Thanks to all the media coverage, most everyone is aware that this coming April 14-15 will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the TITANIC. Few people know, however, that THERE IS A CIRCUS CONNECTION TO THE SINKING: among the first class passengers was Albert A. Stewart, an official of Strobridge Lithographing who had a financial interest in the Barnum & Bailey Circus. (Some sources say that he was part-owner.) Another show business figure who was on board was first class passenger Henry B. Harris, a Broadway producer & theater owner. Neither Mr. Stewart nor Mr. Harris survived the disaster. (Does anyone have more information about Albert A. Stewart? Was he eulogized in the 1912 B&B Route Book?)
Using this admittedly thin circus connection as justification, here are a few frame enlargements from the feature film A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, which many people consider to be the best TITANIC movie ever made. Released in 1958, it was based on Walter Lord’s 1955 best selling book A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (the first TITANIC book I ever read.) As a child, Lord had traveled on board the TITANIC’s sister ship OLYMPIC. He later interviewed dozens of TITANIC survivors and their families and also did extensive research into the first hand survivor accounts that were published after the sinking. Still in print, his book remains one of the best accounts of the events (both major and minor) that transpired that night. The movie’s producers went to considerable lengths to get as many of the historical details as accurate as possible. (One of the TITANIC’s officers served as a technical advisor during filming.) By sticking to historical facts, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER provides a more realistic look at the TITANIC’s last hours than does the James Cameron film, which is largely concerned with the fictional intrigues of Rose and Jack. |
9 comments:
I recall a third Titanic movie with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck.
I saw all three and the technology indeed improved with each but the story line worsened.
In the Cameron version we are expected to believe that this Preppy looking lad is a rugged Soldier of Fortune captivating a burly young lady who looks as tho she could make a good account of herself in a Mexican Revolution.
Had the roles been reversed it would have made more sense. Maybe less money.
At the end of the day, my most lingering impression of this disaster came from the words of a survivor who eventually settled in Chicago and unknowingly rented rooms close to the newly built Cominski Ball Park.
His first night he was awakened in a state of terror by the crowd responding to a home run, which he later said was identical to the sound made by the remaining passengers who went down with the ship.
During his many trips to Europe to buy art pieces and to scout acts, John Ringling would have been a first class passenger on many of the famous luxury liners that were in service at the time of the TITANIC’s ill-fated maiden voyage. In fact, “Mr. John” probably traveled with and knew personally many of the rich and famous first class passengers who were on board the TITANIC.
Nice story, Buckles, but old man Cominski was considered a tightwad because he wouldn't put in lights for many years. The park opened in 1910 but they couldn't play night games until 1939.
One of two things, I remembered the story incorrectly and he was taking an afternoon nap or the dirty bastard wasn't even aboard the ship!
No doubt the latter.
“Henry B. Harris,” headlined Billboard in its April 27, 1912, issue, “Loses Life When Ill-Fated Titanic Sinks—Other Victims of Diasaster Connected With Amusement Field include Albert A. Stewart, Emil Brandeis and Franz Addelmann. Dorothy Gibson Saved.” Harris, whose photographic portrait accompanied the story, died after carrying his wife, injured in a shipboard fall the day before, to a lifeboat in which she survived. Harris was second generation in the theatre world and owned three playhouses in New York City. Billboard devoted more than half of its first coverage of the Titanic disaster to Harris’s career and then incidentally listed Stewart as “Eastern representative of The Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati and connected with the Ringlings’ circus interests.” Brandeis was identified as manager of his Omaha opera house and Addelmann as leader of the Seattle orchestra. Survivor Gibson was called a “prominent moving picture actress and leading lady of the American Éclair Company. In its next issue a week later, Billboard added the name of William Harbeck of Seattle to the list of dead; he was a moving picture operator who had been traveling extensively making films That issue of Billboard also carried a story and ad for “The Animated Weekly” newsreel coverage of the rescue efforts of bringing surviving passengers into port along with recently filmed icebergs seen by another ship making the Atlantic crossing. Didn't take the moving picture people long to get there first Titanic film out!
Dick Flint
Baltimore
Other films based on or inspired by the TITANIC story include SAVED FROM THE TITANIC (1912) starring Dorothy Gibson, an actress who was actually on board the TITANIC, ATLANTIC (1929), an early talkie based on a British stage play, and HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937) starring Charles Boyer.
My first awareness of the story was the 1953 TITANIC, from 20th Century-Fox, as Buckles recalls, starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck at their best. An energetic Robert Wagner, then 23, shows up to console Barbara's character. For me, the most gripping scene came when "Norman Sturges", ably played by child actor Harper Carter, fought his way back from the lifeboats to remain aboard with Webb, the man he thought was his father. Our story had revealed Norman was Barbara's son by a one-night laison, but the boy never knew it. Realizing it was too late to get the boy on a lifeboat, a stalwart Webb intones, "I feel tall as a mountain." Then, our off-camera Michael Rennie narrates the chilling words, that the TITANIC had "slipped from the British registry."
In 1937, Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur co-starred with Leo Carrillo in HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, an involving romance with Colin Clive as the jealous husband. The great climax depicts a giant ship on her maiden voyage which rams an iceberg--the script borrowing undeniably from the disaster without alluding to the TITANIC. Colin Clive was already famous as the doctor who created the monster in 1931's FRANKENSTEIN. Jean Arthur's last big role was as Marion Starrett, in SHANE (1954), and of course, Leo Carrillo was on 1950s TV as THE CISCO KID's Pancho.
Forgot to note that there was no Barnum & Bailey route book issued in 1912.
Dick Flint
Baltimore
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