1912  A mostly bogus 10-minute newsreel circulated in movie theaters immediately following the disaster. Much of the footage is of the Titanic's sister ship Olympic which, having been completed a year earlier, had much more extensive photographic coverage. Unsophisticated movie audiences of the time were easily taken in by these deceptions.

1912  At least one primitive "animated" reconstruction of the disaster was released by the Sales Company's Animated Weekly to satisfy movie audiences' hunger for any kind of footage related to Titanic. It was common practice in this period to produce animated versions of news events that did not enjoy the benefit of coverage by real movie cameras. A similar animated version of the sinking of the Lusitania produced three years later still
exists.

1912  The motion picture was a primitive entertainment medium in its infancy
and there were a handful of individuals connected with the film industry on
board the Titanic. Most did not survive. One who did was Dorothy Gibson, a
part-time actress who was also a 1st class passenger. Within weeks of her
rescue, her studio, Eclair Film Co., capitalized on the connection by
releasing a ten-minute feature Saved from the Titanic. In the film, Ms.
Gibson wore the same dress in which she had boarded a Titanic lifeboat. She
was actually one of the first in a lifeboat, whereas in the film the
heroine helps rescue several people and is one of the last to enter a boat.
This film no longer exists and there were undoubtedly several other silent
film versions of the Titanic disaster which did not survive. It is
estimated that almost 90 percent of films made during the silent era are lost
forever. An early German film about the disaster was assumed lost but was
recently rediscovered weeks after the release of the Cameron film.

1929  British International Pictures released Atlantic in both silent and
sound versions. The film was a then-rare example of what today has become a
television staple, the international co-production with talking versions in
English, French and German. For many European audiences, it was the first
all-talking film that they had seen and, like most early talkies, the
dialogue sequences are stultifyingly bad with most of the actors
demonstrating a profound discomfort at having to emote into a then
unfamiliar microphone.

The film was based on Ernest Raymond's play, The Berg, and was shot at
Elstree Studios in England. The shots of the lifeboats being lowered down
the side of the ship was filmed on a real liner docked in the River Thames.
The title Atlantic is also the name of the ship as the film's producers
were threatened by a lawsuit from the White Star Line, one of many attempts
by the shipping company to discourage filmmakers from dramatizing the
Titanic disaster.

1933  The Fox production Cavalcade, based on a play by Noel Coward,
featured a scene where a doomed honeymoon couple are discussing their plans
for the future on the deck of an unidentified ship. As they move away from the
railing, we see the name Titanic printed on a life ring. The film won an
Academy Award as Best Picture of 1933.

1937 History is Made at Night stars Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur
and is billed as a "romantic comedy-drama." The climax of the film takes
place on board a new luxury liner that collides with an iceberg in the North
Atlantic after the captain is instructed by the owner to ignore the ice
warnings and race for a record crossing. Other than this collision, the
connection with Titanic is flimsy at best. In the film, the ship's bulkheads
hold, the liner is saved and the passengers, who were earlier lowered
in lifeboats, are able to get back on board.

1938  Hollywood film producer David O. Selznick felt that the Titanic
story had the requisite epic historical quality that he found so attractive in
film projects. Selznick decided that a British director was needed to
handle the story properly and he imported Alfred Hitchcock, then one of
Britain's best-known film directors. Selznick's initial plan called for
purchasing the American liner Leviathan, then waiting on the scrap line in
Hoboken, New Jersey and towing it to California through the Panama Canal.
The studio would then overhaul the top decks to resemble Titanic, shooting
the movie on it, then sinking the ship off Santa Monica while the cameras
were running. There were numerous difficulties involved in preparing the
script and the expense of purchasing and overhauling Leviathan proved to be
prohibitive. Besides, by this time Selznick, was deeply involved in one of
his other projects, Gone With the Wind.

1943    During World War 2, the German film industry, firmly under the control
of the Nazis, made a propaganda version of the disaster called Titanic. It
was one of the most expensive German films made until that time. By then,
the war had turned against the Third Reich and average Germans were
experiencing many deprivations in food, gasoline and other resources. Yet,
the film was a pet project of Hitler confidant and powerful minister of
propaganda Joseph Goebbels. The fact that the real disaster highlighted
British incompetence and corruption appealed to Goebbels and there was
considerable opportunity for dramatic license.

Titanic was a flop when released. Regular bombing raids on German cities by
the combined American and British Air Forces did not whet the public's
appetite for a disaster. The Nazi censors yanked it from circulation when
they discovered that German audiences were still far too sympathetic
towards the British passengers despite the obvious propaganda quotient. The
propaganda value also backfired as the Titanic in the film could easily
have been interpreted as an allegory of the Third Reich itself. Titanic
was, however, quite successful when shown in occupied France.
Herbert Selpin was the director of Titanic and he had made several earlier
distinguished films. Selpin resisted many efforts by the Nazis to
exaggerate British cowardice even more than appeared in the final film. He
openly displayed his contempt for his Nazi masters and was murdered in his
prison cell on the orders of Goebbels, having never seen his last film.
Perhaps he was the final victim of the Titanic disaster.

The film was confiscated by the occupying American army in 1945 and
attempts in 1950 to revive a theatrical release of the film in Germany
failed as the film was still deemed by authorities to be too anti-British.
In another stroke of irony, Titanic was shown in East Germany during the
1950's as the films anti-British bias suited Communist ideology better than
it had the Nazis.

In a final touch of irony, portions of this film's special effect model
shots were included in some early American television programs and in the
British film A Night to Remember.

1953  20th Century Fox finally got around to realizing Selznick's plan of
15 years earlier and gave the Titanic story the full Hollywood treatment
that it so richly deserved and which was long overdue. Titanic was a lavish
docudrama that mixed fictional and real characters and opened in Hollywood
on April 14, exactly 41 years after the disaster. The film starred Barbara
Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, and Robert Wagner.

Walter Lord, author of A Night to Remember, reported a comment once made
to him that Clifton Webb's portrayal of snobbish fashion plate Richard Sturges
was so vivid that, if he wasn't on the ship, he should have been.
The director of Titanic, Jean Negulesco, used a dramatic device that
characterized all the superior Titanic films by emphasizing the happiness
and gaiety of life on board the ship prior to the collision and contrasting
this with the chaos and despair that occurred afterwards. The sequence where
Sturges and his son meet their deaths while singing "Nearer My God to Thee"
has become a permanent part of Titanic mythology. This single scene may
have eventually resulted in creating more Titanic aficionados than any other
film in this chronology. Like most American films of the time, Titanic was entirely
a studio production made on Hollywood soundstages. The film's witty and literate
screenplay won an Oscar for the screenwriters. The model of the Titanic
used in this film has been completely restored and is on display at the
Marine Museum in Fall River, Massachusetts.

1956 In a time referred to today as the "Golden Age," television
networks prided themselves on presenting live television dramas of high
quality and the Kraft Television Theater was one of the best. Walter Lord
had published his seminal work on the Titanic, A Night to Remember, a year
earlier and Kraft presented a dramatization of the book, broadcast live
from the NBC Studio in New York.

This "spectacular," as such shows were then known, featured 107 actors, 31
sets; some designed to tilt with the increasing listing of the ship, dump
tanks filled with water and narration by Hollywood star Claude Rains. The
production was probably the most ambitious live show ever presented on TV
and was directed by George Roy Hill who became a top movie director in the
70's with hit films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The
Sting.

1958  The enormous popularity of Lord's book and its television
dramatization convinced Irish film producer William MacQuitty that the
story deserved an even more lavish big screen treatment. As a boy,
MacQuitty had witnessed the launch of Titanic in Belfast in 1911.
The J. Arthur Rank production A Night to Remember is, without question, the
best and most authentic of all Titanic movies. Expertly directed by Roy
Baker, the film dramatically lays out the facts of the event, uncluttered
with the fictional "star" turns and the maudlin sentimentality that had
characterized the 1953 film, and to a lesser extent, the 1997 Cameron film.
The interiors were filmed mostly at Pinewood Studios near London and the
authenticity of this production included 30 interior sets constructed from
actual blueprints of Titanic and actors who looked like the people that
they portrayed. Exterior scenes were filmed on a giant outdoor set in
mid-winter and on an old Harland & Wolff liner, Asturias, which was being
scrapped at the time.

The obsession for authentic detail stands up to repeated viewings. Only
minor alterations were made to the historical record for dramatic purposes
particularly the use of "composite characters," fictional characters who
embodied the characteristics of several real people representing the three
classes on board the ship.

The gut-wrenching sequences portraying the alleged stupidity of the
Californian's officers while Titanic is sinking have probably done more to
stir up sympathy for the much-maligned Captain Stanley Lord than any other
single factor.

The most serious flaws in the film are unconvincing special effect
sequences involving the Titanic's collision with the iceberg, especially
when compared with the Fox film made five years previously. British movie
technology of the time simply couldn't compete with Hollywood in that
regard.

Despite unanimously positive reviews and a slew of various film award
nominations, A Night to Remember did mediocre business at the box office
when it was released. Perhaps the movie's strengths as a docudrama and Baker
and MacQuitty's refusal to make token dramatic concessions weakened its
box office appeal.

1964  The life of colorful real-life Titanic survivor Mrs. J.J. Brown was
turned into a Broadway musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown featuring music
by Meredith Wilson. The film adaptation starred the ebullient Debbie
Reynolds in the title role. Like most musical biographies, the film takes
considerable liberties with the protagonist's real life. The real Maggie
Brown was not nearly as attractive as the comely Ms. Reynolds, but the
outline of the plot was true to life.

Maggie was a backwoods orphan who became one of the wealthiest women in
Denver, Colorado when her husband struck it rich by discovering a silver
mine. Considered a rube and snubbed by Denver socialites, Maggie frequently
traveled to Europe and became a favorite of the titled international set.

While returning to America on Titanic, Maggie ended up in lifeboat #6 where
she took charge when the assigned crew member proved unequal to the task.
This sequence was filmed but dropped from the release version of the
Cameron film. Brown's exploits on Titanic were well publicized and she
finally found social acceptance from those who had snubbed her. Hollywood
could never ignore such an interesting and colorful personality and
practically every Titanic movie features this character in a supporting
role. Maggie was one of the key witnesses at the American inquiry and a
well-known photograph reproduced in many books about Titanic shows her
presenting a medal to Captain Rostron of the rescue ship Carpathia a few
weeks after the disaster.

1979  The ABC Sunday Night Movie presented S.O.S. Titanic, a lavish
made-for-TV movie starring David Janssen as John Jacob Astor, David Warner
(who played the evil and sadistic gun-toting Lovejoy in the Cameron film)
as Lawrence Beesley, a second class passenger, Ian Holm as J. Bruce Ismay
and Cloris Leachman portrayed Molly Brown.

Filmed off the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea; aboard the Queen Mary in Long
Beach, California; in iceberg-infested waters near Greenland and in a
gigantic "floodable" studio near London, this is an interesting version of
the disaster written by Emmy-winner James Costigan. One of the most
compelling sequences at the start of the film shows Titanic survivors,
still in shock, boarding Carpathia.

The script makes much of the class differences among the various passengers
with Beesley extolling a Marxist analysis of the disaster after being
rescued. The three hour film was later released on video in a shortened
version.

1980  The movie Raise the Titanic was based on a mediocre novel by
Clive Cussler that had enjoyed bestseller status a few years earlier. The action
takes place in contemporary times, with the U.S. Navy spending hundreds of
millions of dollars to raise the liner because, in its hold, is a rare
mineral called Byzanium necessary for a new nuclear defense system.
The film itself was a disaster and is one of the great money-losers in
movie history. It cost $40 million and the special effects alone cost more
than it did to build the Titanic itself in 1911. Raise the Titanic was
universally panned by critics and died a quick death at the box office
bringing in revenues of less than 10 percent of its cost. British movie mogul,
Lord Lew Grade, who lost his job over the debacle, is credited with the
famous line "Raise the Titanic? My God, it would be cheaper to lower the
Atlantic!"

Despite terrible acting, abominable dialogue, sloppy research and a
ridiculous premise, portions of the film are quite interesting and make it
worth renting for Titanic buffs. The underwater sequences where they try to
locate the wreck are very similar to what transpired when the Ballard
expedition found Titanic five years later.

The special effects sequences of the Titanic being raised are also quite
impressive and the film features a stirring musical score by John Barry.
The model used for this sequence was fifty-five feet long and cost $5
million. These scenes were filmed in a specially constructed ten million
gallon tank on the island of Malta built at a further cost of $3 million.
Also impressive was set designer John DeCuir's visualization of the
interior of Titanic after it was raised. From a special effects standpoint,
the sequences of Titanic being towed into New York are technically
disappointing and not very convincing.

Unfortunately, the sequences in the book showing how the Byzanium came to
be aboard Titanic in 1912 were not filmed. The film was rushed into release
because the producers were concerned that the Grimm expedition, then
searching for Titanic, would locate the actual wreck and, if the ship was
found in pieces, the movie would have no credibility. They need not have
worried.

1981  Time Bandits, a fantasy adventure produced by ex-Beatle George
Harrison and written and directed by Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam
concerned an English schoolboy and a collection of dwarves who travel in
time meeting various historical figures. They end up on the deck of Titanic
just before the collision, providing an opportunity for strained humour,
"I'll have champagne with plenty of ice."

1989  In a brief sequence in Ghostbusters II, a ghostly apparition of
Titanic arrives in New York and long-dead passengers are seen disembarking.

1996  Danielle Steeles' drugstore potboiler No Greater Love was filmed
as a TV movie in Montreal. The plucky heroine, Edwina, is a passenger on
Titanic but loses her parents and fiance in the disaster. Edwina undergoes a
lifetime of melodrama, having to raise her five siblings by herself.

1996  Titanic was a two-part TV movie filmed in Vancouver and starring
George C. Scott as Captain Smith, Marilu Henner as Molly Brown and Eva
Marie Saint and Peter Gallagher as fictional characters. The CBS movie was
clearly designed to exploit the hype swirling about the then uncompleted
Cameron film. Most viewers were appalled by a scene with Tim Curry as an
oversexed White Star steward raping a female third class passenger in the
shower. The computer-generated special effects were pathetic. The movie
was re-broadcast in May of 1998.