Trivia

The creaking noises during the sinking were created by the set as it was winched up to create the tilting deck effect. The microphones picked up the noises. Roy Ward Baker thought they added a huge amount of realism, as they sounded like the groaning noises a sinking ship would make, so he kept them in.

Lawrence Beesley, a survivor from second class, was on the set during filming. At one point, when the sinking was being filmed, he attempted to enter the scene and, perhaps symbolically, "go down" with the ship. Director Roy Ward Baker didn't allow this, as it would have been a union violation, which could have closed down production.

Each page of the script was marked with the angle of the ship's deck at that point in its descent, to maintain accuracy and continuity when scenes were shot out of order.

When Helen Melville Smith, Captain Smith's daughter, came to the set and met Laurence Naismith, she was overcome with emotion because of his striking resemblance to her father.

The lookout Frederick Fleet, up in the crow's nest during the collision, was portrayed by Bernard Fox, who was later in James Cameron's Titanic (1997), in which he portrayed Colonel Archibald Gracie.

The footage used during the launching sequence is the 1938 launching of the Cunard Liner Queen Elizabeth. No footage of the Titanic's launching actually existed. Despite the 25-year difference in the two launchings, the substituted footage worked perfectly in conveying what a ship launch in the period was like.

The Shaw Savill Shipping Line agreed to allow exterior scenes to be taken on one of their ships, MV Dominion Monarch but shortly before filming was to begin, permission was withdrawn. The matter had come to the attention of the chairman of the line, Basil Sanderson. He was the son of Harold Sanderson, who had been the chairman of the White Star Line from 1913 to 1927 and was himself married to the daughter of J. Bruce Ismay. He did not want the matter reopened. Neither did the rest of the shipping companies, all of which refused co-operation. This led to the decision by Sir Frederick Rebbeck, chairman of Harland and Wolff, to also refuse any co-operation. The company issued a statement deploring the fact that a film company was seeking to make money out of the tragedy: "Too many people from the shipyard lost their lives that night and too many others as well. Why should we help to make an entertainment out of it." Producer William MacQuitty managed to get permission from the firm of Ship Breaking Industries to film on an old steamship, RMS Asturias, which was waiting to be broken up. It was repainted in the White Star Line colors by art students.

It was only after seeing this film that James Cameron decided to make Titanic (1997). In fact, Cameron was so taken by this film that he lifted ideas, plotlines, conversations and characters, including a minor character similar to the one played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the hero of the film, went on to serve in World Wars I and II, rescuing many men at Dunkirk. He was accused of murdering POWs after the sinking of the German U-boat UB-110, admitting in his autobiography that he "refused to accept the hands-up business." He died from chronic heart disease on December 8, 1952 at age 78. Lightoller's son advised Kenneth More on how to play his father and his widow visited the set to observe the filming.

The Titanic's Fourth Officer, Joseph Boxhall (portrayed by Jack Watling), served as technical advisor to the film.

"A Night to Remember" premiered at the Odeon, Leicester Square, in London on July 3, 1958. Among the survivors attending were Fourth Officer J.G. Boxhall, the widow of Second Officer Lightoller, and C.V. Groves who had been Third Officer of the SS Californian.

Four clips from the Nazi propaganda film Titanic (1943) were used in this film--two of the ship sailing in calm waters during the day, and two of a flooding walkway in the engine room.

When Wallace Hartley tells the Titanic band to play "Number 24", they are playing Frédéric Chopin's Funeral March.

Wireless Operator John Phillips mentions several time throughout the sinking that he has been in contact with a ship called the Olympic. The Olympic was the Titanic's older sister ship, entering service in 1911, and an almost identical copy of the Titanic. She was the first in a trio of sister ships built by the White Star Line to counter their rival company the Cunard Line and their new luxury ships the Lusitania and the Mauretania. Unlike the Titanic and the Britannic (the third sister ship that was sunk by a mine during the First World War), the Olympic went on to have an illustrious career as a passenger liner and served during the First World War as a troop transport gaining the nickname "Old Reliable". After nearly twenty five years of service, the Olympic was taken out of service in 1935 and scrapped in the late thirties. Unfortunately, on the night of the sinking, the Olympic was five hundred miles away from the Titanic and unable to arrive to her assistance in time.

Based on Walter Lord's book of the same name. Lord had conducted intensive research behind the ship and the events leading up to the sinking. However, details of the events during the sinking came almost exclusively from interviews he conducted with 64 survivors. Most of these survivors were third-class passengers whose stories, until the publication of Lord's book, had been largely ignored.

Paul Louden-Brown, from the Titanic Historical Society, worked as a consultant on James Cameron's Titanic (1997). He says that the musician scene in this film was so beautifully crafted that Cameron decided to repeat this in his film. "He told me, 'I stole that entirely and put that into my film, because I loved it, it was such a strong part of the story.'"

The archive footage of the RMS Titanic setting sail is actually of the RMS Lusitania.

Closing credits epilogue: "But this is not the end of the story--For their sacrifice was not in vain. Today, there are lifeboats for all. Unceasing radio vigil and, in the North Atlantic, the International Ice Patrol guards the sea lanes making them safe for the peoples of the world."

Contrary to some reports, Sean Connery did not appear in this film. The character he supposedly played was in fact played by Larry Taylor.

Stanley Lord never saw the film but did not like the way he was portrayed based on reviews in newspapers.

The Austurius was the ship used for most exterior shots. Another ship used during the filming was the "Largs Bay".

This was the last feature-length Titanic film to be made in black and white.

Charles Lightoller served as an officer of the Royal Navy during World War I, and while commanding the HMS Garry, rammed and sank the German U-Boat UB-110, for which he was decorated for gallantry. The captain of UB-110 later claimed that some of the German survivors were massacred by Lightoller's crew, an allegation never officially substantiated. In his memoir "Titanic and Other Ships" (1935), Lightoller wrote of the incident that he "refused to accept the hands-up business." This would have constituted a war crime under the Hague Convention of 1907 and the First Geneva Convention. Geoffrey Brooks, who translated Kapitänleutnant Fürbringer's memoirs into English, later commented, "Regarding the alleged atrocity committed against survivors of UB-110, the normal procedure would have been to report the matter to the German military legal authorities at the earliest opportunity. Depositions would then have been taken from all available witnesses. One can imagine how far it would have proceeded subsequently. It is not, and never has been, the practice of the British military authorities to try British service personnel for alleged war crimes committed against enemy belligerents in wartime no matter how strong the evidence."

The famous British science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke mentions this film in two novels of his which feature a raised Titanic; "Imperial Earth" (1976) and "The Ghost from the Grand Banks" (1990). In the former, the film is screened during a tour on board the raised Titanic which is docked in New York City, and in the latter, the film is edited to remove all smoking scenes before the film is aired on worldwide satellite television for the centennial of the Titanic's sinking in 2012. Clarke and the producer of this film, William MacQuitty, were lifelong friends and Clarke credits him in the Acknowledgements of his two books as having provided resources about the Titanic to him such as the dinner menus on the ship which are shown in both books. Clarke dedicated "The Ghost from the Grand Banks" to him. The dedication states: "For my old friend Bill MacQuitty - who, as a boy, witnessed the launch of RMS Titanic, and, forty-five years later, sank her for the second time."

This is the last Titanic film to be made exclusively in the United Kingdom, the birthplace of the real RMS Titanic. S.O.S. Titanic (1979) did film in the United Kingdom (at Shepperton Studios, The Waldorf Hotel), but also filmed in the United States aboard the (former British) RMS Queen Mary. Titanic (2012) written by British screenwriter Julian Fellowes, features a British cast, but was filmed in Hungary.

This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #7.

Prior to the tragedy of the Titanic, the safety record of British passenger service was exemplary. The British inquiry at the time established that in the previous ten years, only 73 lives had been lost of the 3.5 million passengers that British ships had carried in that interval.

Laurence Naismith, John Cairney and Honor Blackman would all go on to co-star in Ray Harryhausen's epic, Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

Uncredited theatrical movie debut of Dudley Sutton (Lookout).

This film shares a few similarities to James Cameron's version of Titanic (1997). Examples include a third-class party, Thomas Andrews preparing to go down with Titanic in the first-class smoking room and a child being separated from its parents.

The first of three films and two television series that Roy Ward Baker would direct Geoffrey Bayldon in.

Frank Lawton, who plays J. Bruce Ismay, also had a role in Cavalcade (1933), which also featured the Titanic.

Two of the uncredited First-Class Passengers were husband and wife, Jack Armstrong and Alecia St Leger.

Arthur Alcott was a production accountant on this film. His son, John Alcott, who would later win an academy award as DP on Barry Lyndon (1975), was a focus puller.

Lifeboats at the time were only intended to ferry passengers back and forth from a stricken ship to a nearby rescuing one. Thus the Titanic had a total of only 20 lifeboats, including 4 collapsible, far fewer than the maximum that it was designed to carry. Still, neither officers Lightholler and Murdoch knew that the lifeboats could hold 68, and so under-filled them from over-caution. It is estimated that as many as 500 more passengers would have been saved, had the lifeboats been filled to capacity.

A young boy on Titanic gets separated from his mother during the sinking, and a kindly steward decides to 'help' him find his mother, and the pair drown in the Atlantic. A little while later, a female passenger mentions her baby in a cracking voice implying she was the boy's mother.