sailing from New York City to France in 1957, Julie Delpy and Sam Shepard meet on board Pegasus and explore the bridge, the engine room, some trap shooting, some ping pong, some shuffle board. Of the sailing experience, Delpy said, "I love it!  I could sail around the world!" Me too ...

Voyager- screenshot

Voyager (based on the German novel, as the film is named here - Homo Faber) is a 1991 English-language drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, and starring Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, and Barbara Sukowa. Adapted by screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer from the 1957 novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch, the film is about a successful engineer traveling throughout Europe and the Americas whose world view based on logic, probability, and technology is challenged when he falls victim to fate, or a series of incredible coincidences.

Faber and his incest love affair, his daugther, of whom he never knew ... - screenshot

Voyager won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Production (Eberhard Junkersdorf), the German Film Award for Shaping of a Feature Film, and the Guild of German Art House Cinemas Award for Best German Film. It was also nominated for three European Film Awards for Best Film, Best Actress (Julie Delpy), and Best Supporting Actress (Barbara Sukowa), as well as a German Film Award for Outstanding Feature Film.
In April 1957, engineer Walter Faber (Sam Shepard) is waiting to board a flight from Caracas, Venezuela to New York City when he meets a German, Herbert Hencke (Dieter Kirchlechner), who reminds him of an old friend. Before takeoff, Walter decides not to board the airplane, but when a flight attendant discovers him still in the terminal, she escorts him aboard. During the flight, the airplane develops engine trouble and crash lands in the desert near the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains.

`Voyager´ movie poster

While the passengers and crew wait to be rescued, Walter discovers that Herbert Hencke is the brother of his old friend, Joachim (August Zirner), whom Walter has not seen since he left Zürich, Switzerland, twenty years ago. He also learns that Joachim married Walter's former girlfriend Hannah (Barbara Sukowa), that they had a child together, and that they are now divorced. After writing a letter to his current married girlfriend, Ivy, ending their relationship, Walter thinks back on his days in Zurich falling in love with Hannah. He remembers proposing marriage to her after she revealed she was pregnant, and that she refused, saying she would terminate the pregnancy.
The passengers and crew are rescued and brought to Mexico City, where Herbert prepares to continue on to see his brother Joachim at his tobacco farm in Guatemala. Walter decides to accompany Herbert to see his old friend again. The journey is long and difficult. When the two finally arrive at the tobacco farm, they find Joachim has hanged himself.
Back in New York City, Walter returns to his apartment, only to find Ivy waiting for him. She received Walter's letter ending their relationship, but simply does not acknowledge it. Needing to escape, he decides to leave for his Paris business trip a week early and take an ocean liner rather than fly. Feeling he has "started a new life" aboard the ship, Walter meets a beautiful young woman, Elisabeth Piper (Julie Delpy), whom he begins to call Sabeth. They spend time together, playing ping-pong, exploring the ship, and falling in love. On the last night of the voyage, Walter asks her to marry him, but she does not know how to respond, and they part without saying goodbye.
In Paris, Walter looks for Sabeth at the Louvre and they reunite. He offers to drive her to Rome, rather than have her hitchhike as she's planned, and she agrees. They drive south through France and stop for the night at a hotel near Avignon. Late in the evening, Sabeth comes to Walter's room and they make love. They continue on their way through France and Italy, stopping at Florence and Orvieto before arriving in Rome. At Palatine Hill, Walter is captivated by the sculpture, Head of a Sleeping Girl. Walter learns that Sabeth is the daughter of his former girlfriend, Hannah—and possibly his own daughter. He becomes distant and refuses to tell Sabeth of what he suspects; Sabeth is upset with Walter's sudden unexplained strange behavior. Walter finally reveals to Sabeth that he knew her mother and father in Zurich in the 1930s.
Walter and Sabeth make their way to Greece, but Walter is troubled by the possibility that Sabeth may be his daughter. They sleep under the stars on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and at sunrise Walter goes for a swim. While sleeping, Sabeth is bitten by a snake, jumps up in alarm, and falls, hitting her head on a rock. Walter rushes her to a hospital in Athens. Hannah arrives to look after her daughter.
While Sabeth is treated at the hospital, Walter stays with Hannah at her house, recounting how he met Sabeth on the ship and how they travelled through Europe together. Hannah reveals that Sabeth is his daughter and asks him, "Walter, how far did you go with the child?" Devastated, Walter acknowledges he had sexual relations with her. Sabeth recovers from the snake bite and appears to be gaining strength, but suddenly dies from the head injury.
In June 1957, at the Athens Airport, Hannah and Walter embrace and say goodbye. Walter sits dejected in the airport terminal. When his flight is called, he remains seated, pondering his fate and existence.

Source: Wikipedia

Love Affair (1994)

ARANUI 2
Director: Glenn Gordon Caron

The third time of the 1939 original movie is not the charm for this remake with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. But the good news is that we get to see Katharine Hepburn in one last film.

And for those with a romantic streak and not ashamed shedding the one or the other tear, the film is okay.

ARANUI 2, part film location of `Love Affair´ - courtsey ARANUI CRUISES

Love Affair is a 1994 American romantic drama film and a remake of the 1939 film of the same name. It was directed by Glenn Gordon Caron and produced by Warren Beatty from a screenplay by Robert Towne and Beatty, based on the 1939 screenplay by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart, based on the story by Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey. The music score was by Ennio Morricone and the cinematography by Conrad L. Hall.
Ex-football star Mike Gambril and singer Terry McKay, each of whom is engaged to marry someone else, meet on a flight to Sydney. The plane makes an emergency landing and passengers must wait until a piece of equipment is delivered.
Mike and Terry visit his elderly aunt Ginny on the isle of Tahiti. They see each other with new eyes and fall in love. When they reach New York City, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in three months' time. Terry breaks up with her fiance Ken Allen, as does Mike with his, Lynn Weaver.

`Love Affair´ meet and talk at the bar - screenshot

Terry finds work as a singer, mostly in advertisements. Mike quits his job as a Los Angeles television sports announcer. He finds honest work as a coach at a small school and also returns to his true vocation as a painter. One of his works captures Terry in prayer from their idyllic day in the islands.
On the day of their rendezvous, Terry, in her haste, is struck down by a car while crossing a street. Gravely injured, she is rushed to the hospital. Mike, waiting for her at the observation deck at the top of the building, is unaware of the accident. After many hours, he finally concedes at midnight that she has rejected him.

`Love Affair´ party on board - screenshot

Now unable to walk, Terry refuses to contact Mike, wanting to conceal her disability. Instead, she finds a job as a music teacher. Six months after the accident, she sees Mike with his former fiancée at a holiday concert featuring Ray Charles, which Terry is attending with her former boyfriend. Mike does not notice her condition because she is seated. Each can only manage a hello.
Christmas Eve arrives and Mike makes a surprise visit, claiming to have come across her address while looking up another name in a telephone directory. Although he steers the conversation to make her explain her actions, Terry merely dodges the subject, never leaving the couch on which she sits.
About to leave her life for good, Mike mentions the painting that he had done of her, which that very afternoon had been given away to a woman who admired it. He is about to point out that the woman was in a wheelchair when he suddenly pauses. Mike walks into Terry's bedroom and sees his painting hanging on the wall. He now knows why she did not keep their appointment. They embrace.

`Love Affair´ romantic dance - screenshot

The film is a remake of the 1939 film Love Affair with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne and of the 1957 film An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, both directed by Leo McCarey. The name of Terry McKay's character remained the same in all three films, while a different one was chosen for each of the three leading men.
Love Affair was Hepburn's first big-screen appearance in nearly 10 years (although she had made several TV movies in this time) and marked her last appearance in cinema. It includes the only time that she ever said the word "fuck" on-screen. Beatty personally lobbied 86-year-old Hepburn to appear in the film. He rented a house for her in Los Angeles and had her referred to a special dermatologist, but she did not give a definitive answer until the day of filming. Luise Rainer was also considered for the role.

`Love Affair´ the rail another place for romantic talk - screenshot

Filming took place in New York City, Los Angeles and on the islands of Tahiti and Moorea in French Polynesia.
The remake was neither a critical nor a commercial success at the box office. It grossed $18 million domestically over a budget of $60 million and holds a 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was nominated for one Razzie Award, Worst Remake or Sequel.

Source: Wikipedia

Mann (1999)

ss SUN VISTA, ex MERIDIAN, ex GALILEO, ex GALILEO GALILEI

What began as `Love Affair´ in 1939 evolved into Mann, sixty years on. Though an over-the-top Bollywood, song-and-dance spectacle, some love it, some hate it, it remains the same `Love Affair ´ story when Dev and Priya meet on board the SUN VISTA en route from Singapore to Mumbai and fall in love. Instead of the Empire State Building, the lovers plan to meet at the Gateway of India. Instead of the grandmother's shawl, Priya receives her ankle bracelets. Other than that, it's the same. But different.

Dev and Priya meet at the Gateway of India - screenshot

Mann (English: Mind) is a 1999 Indian Hindi romantic drama film directed by Indra Kumar. The film stars popular actors Aamir Khan, Manisha Koirala and Anil Kapoor. Rani Mukerji also makes a special appearance in the movie. This is Aamir and Manisha's second movie together after Akele Hum Akele Tum. The film was remade in the same year in Tollywood titled Ravoyi Chandamama starring Akkineni Nagarjuna, Anjala Zhaveri, Keerthi Reddy and Jagapati Babu.

The movie is a remake of old classic Bheegi Raat (1965) starring Ashok Kumar, Meena Kumari and Pradeep Kumar, and is also a frame-by-frame copy of An Affair to Remember.While the plot-twist pre-climax was inspired by the 1976 movie Bayalu Daari , the climax sequence was inspired by the 1983 movie Kaamana Billu.

Dev Karan Singh (Aamir Khan), a casanova and ambitious painter deep in debt, agrees to marry Anita (Deepti Bhatnagar), the daughter of Singhania (Dalip Tahil), a rich tycoon. Priya (Manisha Koirala), a music teacher for children, is engaged to Raj (Anil Kapoor), whom she has agreed to marry because he had helped her when she was in need. Priya and Dev meet on a cruise and fall in love. However, due to them already being engaged to other people, they agree to work everything out and meet in 6 months on Valentine's Day to get married.

During the 6 months, Dev breaks off his engagement with Anita and starts working hard. Driven by his love, he creates and auctions beautiful paintings, and becomes very successful. On the other hand, Priya realizes that leaving Raj will be wrong and sadly writes a letter to Dev, explaining everything. When Raj gets the letter instead, he supports Priya and convinces her to go to Dev. Things take a bad turn when, on her way to meet him, Priya gets hit by a car and gets her legs amputated. Dev, who waited all night for Priya, believes she has rejected him, as he does not know of her accident. Priya forbids Raj from telling Dev, not wanting to become a burden on him. However, both Dev and Priya still love and pine for each other.

Though heartbroken, Dev continues his career and goes on to become a famous painter. One day, Priya attends his art exhibition and wishes to buy a painting of his, a sentimental picture of her speaking to his beloved grandmother, whom Dev had introduced to her during the cruise. Dev had said that he would not sell the painting as it was only for Priya, but upon hearing that the girl who wanted it understands the emotion behind the picture and is disabled, he tells the host of the exhibition to give the painting to her for free.

One day, he visits Priya to give her an anklet that his grandmother, who recently died, had wished for Priya to have when she became Dev's bride. Initially unaware of Priya's condition, Dev realizes the truth when he sees the painting in another room. The two embrace tearfully and he assures Priya that he will love her no matter what. Dev and Priya then get married and live happily ever after.

Source: Wikipedia

I'm sure there are many other films set on ships.  For example, I specifically avoided disaster films so I would be brave enough to step back on the MV Explorer.  But if you think of other non-disaster ship movies, be sure to let me know!