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 "title": "Lifeboat (1944 film)",
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 "excerpt": "Lifeboat (1944) is Alfred Hitchcock's Twentieth Century-Fox survival drama, from a John Steinbeck story, set entirely on a lifeboat with Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Slezak, and Canada Lee; three Oscar nominations, box-office failure, later reappraised.",
 "snippet": "Lifeboat (1944) is Alfred Hitchcock's Twentieth Century-Fox survival drama, from a John Steinbeck story, set entirely on a lifeboat with Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Slezak, and Canada Lee; three Oscar nominations, box-office failure, later reappraised.",
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 "markdown": "# Lifeboat (1944 film)\n\n**Lifeboat** is a 1944 American black-and-white survival drama directed by [Alfred Hitchcock](https://www.edgepedia.org/alfred-hitchcock), in which survivors of a German U-boat attack drift on an open-sea lifeboat with the captain of the submarine that sank their ship. It was produced by Kenneth Macgowan for Twentieth Century-Fox from a story by [John Steinbeck](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-steinbeck), with a screenplay credited to Jo Swerling, and stars [Tallulah Bankhead](https://www.edgepedia.org/tallulah-bankhead), William Bendix, and Walter Slezak.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> The entire film takes place on the boat, making it the first of Hitchcock's deliberately limited-setting films.<sup>[2](https://humanitiesinstitute.org/__static/ad02b59c972df4bfeef2668df8b9a631/lifeboat.pdf?dl=1)</sup>\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | New York opening 11 January 1944; general release 28 January 1944, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> |\n| Physical properties | 96-98 minutes, black and white, 11 reels, 8,711 feet; production dates 3 August to 17 November 1943<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> |\n| Principal cast | Tallulah Bankhead (Constance Porter), William Bendix (Gus Smith), Walter Slezak (Willi, the German), John Hodiak (Kovac), Hume Cronyn (Sparks Garrett), Canada Lee (Joe Spencer)<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> |\n| Academy Awards | Three nominations: Best Director (Hitchcock's second), Best Original Story (Steinbeck), Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Glen MacWilliams)<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> |\n| Setting device | Four lifeboats used in the shoot: one for rehearsals, one for close-ups, another for long shots, and one kept floating on the studio tank<sup>[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615760/behind-the-camera-lifeboat)</sup> |\n| Cameo | Hitchcock appears only in a newspaper advertisement for a fictional diet aid, \"Reduco,\" with before-and-after photographs of himself<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> |\n| Reception | A box-office failure on release, later reappraised; Bankhead named best actress of the year by the New York Film Critics<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThe North Atlantic, during the Second World War. A luxury liner carrying American civilians has been torpedoed by a German U-boat; the U-boat was then destroyed on the surface. Out of the wreckage, a single lifeboat collects its passengers. First in is Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), a hard-drinking, wisecracking war correspondent who has saved her fur coat, her typewriter, and her camera, and who photographs the dying as cheerfully as she interviews them. She is joined by Gus Smith ([William Bendix](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-bendix)), a good-natured machinist with a shattered, bleeding leg; Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), a nurse; Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), a self-made millionaire industrialist; John Kovac ([John Hodiak](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-hodiak)), a rugged, radical seaman; Stanley Garrett ([Hume Cronyn](https://www.edgepedia.org/hume-cronyn)), a nervous radio operator in love with Alice; and Joe Spencer (Canada Lee), a Black steward whose ship went down, whose wife is missing, and who is the boat's steadiest moral presence.\n\nThe first crisis is a baby: a floating bundle of blankets turns out to be an infant, and its mother, the wealthy Mrs. Higley (Heather Angel), is pulled aboard in shock. Connie gives up her fur coat to wrap the child, the first crack in her armor. The baby becomes the boat's fragile center of hope until the mother, staring at the sea, quietly slips over the side and drowns herself. The infant dies soon after and is buried at sea, and the boat's mood hardens.\n\nThen comes the turn that drives the whole film: the survivors haul in a ninth swimmer, and he turns out to be German. He is Kapitän Willi ([Walter Slezak](https://www.edgepedia.org/walter-slezak)), a U-boat officer pulled from the same battle that orphaned everyone else in the boat. Kovac wants him thrown overboard immediately. Connie argues for keeping him. Willi, fluent, courteous, and useful, wins the vote by steering them toward shipping lanes and rationally dividing the water. From then on the film is a floating parliament: the Americans argue over the enemy while the enemy quietly runs the boat.\n\n**The film's most famous sequence is Gus's amputation.** Gangrene sets into Gus's shattered leg, and with no surgeon aboard Willi, who was a doctor in civilian life, performs the operation with a knife boiled in salt water, Alice administering, Connie narrating to her typewriter for morale. The scene is staged as pure ensemble theater, every face in the boat doing a job, and it cements Willi's value even as it deepens the unease: the man they are keeping alive is the man who sank their ship. Gus survives the operation, only to be destroyed by a different wound. Gus has secretly fixed Stanley's makeshift radio, and hears a German-language broadcast listing the names of Allied ships sunk, including his own. He learns his wife has died in the sinking, and that Willi has been hiding a compass, water, and a pistol all along. Willi, realizing Gus knows too much, pushes him over the side to drown.\n\nA hurricane then nearly ends the story. The storm capsizes the boat and scatters its contents; when the survivors regroup in the wreckage, Joe is gone, lost overboard, and Connie's camera, her bracelet, and most of her armor have gone with the storm. What floats back into the frame is Willi, alive and unbothered, and the boat's patience is finally spent.\n\nThe reckoning is the film's boldest scene. The survivors, the democrats who spent ninety minutes debating the rules of war, become a mob: they close on Willi, beat him to death, and push him into the sea, an act the film does not soften. Almost immediately the point is made literal. A German supply ship Willi had been steering toward appears, and a surfaced U-boat crew comes alongside and takes the survivors prisoner at gunpoint. The coda is pure wartime defiance: the Americans, with Joe's memory invoked and Kovac leading, overpower the German boarding party in a sudden rush, seize the U-boat crew, and are last seen under Allied air cover, heading toward rescue with prisoners of their own. The boat never reaches shore on screen, but the argument does.\n\n### Characters\n\nConnie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) is the film's engine: a famous journalist who treats the shipwreck as a story, hoards her brandy and bracelet, photographs the dead, and slowly sheds every possession and pretense until she is the boat's toughest survivor. Bankhead, a stage legend, gives her most durable screen performance.\n\nKapitän Willi (Walter Slezak) is the German, polite, competent, and quietly ruthless, who rations the water, steers the boat, hides the compass, and kills when it suits him. Hitchcock deliberately presented him as smarter than everyone else in the boat.\n\nGus Smith (William Bendix) is the wounded machinist whose leg, radio, and wife make him the boat's heart; his death is the film's cruelest turn. John Kovac (John Hodiak) is the working-class seaman whose fists-first instincts are proved right too late. Joe Spencer ([Canada Lee](https://www.edgepedia.org/canada-lee)) is the steward whose dignity and forgiveness are the boat's conscience, and whose loss breaks it. Around them: Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), the nurse torn between duty and Stanley; Stanley Garrett (Hume Cronyn), the radio operator; Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), the industrialist who learns to see Kovac as a fellow man; and Mrs. Higley (Heather Angel), the grieving mother.\n\n### Interpretations and controversies\n\nThe film's politics caused trouble from the start. Hitchcock later said one thing that drew the fire of American critics was that he had shown a German as being superior to the other characters, at a time when the Allies were not doing well, and Fox executives, worried by the controversies, gave the film a limited release with reduced advertising.<sup>[12](https://cinephiliabeyond.org/alfred-hitchcocks-lifeboat/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[13](https://www.derekwinnert.com/lifeboat-classic-film-review-273/)</sup> The mob execution of Willi remains the film's most debated scene: critics have called it an honest admission that war strips its victims of their decency, and an ugly one.<sup>[14](https://trailersfromhell.com/lifeboat/)</sup> The film is also remembered for its cameo: Hitchcock appears not in person but in a before-and-after advertisement for the fictional reducing drug \"Reduco\" in a newspaper floating past the boat, one of the most famous gags in his career.\n\n## Origin and writing\n\nThe idea was Hitchcock's. Studio records at UCLA confirm the original story concept was his, and a 28 December 1942 Hollywood Reporter item announced his first film for the studio would be based on it.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Twentieth Century-Fox had obtained Hitchcock's services in November 1942 by purchasing from [David O. Selznick](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-o-selznick) the rights to three story properties and the services of several actors and technicians; the deal called for two films, but Hitchcock never directed the second.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> According to [Turner Classic Movies](https://www.edgepedia.org/turner-classic-movies), Zanuck paid Selznick $300,000 for Hitchcock's services, of which the director received less than half.<sup>[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615759/the-big-idea-lifeboat)</sup>\n\n**The writing went through many hands.** Hitchcock first telegraphed [Ernest Hemingway](https://www.edgepedia.org/ernest-hemingway) on 30 December 1942 asking for help with the screenplay; Hemingway declined, citing pressures from his own work.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Hitchcock then turned to John Steinbeck, who felt constricted by the demand that the entire film take place in the lifeboat and turned in a novella based on interviews with seamen who had survived submarine attacks; a scenario developed with Harry Sylvester was published in *Collier's* magazine on 13 November 1943.<sup>[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615759/the-big-idea-lifeboat)</sup> Hitchcock judged Steinbeck's sequences undramatic, calling them \"no scene\" scenes, and brought in MacKinlay Kantor and then Jo Swerling; when he still could not get the script he wanted, he rewrote all the dialogue himself and hired [Ben Hecht](https://www.edgepedia.org/ben-hecht) for revisions.<sup>[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615759/the-big-idea-lifeboat)</sup> Swerling was the only writer credited with the screenplay, with Steinbeck credited for the original story.<sup>[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615759/the-big-idea-lifeboat)</sup> Other writers who worked on drafts, according to studio records, included [Alma Reville](https://www.edgepedia.org/alma-reville), Patricia Collinge, Albert Mannheimer, and Marian Spitzer.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Lifeboat marked the first time Steinbeck wrote a fictional story directly for the screen.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n## Production\n\nFilming ran from 3 August to 17 November 1943, entirely at the studio.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> During pre-production Hitchcock and Macgowan used a miniature lifeboat and model figures to plan camera angles, along with official British lifeboat manuals for authenticity.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Four lifeboats were used in the shoot: one for rehearsals, one for close-ups, another for long shots, and one kept floating on the studio tank.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> In the tank the boat was held by underwater wires, with water chutes on all four sides, each fed by a tank holding 4,000 gallons of water; for some scenes a lifeboat was suspended above rollers to duplicate the boat's movement on waves.<sup>[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615760/behind-the-camera-lifeboat)</sup> Background shots were taken near Miami, the [Florida Keys](https://www.edgepedia.org/florida-keys), and San Miguel Island, California.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n**Shooting in sequence** was Hitchcock's choice, which meant most actors were paid for the entire shoot; when studio head [Darryl F. Zanuck](https://www.edgepedia.org/darryl-f-zanuck) objected, the director insisted it was necessary to shape the unconventional narrative.<sup>[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615760/behind-the-camera-lifeboat)</sup> Zanuck's main concern was length: he had the script timed and warned the finished film would run almost three hours, while Hitchcock predicted about 90 minutes. The film actually ran 97 minutes, and once Zanuck saw the first complete reel he was satisfied.<sup>[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615760/behind-the-camera-lifeboat)</sup>\n\nThe production was hard on its cast. Director of photography Arthur Miller fell ill after two weeks and was replaced by Glen MacWilliams.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> William Bendix replaced Murray Alper as Gus when Alper fell sick days into shooting.<sup>[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615760/behind-the-camera-lifeboat)</sup> The work, which often soaked the actors with water and oil, gave Bankhead two cases of pneumonia, seriously illened Mary Anderson, and cracked two of Hume Cronyn's ribs.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n## Cast and characters\n\nThe survivors are drawn from distinct social positions, and their friction drives the story. Bankhead plays Constance Porter, a renowned journalist and cynic; John Hodiak plays Kovac, an oiler (engine-room crew member who lubricates machinery) from the freighter; William Bendix plays Gus Smith, an injured sailor; Walter Slezak plays Willi, the German; Canada Lee plays Joe Spencer; and the cast also includes Mary Anderson as Alice Mackenzie, Henry Hull as C. J. \"Ritt\" Rittenhouse, Heather Angel as Mrs. Higley, and Hume Cronyn as Stanley \"Sparks\" Garrett.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> A moral dilemma arises when one of the survivors pulled from the water turns out to be the captain of the U-boat that sank their ship.<sup>[5](https://iavmuseum.org/lifeboat/)</sup>\n\nStage actor Canada Lee was the first actor cast.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Bankhead, paid $75,000 according to modern sources, had not made a film since 1932 apart from a cameo in *Stage Door Canteen*.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Lee later said he had tried to revise the part of Joe by cutting dialogue and action he found demeaning, and in a 1945 deposition said the character had turned out to be \"the same old stereotyped Negro\" rather than the variation he had expected.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n**The cameo** posed a logistical problem for a director whose films customarily included a walk-on appearance by himself. With the whole film set on a small boat, Hitchcock instead appears in a newspaper advertisement for \"Reduco,\" a fictional diet aid, showing before-and-after photographs of himself, who had recently lost a great deal of weight.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> In 1950 he told *The Saturday Evening Post* the ad was his favorite \"role\" and that he had \"an awful time thinking it up.\"<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Some modern sources erroneously state he appeared as a dead body floating in the water.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n## Controversy and reception\n\nThe film generated controversy on release, centered on Willi. Political columnist Dorothy Thompson and New York Times critic Bosley Crowther accused Steinbeck and Hitchcock of glorifying the German character while presenting the Allied characters negatively; Thompson gave the film \"ten days to get out of town,\" and Crowther wrote that the Nazis, with some cutting, could turn it into \"a whiplash against the 'decadent democracies.'\"<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Hitchcock defended the portrayal, saying he intended the film to show that the Allies must stop bickering and unite to win the war, and that he always built his villain into \"a redoubtable character\" to make the thesis more admirable in defeating him.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Bankhead likewise defended it, saying the film shows \"you can't trust a Nazi, no matter how nice he seems to be.\"<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n**Steinbeck disowned the film.** Angered by the criticism and by the changes made to his material, he sent a telegram asking that Twentieth Century-Fox remove his name \"from any connection with any showing of this film,\" stating the picture seemed to him dangerous to the American war effort.<sup>[6](https://raintaxi.com/john-steinbeck/)</sup> *Life* magazine noted that he disclaimed responsibility for Hitchcock's and Swerling's treatment of his material.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\nDespite the dispute, the film received substantial critical praise. Some critics called it a powerful piece of propaganda demonstrating that united Allies could defeat Germany; the acting and Hitchcock's direction were lauded, and the absence of background music during the dramatic action was noted and praised.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Bankhead was chosen best actress of the year by the New York Film Critics, and *Film Daily* and the National Board of Review named it one of the ten best films of the year.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup> Commercially, however, it was a box-office failure, and it was the last film Macgowan produced for Fox.<sup>[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)</sup>\n\n## Later standing\n\nThe film's reputation was rebuilt slowly, largely by later critics and the auteurist reappraisal of the 1950s and 1960s.<sup>[7](https://sightlines.media/film/13321/lifeboat-1944)</sup> It has since been treated as a touchstone of the confined-setting survival film: a 2025 study in *Screen* names it, alongside *Seven Waves Away* (1957), as a classic cinematic example of the lifeboat narrative, a genre dramatizing survival with dwindling resources after catastrophe.<sup>[8](https://academic.oup.com/screen/article-abstract/66/1/61/8090419)</sup> The Guardian has called it \"a virtuoso thriller,\" noting that the Nazi intruder becomes a complex figure rather than a caricatured villain.<sup>[9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/apr/29/lifeboat-classic-dvd-french)</sup> It remains on the Library of Congress list of films not yet named to the National Film Registry.<sup>[10](https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/films-not-yet-named-to-the-registry/)</sup>\n\nThe story was remade in other media. On 16 November 1950 NBC broadcast an hour-long version on the *Screen Director's Playhouse* radio show, and in 1993 the Fox television network aired a remake titled *Lifepod*.<sup>[11](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/24046)</sup>\n\n## References\n\n1. [Lifeboat (1944), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/24046-LIFEBOAT?cxt=filmography)\n2. [Lifeboat (1944), Humanities Institute film analysis](https://humanitiesinstitute.org/__static/ad02b59c972df4bfeef2668df8b9a631/lifeboat.pdf?dl=1)\n3. [Behind the Camera - Lifeboat, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615760/behind-the-camera-lifeboat)\n4. [The Big Idea - Lifeboat, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/615759/the-big-idea-lifeboat)\n5. [Lifeboat, IAVM Night at the Movies](https://iavmuseum.org/lifeboat/)\n6. [John Steinbeck, Rain Taxi](https://raintaxi.com/john-steinbeck/)\n7. [Lifeboat (1944): analysis, influences and similar films, Sightlines](https://sightlines.media/film/13321/lifeboat-1944)\n8. [Graig Uhlin, \"Lifeboat films: cinematic responses to resource scarcity,\" Screen 66(1), 2025](https://academic.oup.com/screen/article-abstract/66/1/61/8090419)\n9. [Lifeboat, Alfred Hitchcock, The Guardian (2012)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/apr/29/lifeboat-classic-dvd-french)\n10. [Films Not Yet Named to the Registry, National Film Preservation Board, Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/films-not-yet-named-to-the-registry/)\n11. [Lifeboat, AFI Catalog movie details (broadcast and remake history)](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/24046)\n12. [https://cinephiliabeyond.org/alfred-hitchcocks-lifeboat/](https://cinephiliabeyond.org/alfred-hitchcocks-lifeboat/)\n13. [https://www.derekwinnert.com/lifeboat-classic-film-review-273/](https://www.derekwinnert.com/lifeboat-classic-film-review-273/)\n14. [https://trailersfromhell.com/lifeboat/](https://trailersfromhell.com/lifeboat/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1934 to 1962*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n",
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 "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film.md",
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 "credit": "\"Lifeboat (1944 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.",
 "credit_md": "\"[Lifeboat (1944 film)](https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film](https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).",
 "credit_html": "\"<a href=\"https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film\">Lifeboat (1944 film)</a>\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), <a href=\"https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film\">https://www.edgepedia.org/lifeboat-1944-film</a>. <a href=\"https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\">Edgepedia Community License 1.0</a>.",
 "speakable": "Lifeboat is Alfred Hitchcock's Twentieth Century-Fox survival drama, from a John Steinbeck story, set entirely on a lifeboat with Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Slezak, and Canada Lee; three Oscar nominations, box-office failure, later reappraised."
}