370: Titanic with Mark B. Perry

00:03:39:07 – 00:03:49:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you for coming on to talk about Titanic, Mark. And before we get started as a screenwriter, can you share how you got interested in the Titanic?

00:03:49:23 – 00:04:15:29
Mark B. Perry
Yes. I am a self-professed ship geek. I am, it’s one of my most passionate hobbies. I’m not an expert, but I know, a little bit about a lot of things as a result of, a lot of research that I’ve done over the years. I love 20th century ocean liners. I love ocean travel. I love the Normandie, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the New Amsterdam of 1938.

00:04:16:01 – 00:04:41:08
Mark B. Perry
To the QM, to the contemporary ocean liner. I’m a big collector of memorabilia, furniture, artwork, China, silverware, that sort of thing. And I’m also on. I’m a founding board member of the SS United States Conservancy, which is a nonprofit that is working to preserve the legacy of my favorite ship, which is the 1950s era ocean liner, the SS United States.

00:04:41:11 – 00:05:04:24
Mark B. Perry
So as I say, I am a ship geek as a hobby, but I am a screenwriter, professional Lee. And to that end, in 1988, I got, before I got my first professional break on the Wonder Years in 1989, I wrote a screenplay with a writing partner, a wonderful writer named Dudley Sanders, and we wrote it.

00:05:04:24 – 00:05:25:29
Mark B. Perry
We sent it to the agent that was representing me at the time. She called on a Sunday and left a message on my answering machine. This was 1988, and she said she had just finished reading it. She was so excited that Monday morning they were going to send this script. Every studio and every producer in town, there was going to be a bidding war.

00:05:26:02 – 00:05:47:28
Mark B. Perry
This was going to be a huge success. Congratulations, kiddo. Monday came. They did. They sent the script everywhere. All over town. Everybody passed and everybody said the same thing. A version of the same thing. This is a great script, but it would be the most expensive movie ever made. And nobody cares about the Titanic.

00:05:48:00 – 00:05:50:00
Dan LeFebvre
Oh.

00:05:50:03 – 00:06:12:25
Mark B. Perry
So. Yeah. True story, true story. So that came about because when I was a kid, I saw a movie called The Last Voyage with Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone. It was from the early 60s, and in it they actually partially sank an old ocean liner, the Ille de France, which was one of the most famous liners of its era.

00:06:12:27 – 00:06:44:11
Mark B. Perry
And when I saw that as a kid, I was fascinated by the ship. And so I really got interested in the ships. And then, of course, I read Walter Lord’s book, A Night to Remember all about the Titanic disaster. And it wasn’t until the mid 80s when the National Geographic documentary came out about Bob Ballard finding the wreck and the story of the Titanic, that I got re-energized about the story, and I reread A Night to Remember, and there was one passage in there.

00:06:44:13 – 00:07:06:07
Mark B. Perry
It was, I think, about two sentences, and it was. A surviving crew member recounted the story of just after the ship struck the berg, that a passenger came up to him out of nowhere, holding ice in his hands, where he had scooped it up and shaved into the deck, threw it at the officer’s feet, and said as if it had been an ongoing debate.

00:07:06:08 – 00:07:43:17
Mark B. Perry
Will you believe me now? And that’s all Lord wrote was that little exchange. And I thought, that’s really interesting. So the script that we wrote was not a Jack and Rose story. It was, it was a time travel action adventure film set aboard the Titanic. But because we didn’t want to come across as, you know, exploiting a real life tragedy where real people died, we decided that we were going to work really hard to make sure that our version of events was is accurate, as it could possibly be, out of respect for the people who died and the events of that night.

00:07:43:19 – 00:08:03:02
Mark B. Perry
So we scripted the ship breaking in half, which had never been confirmed before or portrayed in any of the films, because it wasn’t really known until Ballard find that found the wreck in two pieces, and you may see the Ravel model behind me. I built that while we were writing the script, and I’m not a model maker.

00:08:03:02 – 00:08:09:29
Mark B. Perry
That funnels are the wrong part, but the the point was we wanted a three dimensional reference as we were plotting out.

00:08:10:01 – 00:08:10:19
Dan LeFebvre
The.

00:08:10:19 – 00:08:37:28
Mark B. Perry
The, the action of our script while the ship was sinking and again, trying to stick as close as we could to the established history. And since we did that, you know, research back then, there was no internet. So we had, you know, we went to the bookstores, we bought everything we could get our hands on. And, so that’s why I, my, my interest has endured in the story of the Titanic.

00:08:38:01 – 00:08:58:04
Mark B. Perry
But when it comes to my love of ships, I’m actually more drawn to the ones that were, that that did what they were designed to do and not the ones that failed. But, so anyway, that’s that’s how I came to know I can hold my own in a cocktail party. If the subject of the Titanic comes out.

00:08:58:06 – 00:09:19:14
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the movie that we are talking about today is 1953. So even before, the timeline of when you were writing your version of the story as well, and here on the podcast, it being based on a true story. Most of the movies that we talk about start with some sort of variation of based on true Story, but the movie that we’re talking about today goes a little bit further than that.

00:09:19:14 – 00:09:43:19
Dan LeFebvre
I think I’m going to quote with the opening text is from the movie. It says all navigational details of this film. Conversations, incidents and general data are taken verbatim from the published reports of inquiries held in 1912 by the Congress of the United States and the British Board of Trade, and while it does only mention the navigation details, it also kind of generically says the general data is.

00:09:43:19 – 00:10:01:02
Dan LeFebvre
So the impression that I get, as I read that when I started watching this movie was that this is trying to be more than based on true story. It’s trying to be as accurate as possible. So as we start our discussion today about 1953, is Titanic. If you were to give it a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would again.

00:10:01:05 – 00:10:23:21
Mark B. Perry
First of all, I want to preface everything by quoting Walter Lord, who I think is the definitive. He said in his first book, A Night to Remember. It is a rash man indeed who would set himself as final arbiter on all that happened, the incredible night the Titanic went down. So, to be clear, I’m not a rash man, but, historical accuracy of Titanic 53.

00:10:23:23 – 00:10:54:08
Mark B. Perry
This movie was made before, Walter Lord’s book came out. This book was 53. His book came out in 55. And in Lord’s book is considered by many to be the Titanic Bible. And because he was able to interview dozens and dozens of people who survived the sinking who were still alive in the 1950s, though even he admits that it can’t be 100% accurate because of human memory.

00:10:54:15 – 00:11:17:28
Mark B. Perry
Memory eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible, and stories would change. People swore they saw Captain Smith saving a baby, you know, in the water, before he went down. Others swore they saw him on the on the bridge. So this is what I think about this film. I think that they really tried, I think with what they knew at the time, they really tried.

00:11:17:28 – 00:11:41:11
Mark B. Perry
And it wasn’t until five years later when when A Night to Remember the movie came out that was based on, Walter Lord’s book. That was that was much more of a documentary like dramatization of the sinking. But, in this one there, as for Titanic 53, I love this movie because it is. It’s a soap opera.

00:11:41:11 – 00:12:13:16
Mark B. Perry
First it and and it’s a good soap opera. The script won an Academy Award, and, it’s also a soap opera, a disaster movie hybrid. And I think more than based on a true story, we could say it’s inspired by a true event. The focus of this movie is the Sturges family. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb as Richard and Julia Sturges and it’s it’s how the disaster plays a role in their relationships and not the other way around.

00:12:13:16 – 00:12:39:16
Mark B. Perry
And on that level, I think the movie works really well. So the navigational details may indeed be correct and taken verbatim from the reports that were available. But remember that those hearings were held very quickly after, the the survivors arrived in New York and they didn’t ask all of the questions of the people who were available, and not everybody was testifying.

00:12:39:18 – 00:13:03:00
Mark B. Perry
So they didn’t know as much. In 1953 or 52, when the writers were working on the script. And they didn’t have a lot of photographs of interiors of the ship and things to go. And they did not have the absolute wealth of information that we have now. So in fairness to the film makers, I think that they were making do with what they had in terms of reference.

00:13:03:00 – 00:13:24:21
Mark B. Perry
So as for the general data, that may refer to the timeline of things like, you know, which boat left when, how many people. But this film is not really beholden to historical accuracy, despite its lofty claims at the top. And I think it’s trying to set the stage to say we want to be respectful to the true story.

00:13:24:23 – 00:13:51:07
Mark B. Perry
But and, you know, not unlike what Dudley and I were doing, I do think that they were trying to be respectful and, they just didn’t didn’t have the material research available. There’s also there’s a famous story about the night they were filming in the in the tank on the backlot when they were lowering the lifeboats. And Barbara Stanwyck was in one of the lifeboats, and she started sobbing uncontrollably, not as the character, but as the actress herself.

00:13:51:09 – 00:14:19:01
Mark B. Perry
And it was because she was suddenly overcome with the reality of what they were reenacting in this movie. And from what I’ve heard, that sentiment also, pervaded some of the crew as well. But in the end, they had to answer to Darryl Zanuck, you know, and the accountants at 20th Century Fox. So, you know, they couldn’t throw as much money, certainly as Cameron did to to make his film.

00:14:19:04 – 00:14:51:15
Mark B. Perry
But I think they get a fair amount. Right. The film is often disparaged in Titanic circles, but they don’t always take it in context of the fact they didn’t know as much as we we do now. And I think little things like there’s a there’s a brief moment once, Clifton Webb as, Richard Sturges gets aboard the ship and he’s this pompous, snob, wealthy guy, but he pauses to recognize a stewardess and he calls her by name, and he mentions the ship that he recognizes her from, and that was apparently a very real thing among the wealthy people of the time.

00:14:51:18 – 00:15:23:10
Mark B. Perry
That they they would make a point of knowing the people who waited on them on these ships. But in this movie, there’s no mention of Thomas Andrews being aboard. And of course, he was aboard. He was the ship’s designer. And he played an incredibly important role in, the events of that night. Also, there’s a version of that with Bruce Ismay in this, who was the White Star Line representative, who by all accounts, was pressuring Captain Smith to, you know, go faster, go faster, break the speed record.

00:15:23:12 – 00:15:49:15
Mark B. Perry
He died in the 1930s, so I’m not sure why they felt that they had to fictionalize him. There’s a there’s someone named, Mr. Sanderson who’s a fictional character who’s representing the White Star line at the beginning of the movie, but he disembarks in Cherbourg. Does not even take the maiden voyage. And I think that must have been the 20th Century Fox lawyers being worried about the estates coming after them because Ismay died in the 30s.

00:15:49:17 – 00:16:13:09
Mark B. Perry
Also, the maiden voyage was not sold out as it is depicted in this film, and it’s used as a device for, Clifton Webb to, you know, sort of buy a ticket from a third class passenger. He could have just bought a first class ticket. And, but in the movie, they’re going for drama. And so, you know, he the ship is sold out, but he’s got to get on that ship.

00:16:13:12 – 00:16:37:27
Mark B. Perry
And, you know, he buys a ticket from Mr. Oscar Doom, who’s who’s with his family. And that way, you know, like I said, there’s plenty of room in first class, but the film certainly goes for the more dramatic setup. And that gives the his character a chance to prove that he isn’t entirely a heartless snob when he makes an effort after this ship hits the bird to return to third class, find Mrs. Goodman or children and get them into a lifeboat.

00:16:37:29 – 00:17:01:06
Mark B. Perry
Marnie the character who’s played by Thelma Ritter, is clearly Molly Brown, but again, the lawyers at 20th must have been nervous. Even though Molly Brown died in the 30s and The Unsinkable Molly Brown was still a good seven years away, it wasn’t until the 60s that the play and then the movie was made. So one bit of trivia that I want to share, and I am I’m going to answer your question, by the way.

00:17:01:06 – 00:17:30:04
Mark B. Perry
I’m going to give you my, my rating. But one bit of trivia that I find fascinating is, is is more of a, it’s more of a continuity error, an error than, an historical inaccuracy. And that is the they depict the ship striking the iceberg on its starboard or right side, which is accurate. But then they cut to an underwater shot and they show the hull of the ship being ripped open by the iceberg, and it’s on the port or left side of the ship.

00:17:30:09 – 00:17:52:06
Mark B. Perry
Then they cut to the inside cargo hold where some men are fleeing as the terror is is in real time, going down the side and the water spilling in. And again, based on the the way the ship was moving, that’s also on the on the port or left side of the ship. Then it cuts back to the ship and the ship is again, you know, with the iceberg to starboard.

00:17:52:08 – 00:18:12:02
Mark B. Perry
And all they had to do was flip the negative on those two shots and my theory on that is, I think that the director, John Lesko, realized that by flipping the shots and keeping it accurate, suddenly the ship would be moving right to left when it hit the bird. But it would then be moving right, left to right when it hit the hull.

00:18:12:02 – 00:18:34:20
Mark B. Perry
I know this is a little confusing, but I think he left it that way because that way all of the action is consistent from right to left, both above water and underwater. And only a nerd like me would probably notice something like and then go into a dissertation about it. But anyway, the film depicts an alarm going off, when they’re loading the lifeboats.

00:18:34:20 – 00:18:59:15
Mark B. Perry
That did not happen. They did fire signal, flares. But there was no white siren wailing throughout the loading. The interiors of the ship, they’re more evocative. They’re certainly not reproductions. And again, there were only a handful of photographs available at the time. But I think on the scale of lavishness of of what they’re depicting, I think, you know, they got they get the general ambiance and the orchestra music in this.

00:18:59:15 – 00:19:23:26
Mark B. Perry
The ship’s orchestra is much more 1920s than it is 19 tens. And the dancing that people are doing is, is more 1920s. The Titanic Orchestra was all piano and string instruments. So in terms of historical accuracy, to answer your question, and for the very long winded answer, I give it whatever the razor thin line is between a B and a C minus.

00:19:23:29 – 00:19:48:29
Dan LeFebvre
I really like that you went that you were talking about the historical context of it, because that’s something that, you know, I hear a lot of, a lot of different stories that in history, it’s hard for us now to kind of put yourself, especially going back into ancient times or things like that. But even with this one in particular, too, because we you mentioning James Cameron’s movie 1997 is kind of that’s what everybody thinks of with Titanic.

00:19:49:01 – 00:20:18:01
Dan LeFebvre
And so even, you know, watching this, it’s really hard not to compare this to that movie and, and just assume that, okay, James Cameron’s movie showed it this way. So let’s compare it to that, even though, as you point out, like they didn’t even know a lot of that stuff. And that leads right into my next question, because in Cameron’s 97 movie, we see these lavish sets and obviously a lot more money put into that than the 1953 Titanic movie.

00:20:18:03 – 00:20:26:29
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think the 53 movie did a good job transporting us back to being aboard the Titanic? From a visual perspective.

00:20:27:01 – 00:20:51:26
Mark B. Perry
Does the film visually transport us back to the ship? Does it do a good job? And I’m going to give them props, and that’s an intended pun for the 28ft model. And the exterior shots on deck, all of which were sets, and they’re pretty convincing for the time, especially when you consider this was before CGI. It was before AI and before whatever other eyes are coming down the pike toward us.

00:20:51:28 – 00:21:19:09
Mark B. Perry
But I think it was much easier for audiences in 1953 to suspend disbelief because they hadn’t yet been made completely immune by seeing, anything imaginable rendered on film in a reasonable facsimile of reality, like people flying in anything you might see in a marvel movie. As I said earlier, the interiors of the of the the ship are evocative, and they didn’t have the visual resources for the designs.

00:21:19:11 – 00:21:43:28
Mark B. Perry
We have a context now from all the material at the endless documentaries, the, you know, everything. We have so much visual reference that they just didn’t have in 53. So I cut him some slack in this regard. The sets, I think they captured the lavishness and the scale and the ambiance of, of what a what a liner of that class would have been like back in the day.

00:21:44:01 – 00:22:06:21
Mark B. Perry
But they’re not exact replicas. And the iconic staircase is actually laid out more or less like the actual staircase aboard the ship. The one in, in Titanic 53. But again, the version to beat on that count is Cameron, who was obsessive about getting every rivet on the models of the hull in exactly the right place.

00:22:06:23 – 00:22:27:17
Mark B. Perry
And he had endless amounts of research, including having seen the wreck with his own eyes, diving down to the wreck of, the Titanic. So I, I think for the time period again, all in context, I think they did a pretty good job of putting us aboard a ship in 1912.

00:22:27:19 – 00:22:51:03
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. Again, it goes I mean, with Cameron’s not only having that extensive research, but also had a little bit of a bigger budget and better technology to work with. So, you know, being able to, to do that, and again, with the 53 movie is black and white too. So, you know, you’re capturing some of those lavish things.

00:22:51:05 – 00:22:55:06
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a little he’s going to suspend belief a little bit more.

00:22:55:08 – 00:23:15:17
Mark B. Perry
They were there was talk about making the film in color in 1953, but then they realized that the models would probably not look as realistic in color, which I think is a good point. And again, you know, for the special effects that were available at the time period, I think they do a serviceable job. I mean, it’s always funny when you cut to the ship sinking in there, clearly.

00:23:15:17 – 00:23:29:19
Mark B. Perry
No people on the deck, but, you know, they they had little motorized lifeboats with the oars moving in in one of the shots. And so, you know, they really tried, they really did try with what they had available at the time.

00:23:29:21 – 00:23:40:24
Dan LeFebvre
I think you mentioned his name. And early in the movie we meet Captain Edward Smith, and this movie seems to make a point of mentioning a flag that Captain Smith had when he was an apprentice on another ship called the Star of Madagascar.

00:23:40:25 – 00:23:42:22
Mark B. Perry
Star of Madagascar.

00:23:42:25 – 00:24:01:23
Dan LeFebvre
When I saw that, it made me curious about why the movie would mention that. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression that I’ve always had is that even back in 1912, the maiden voyage of Titanic was a big deal. And the movie seems to allude to this. So as you talk about, you know, talks about the it was sold out since March, although you already mentioned that that’s not necessarily true.

00:24:01:25 – 00:24:25:12
Dan LeFebvre
But then the only experience that it mentions for Captain Smith is him being this apprentice. So that left me with the impression after watching the movie, that maybe Titanic’s maiden voyage was also Captain Smith’s first time being a ship’s captain, but then that just kind of seems to be a juxtaposition of this big deal. How experienced was Captain Smith prior to taking command of Titanic?

00:24:25:15 – 00:24:50:17
Mark B. Perry
Well, first, I can see how you would take that away from this particular film and the way Smith is depicted. But Smith was actually one of the most experienced captains of, vessels, on the North Atlantic. The star of Madagascar, as far as I can tell, existed only in the same universe where the Titanic’s maiden voyage was sold out.

00:24:50:20 – 00:24:52:18
Dan LeFebvre
So,

00:24:52:21 – 00:25:16:08
Mark B. Perry
I can find no reference to the Star of Madagascar. And I’ve always personally. I mean, I’ve seen this movie a hundred times, and I’ve always found that an odd bit of like, what were the writers trying to convey with. It’s delivered to him on the bridge and he says, run it up the main mast. And, you know, then there’s that moment at the end after the ship is sinking and he’s going down with the ship, and that’s what he looks up and sees.

00:25:16:08 – 00:25:45:09
Mark B. Perry
And I’m like, maybe they were trying to give us some sort of sentimental backstory to humanize him in some way. I mean, we’ll never know because the writers are all dead, and I don’t I don’t know, but it’s an odd beat, but it’s weirdly effective. But I and at the same time, I don’t know what it’s accomplishing. So and if it cast dispersion on Captain Smith’s experience, that’s an unfortunate, upshot of what I think they were trying to do.

00:25:45:11 – 00:26:23:13
Mark B. Perry
But Smith was very experienced. He had over 40 years at sea, as a as a commodore or captain for the White Star Line. And he was their go to whenever they would introduce new ships. And in fact, he had commanded the, he had commanded 17 White Star Line ships in his 40 years, including the maiden voyage of the Titanic’s bigger, older sister, the Olympic, about a year before the Titanic, maiden voyage, wealthy people at the time also very often chose their ship based on the captain, not on the vessel.

00:26:23:15 – 00:26:52:15
Mark B. Perry
And, Captain Smith had his own, groupies who followed him around from ship to ship, which I found to be a very interesting little factoid. But in truth, in some ways, Captain Smith’s abundant experience, I think, may have actually worked against him. On the night of April 14th. And to clarify, I want to read you a famous quote of his.

00:26:52:17 – 00:27:20:19
Mark B. Perry
He once said, I will say that I cannot imagine any condition which could cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that, and I wonder if that played a part in his apparent nonchalance about the ship’s speed, the ice warnings, if he felt that the ship was indeed impervious.

00:27:20:21 – 00:27:45:03
Mark B. Perry
But we don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point, but I do find that interesting that he did apparently say that, and that’s what he believed. And what’s even more poignant, I think, about the Titanic, is that opposed to it being the first time he commanded a ship, it was to be his last. He was going to retire after the maiden voyage once he got back to England.

00:27:45:06 – 00:27:54:01
Mark B. Perry
And to me, that’s a very tragic, bittersweet note to this man who had this long and storied career.

00:27:54:03 – 00:28:18:00
Dan LeFebvre
I wonder if maybe this is just my speculation, as you mentioned, that if this was going to be his last, if the writers of Titanic 53 knew that and then they because the the flag that you know from the Star of Madagascar, it mentions him being an apprentice. So maybe it’s kind of trying to do a bookend like this was, you know, the flag of his first command, his first ship.

00:28:18:08 – 00:28:28:21
Dan LeFebvre
And then this is going to be his last, you know, if he was going to retire after that, that that was maybe I’m just thinking out loud as, you know, as you mentioned, that that’s very interesting.

00:28:28:28 – 00:28:35:09
Mark B. Perry
That may have that I that had not occurred to me, but I think that’s a very, that’s a that’s a solid theory.

00:28:35:12 – 00:28:47:08
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned their names earlier and you know, the this May storyline throughout the movie follows, Richard Sturgis, his wife Julia, and their two kids, Annette Norman. Do we know if they’re based on real people on Titanic?

00:28:47:11 – 00:29:13:00
Mark B. Perry
Not that I know of, but they are certainly amalgams of, real people, real wealthy people of the time. And certainly real people who were aboard the ship. So I would say kind of yes and no. Now, in the film, Barbara Stanwyck is basically she’s kidnaped her children and she’s tried she wants to save them from, you know, the a life of insufferable snobbery growing up with Clifton Webb.

00:29:13:02 – 00:29:46:10
Mark B. Perry
And there was on the actual Titanic, there was a man aboard who had kidnaped his children in a custody dispute and was taking them to the United States, and the children survived, but the father perished in the the sinking. So it’s possible that, Charles Brackett and Richard Breen and Walter Rice had read about that particular passenger, and that may have been the the inspiration for the inciting incident of Julia kidnaping or taking the kids away from him.

00:29:46:13 – 00:29:49:28
Mark B. Perry
But again, of course, we’ll never know.

00:29:50:01 – 00:30:08:29
Dan LeFebvre
That leads into another tie. And speaking of, Annette, the the daughter in the 53 movie, that’s another tie into the James Cameron 97 one, which is that, you know, a young love story and that one, it’s Annette. And then a young guy named Gifford Rogers from the Purdue tennis team on his way home after playing Oxford during Easter.

00:30:09:01 – 00:30:25:25
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s not exact copy of, you know, the 97 movie with Jack and Rose. But then we it’s it’s hard watching the 53 movie now not to compare it to the 97 movie me like, oh on Titanic, there’s both these love stories. Do we know of any romances like that actually happening on Titanic?

00:30:25:27 – 00:30:54:10
Mark B. Perry
Well, first of all, let me just say this. If you look at Old Hollywood films, so many of them take place at least partly on, some glamorous ocean liner. Doris Day’s first movie wrote, romance on the high seas. Gentlemen prefer blonds. The Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell film, and The Lady Eve, which is one of my favorites, which is a Preston Sturges movie which coincidentally also stars Barbara Stanwyck.

00:30:54:12 – 00:31:17:25
Mark B. Perry
And in it she’s a con artist and she’s seducing Henry Fonda. And there’s a scene where they’re out on deck at night. It’s very romantic, and she says something like, A moonlit deck is a woman’s business office. And so there was a great romance associated with the old steamships and ocean voyages and the idea of shipboard romances has become a trope and a cliche.

00:31:17:28 – 00:31:36:14
Mark B. Perry
Did they happen on the Titanic? I think it’s very likely that they did, because people are people, and when you’re on a ship, there’s a there is a romantic aspect to it. I mean, I’ve crossed the Atlantic on the QE2 and the Queen Mary two and the old France as the Norway, and there is a romance to it.

00:31:36:14 – 00:32:05:22
Mark B. Perry
It’s, it’s it’s a very unique experience. There was a woman aboard the Titanic and her name was, Helen Candy. Candy. And she was traveling alone. And she had she had written a book, about how women can make a living. So I think she was a pioneer of women’s rights and, you know, good for her. She was traveling alone, and she caught the fancy and the attention of a handful of male passengers.

00:32:05:24 – 00:32:30:00
Mark B. Perry
And as Walter Lord describes it, they formed this little coterie of suitors with with miss Candy. And so who knows? You know, if I had to guess, I’d say yes. They’re probably more than one shipboard romance, but the chances are that many of them likely had very unhappy endings. Given what happened to the ship related to this in Cameron’s film.

00:32:30:02 – 00:32:38:17
Mark B. Perry
Leonardo DiCaprio. Jack, he dies because there isn’t room for him on that ginormous piece of wood.

00:32:38:20 – 00:32:42:04
Dan LeFebvre
I think we all saw the MythBusters on that. Yeah.

00:32:42:06 – 00:33:11:29
Mark B. Perry
That saves Kate Winslet. Yeah, there’s a debate about that. But that serves that story really well because that there’s a tragedy at the heart of the tragedy and a personal tragedy at the heart of the tragedy. And I find it interesting that, in 1953, which was closer in time to 1912, that the writers went out of their way to have Gifford, Robert Wagner be a hero.

00:33:12:01 – 00:33:36:16
Mark B. Perry
He’s the one who shimmies down when the lifeboat gets tangled. He’s the one who shimmies down, gets it free, gets it moving again, and then it’s when he’s trying to climb back up to rejoin the men that he loses. His grip, falls into the water. He’s pulled into a lifeboat, he’s unconscious, and that’s how he survives. And that way he’s not depicted as being dishonorable for not staying with the other man aboard the ship.

00:33:36:16 – 00:33:56:02
Mark B. Perry
And it. I think it’s an effective moment, but I also really thought that’s what they’re doing is they’re trying to justify him being able to survive. The Jack and Rose scenario, sadly, is probably closer to real life because so many of the third third class passengers perished.

00:33:56:04 – 00:34:16:19
Dan LeFebvre
That leads right into my next question that I have for you, because, we talked briefly about Richard Sturgis, and in the 53 movie, he buys a third class ticket to get in, and in the 97 movie, Jack wins a third class ticket. And it’s interesting because we don’t really see in both those movies, we see the first class and the third class.

00:34:16:19 – 00:34:34:19
Dan LeFebvre
They don’t really talk too much about a second class, but then both movies seem to imply that you can’t move around very much. In the 53 movie, after Richard gets his ticket, he deliberately moves a sign that says first class passengers, only to go from first. I’m sorry, from third class to first class and the top portion of the ship to where his family is.

00:34:34:22 – 00:34:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Can you unravel some of the different classes that were aboard Titanic and how their experiences differed?

00:34:40:20 – 00:35:06:18
Mark B. Perry
Yes. This was something we researched quite a bit because in our script, the female sort of love interest, it wasn’t really a love story, but, she was a, an Irish immigrant, single mom who was traveling in steerage or third class, and our protagonist, our time traveling hero. He ends up, finding himself first in first class, but he spends the movie divided between the two.

00:35:06:20 – 00:35:41:21
Mark B. Perry
And we didn’t really get into second class, although Titanic 53. There is a brief sequence where Barbara Stanwyck escorts the defrocked drunken priest, played by Richard based Hart, another fictional character, by the way, down to his state room. And that’s the only time I think we see a second class state room. Then in the there was a 1970s made for TV movie called S.O.S. Titanic with Cloris Leachman and David Warner, and David Warner played a real life character, Lawrence Beasley, who was a survivor of the Titanic who was traveling in second class.

00:35:41:21 – 00:36:15:09
Mark B. Perry
So that film did a little more in second class than other films have historically done. And coincidentally, David Warner, who played Lawrence Beesley, is also in Cameron’s movie, playing Lovejoy, who is, the henchman of, Billy Zane’s character. And so he’s an actor who has the dubious distinction of being on the Titanic twice. But in a historic in a contemporary context, the first class aboard the Titanic was probably more like Claridges Hotel in London, which is considered to be one of the finest, most luxurious in the world.

00:36:15:11 – 00:36:51:08
Mark B. Perry
Or maybe a Four Seasons or a Ritz Carlton. Whatever the passengers wanted was available. They were pampered, like, the patrons on the show, HBO show White Lotus, with one exception that really surprised me. Everyone always talks about how this ship was the pinnacle of luxury, and it may have been for 1912, but it’s only some of the first class suites had private bathroom facilities, and most of the first class had shared bath facilities with other first class passengers.

00:36:51:08 – 00:37:16:01
Mark B. Perry
And to take an actual bath, you had to make a reservation with your cabin steward or stewardess, which I thought that was interesting. I would have assumed that in first class they’re paying that much money. They would have their own bathrooms. But no, second class is more like a marriott or Holiday Inn. It’s still nice, but it’s not quite as opulent as or as luxurious as first.

00:37:16:04 – 00:37:44:05
Mark B. Perry
My late friend, who was a historian and a writer. Her name was Sylvia Stoddard, and she was a Titanic fanatic. And she said that from her research second class aboard the White Star Line’s Titanic was more like first class aboard other liners from other shipping lines of the day. So I that says that says a lot about what first class must have been like.

00:37:44:07 – 00:38:10:07
Mark B. Perry
But the second class cabins had bunk beds, not regular beds, and they too had shared bathroom facilities. All of the second class had shared bathroom facilities. Third class, we’re talking super eight, Best Western, motel six. They were also equipped there. They were equipped with bunk beds. Some of them, I think, had up to 12 or 14.

00:38:10:07 – 00:38:35:10
Mark B. Perry
And so you, you would buy actually space in a bunk. If you were traveling either with you or just your family, and you may have to share quarters. And all of the bathrooms, of course, were shared in third class. And according to two sources, there were only two bathtubs available for third class, one for men, one for women, which I found to be pretty interesting.

00:38:35:12 – 00:39:06:03
Mark B. Perry
That said, people back in the day said that the third class on the Titanic was the best third class accommodations on any vessel at the time. So from what I’ve read about the separations between the classes, it wasn’t as regimented as it’s usually depicted. Yes, there were some physical barriers. There were gates and there were, but there were also chains and signs like we see in Titanic 53, when Clifton Webb lets himself into first class.

00:39:06:05 – 00:39:24:22
Mark B. Perry
It’s hard to imagine, but I think back then they still paid attention to, the honor system. And I hate this expression, but I think people sort of knew their place. And so, you know, they they didn’t break the rules. Yes. As they said, there were gates and there were barriers, and some of them were in fact locked in sort of thing.

00:39:24:22 – 00:39:39:13
Mark B. Perry
But it was not impossible, according to our research. For someone to move from one class to another if they were determined enough and in some cases sneaky enough or rich and entitled.

00:39:39:16 – 00:40:09:19
Dan LeFebvre
Which then makes sense in the 53 movie, how it would be so easy for him to go from third class to first class and just fit in exactly. Well, if we go back to the 53 movie, there are a few different scenes where we see mentions of an iceberg report. The one it focuses on most is a telegraph sent to Captain Smith from the commander of SS Baltic, about an iceberg at latitude 41 degrees 51 North, longitude 49 degrees 52 West.

00:40:09:21 – 00:40:36:21
Dan LeFebvre
And despite this, Captain Smith orders Titanic to go 21 knots. And doing the math on that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s like 24mph. 39km/h. Going that fast seems to be something that one of the crew in the movie, Mr. Lightoller, is concerned with. So he asked Captain Smith about it, and Smith reassures Lightoller that they’ll be able to see any icebergs in the daylight, and so he’ll personally be on the bridge in the morning to watch out for those.

00:40:36:24 – 00:40:58:17
Dan LeFebvre
And just to help with some of the numbers, I looked up, Titanic’s top speed, and it’s about 23. Not so 26 miles an hour, 43km an hour. So our service speed was 21 knots that we see in the movie. And then, of course, looking at this with the historical context, it’s easy to see why, you know, with what happened, why the speed with the iceberg would have been such a big deal.

00:40:58:19 – 00:41:13:09
Dan LeFebvre
But then the movie seems to suggest that maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. So with that in mind for how the movie portrays things, how well do you think the movie does explaining the iceberg reports, and then Captain Smith’s orders to maintain titanic speed.

00:41:13:12 – 00:41:41:15
Mark B. Perry
Is a good question. According to Walter Lord, again, the Titanic received at least seven ice warnings from ships like the Baltic, the, the Corona, the America, the Masada. And there may have been more, but the radio operators were very busy sending personal messages for the passengers who were basically playing with this brand new toy, the high tech of its day, the wireless telegraph.

00:41:41:21 – 00:42:13:05
Mark B. Perry
And they were sending personal messages about, oh, we expect to arrive in New York at such and such a time. Please have such and such available. And the it was a source of revenue for the White Star Line. And so the operators were sending outgoing messages, which meant that not some incoming messages. And in fact, in some cases the the, the operators aboard the Titanic told the people sending them messages to shut up and get off the line because they were sending messages through the Cape Race relay to the, the, the United States.

00:42:13:07 – 00:42:35:10
Mark B. Perry
So some of them probably didn’t even get through. And but that said, I’m not sure I, I think in the movie, if I’m recalling right, it’s the Baltic message that the captain flips over and writes the coordinates of the ship. I don’t think that’s true. I think he did receive the Baltic message in real life. Would it have made any difference?

00:42:35:10 – 00:43:13:06
Mark B. Perry
I don’t know, because Captain Smith believed his that ship’s shipbuilding had gone past the, you know, kinds of accidents they had. But this was a night of what ifs. This was a night of if this hadn’t happened, if this hadn’t happened, if this had happened. You know, I heard a theory recently that said that the iceberg, which I had never heard this before and I haven’t researched it, so I may be talking out of turn, but they said that the, the, the iceberg that they hit was actually had broken off and flipped over and was a dark blue on the bottom, and which there was no moon that night, and it made it almost

00:43:13:06 – 00:43:48:21
Mark B. Perry
impossible to see until they were right up on it. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know. But Smith, by all accounts, was pretty nonchalant about the ice warnings. And again, I think it’s because of his overconfidence in shipbuilding. And being unable to envision any circumstance where a ship like this would actually flounder. So, again, not being the final arbiter of these things, my guess is the movie does a pretty good job in his attitude, if not the actual, facts as they played out aboard the aboard the ship.

00:43:48:23 – 00:43:58:08
Mark B. Perry
And, pretty much what he did, I think is, was supported by, contemporaneous accounts in those hearings and from survivors who were there.

00:43:58:10 – 00:44:23:22
Dan LeFebvre
I had never heard that theory about it, flipping over. But that brings up a good point of something kind of touching on what you were talking about before of, you know, if we don’t even it especially don’t, you know, during the 53 movie, they didn’t even have pictures or that much information there and then even even now, like how how old would you possibly be able to know about a specific iceberg in 1912, whether or not it had slipped over?

00:44:23:29 – 00:44:39:10
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not like there were footage or I mean, it’s that that kind of thing. I know there’s a lot of scientific stuff that people can do. It just blows my mind. But how we can jump to those sort of conclusions that we might know that, oh, there’s one particular iceberg might have flipped over. And that’s why they couldn’t see at that time.

00:44:39:10 – 00:44:48:02
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s like, okay, maybe. But also sometimes I think we just have to be okay never knowing what actually happened.

00:44:48:04 – 00:45:10:25
Mark B. Perry
Well, I think that’s true. And like I said, I preface that that’s I heard that recently and I have not substantiated it, but I thought it was interesting, but it still seems like that didn’t need to be part of the equation. I think if it had just been an iceberg, as it’s portrayed in the Cameron film and the the 53 film, and in a night to remember that just a big white iceberg, coming up out of nowhere.

00:45:10:25 – 00:45:32:14
Mark B. Perry
I mean, there was no moon that night, and it was it was difficult to discern those shapes at at the speed that they were moving and to maneuver properly in time. And, you know, again, you go back to eyewitness accounts. That’s all they had. And in 1953 that they only had what was on the record from people who were there.

00:45:32:16 – 00:46:01:19
Mark B. Perry
And those people weren’t carrying HD and 4K cameras in their pockets. The ship was not being charted by satellites. They weren’t in constant two way communication with other ships. It was a very different time. And so, you know, there’s so much speculations. There’s all the, you know, there’s the crazy conspiracy theory that that ship to to the Olympic and the Titanic were switched for some reason that I don’t think I’ve ever clearly understood.

00:46:01:22 – 00:46:10:03
Mark B. Perry
But, you know, it’s it’s fascinating to me that over 100 years after this happened, we’re still talking about it.

00:46:10:06 – 00:46:34:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, human memory is not great. But also to add to that, to everybody who survived had still gone through this extremely traumatic event. And so that’s going to affect memory as well. And just all these different. Yeah. We’re just never going to know all, all the facts.

00:46:34:20 – 00:46:53:27
Mark B. Perry
You know did clearly people can misremember. People can also make things up whether they mean to or not. I mean they might change their story because they didn’t run back to get the little boy who had fallen in the water and they just left them, you know, who knows? You know, we’re fallible.

00:46:54:00 – 00:47:11:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, very, very true. Well, if we go back to the movie, we do see we see a little bit, but there’s not a lot of dates and locations displayed out. Right? Like, you know, a lot of movies have had the text on screen, but we get some clues here and there, kind of what the path that the Titanic is taking.

00:47:11:03 – 00:47:27:03
Dan LeFebvre
At the beginning of the movie, for example, there are some signs that were in French. That’s when Richard Sturgis boards the ship, getting his his ticket. And after they start making their way to the open ocean, Richard is having dinner with his family, asks his daughter Annette what day it is, and she says it’s April 13th.

00:47:27:05 – 00:47:46:07
Dan LeFebvre
And then later in the movie, one of the sailors on the ship looks at the clock, making the movie make some notice that the clock is at 11:36 p.m. on April 14th, and that’s just before they see the iceberg in front of them. So based on these little clues that we have, do you think the movie does a pretty good job portraying the dates and places for Titanic’s timeline?

00:47:46:09 – 00:48:15:20
Mark B. Perry
I think they do an excellent job. In this case, the movie seems to be pretty accurate in the timeline. Maybe that’s what they meant by quote unquote general data in the, and, in the opening statement, the Titanic set sail on a Wednesday, which was April 10th, 1912, from Southampton, England. And there she was docked and the passengers boarded by gangway in the traditional fashion that we usually see in the movies.

00:48:15:22 – 00:48:37:00
Mark B. Perry
Interesting factoid. The the loading was done opposite of modern day air travel, and that they put the third class passengers aboard first before the first class and second class passengers boarded. I don’t know why, but apparently that was protocol of the day. Once she was fully loaded, she set sail. She arrived a few hours later in the French port of Cherbourg that you mentioned.

00:48:37:00 – 00:49:02:14
Mark B. Perry
And that’s where Titanic 53 picks her up, basically. Then they take on more passengers who come aboard by tender or those the smallish ferry boats that bring them out to the ship, because the harbor at Cherbourg did not have docking facilities that could accommodate a ship the size of the Titanic. So, incidentally, one of those tenders, the nomadic, survives to this day.

00:49:02:14 – 00:49:36:20
Mark B. Perry
It’s been restored. It’s on. You can visit it in Belfast, Ireland. And it was also designed by Thomas Andrews, who designed the much bigger sister ship, the Titanic. Only the nomadic is still afloat after all these years, unlike, the Titanic. There were while they were in Cherbourg. This is also where, this is where we see Julia and her children boarding, along with, Maud Young and other characters coming out on that tender.

00:49:36:22 – 00:50:10:07
Mark B. Perry
And that’s also where we see, Richard Sturgis, getting aboard by buying his ticket from the U.S. cruise and then sneaking up, and, let’s see. So then there were, passengers who disembarked in Cherbourg. There were about two dozen who left the ship because they had only booked passage to cross the channel. And I imagine they spent the rest of their lives with some pretty interesting cocktail party stories, about having, you know, just narrowly missed doom.

00:50:10:09 – 00:50:33:07
Mark B. Perry
And then from Cherbourg, the ship went to Queenstown, Ireland, which is they’ve changed the name and I’m blanking on what it’s called now, but, that isn’t even shown in Titanic 53. But it did stop in Ireland on Thursday the 11th midday, and then early afternoon it set sail for New York. And of course, infamy.

00:50:33:09 – 00:51:02:00
Mark B. Perry
April 13th would have been the Saturday. And that’s when when Annette says that the next day is when they’re in church on Sunday and they’re singing the hymn. And then by Monday morning, of course, the ship would be lost. And, you know, the story of the investigations and everything would begin. So in terms of accuracy, I think they got this, you know, with excluding things for time’s sake, I think more than anything else.

00:51:02:03 – 00:51:11:20
Mark B. Perry
I think they they did an excellent job. In fact, I’m going to upgrade my rating to a solid B at this point. Okay. Nice. That sizable.

00:51:11:22 – 00:51:30:13
Dan LeFebvre
Oh yes, of course, of course. Well we are at the point then if we go back to the movie, we’re at the point in the timeline where Titanic strikes the iceberg. It’s mere moments after it’s sited. According to the way the movie’s timeline is. And but Captain Smith is not on the bridge when the first actions are taken to avoid the iceberg.

00:51:30:13 – 00:51:46:26
Dan LeFebvre
But we can hear orders like Carter starboard and and full speed astern. Keep the helm hard over, and then movie cuts to the underwater shot that you’re talking about, where you see the, you know, the iceberg actually slicing the hull. And then at this point it cuts to, Captain Smith and he can feel the impact from where he’s on the ship.

00:51:46:26 – 00:52:12:15
Dan LeFebvre
And he rushes to the bridge, and he’s been informed that they picked up a spur. There’s no damage above the waterline, but the for pike is floated to the all top deck. There’s additional damage. After the the bulkhead be. And they’re taking water. And number one, two and three holds number five and six boiler rooms. And in the movie, Captain Smith seems surprised that there’s damage that far aft and asks if they can shore up.

00:52:12:18 – 00:52:29:26
Dan LeFebvre
No, is the reply, and they’ve been cut open like a tin can. And that’s basically a summary of the movie’s version of events. And there’s a lot of nautical terminology in there that, I would hope that you can help, kind of help explain what some of that is, but is that basically what happened?

00:52:29:29 – 00:52:33:00
Mark B. Perry
Well, no.

00:52:33:02 – 00:52:37:02
Dan LeFebvre
I’m sorry. Does that does that bring the grade back down to the B much? Yeah.

00:52:37:05 – 00:52:58:15
Mark B. Perry
No, no, I’m sticking with the B at this point. I, you know, I got a soft spot in my heart for this movie. So is that really what happened again? It’s a rash man indeed. Who knows. But from what we do know, the commands on the bridge. Hard to starboard. Full speed astern. All of that was pretty much exactly right.

00:52:58:15 – 00:53:22:04
Mark B. Perry
And it’s depicted as it’s depicted in the film. And I believe it’s the same thing in Cameron’s film. And that came from testimony at the hearings, because there were officers who survived, who were there, who knew what was going on. Captain Smith in Titanic 53 is sort of having a waxing, sentimental, poetic moment watching the kids sing their school anthem.

00:53:22:04 – 00:53:42:16
Mark B. Perry
And I think they’re in the I don’t know if they’re in the ballroom at the restaurant or where they are. But anyway, he was actually in his cabin, which was next to the wheelhouse on the bridge, and he did feel the impact. But it is very unlikely that the crew had that much information at their disposal, the way it’s portrayed in the film.

00:53:42:18 – 00:54:06:00
Mark B. Perry
In reality, Smith ordered inspections. He’s the one who ordered them to go down and do the inspections. And he also summoned Thomas Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, who again, isn’t in this movie conveniently, and I think the writers were taking license to just condense all the shoe leather so that they don’t have to play out every step because they want to get back to.

00:54:06:01 – 00:54:27:15
Mark B. Perry
They just want to set up the stakes that the ship is going to sink. What’s going to happen to the Sturges family? And it it seems unlikely that Smith, given his history, and again, that quote, it seems unlikely that he believed the ship was doomed from the get go and he sent an officer below to inspect the damage.

00:54:27:15 – 00:54:54:04
Mark B. Perry
And he then subsequently learned that the forward compartments were flooding. The mail room was flooding, taking on water fast, and he ordered the ship’s carpenter to go down and shore up the damage as best they could. And when, Smith was told that the ship foundering was a mathematical certainty by Thomas Andrews as the ship’s designer, he would know.

00:54:54:07 – 00:55:23:09
Mark B. Perry
That’s when Smith really knew that this was inevitable. So there were several steps in his process. I think some of it may have been denial, but some of it was also doing what he possibly could to try to buy as much time as he could. And, I just think the film for dramatic purposes condensed all of that because, again, that despite their claim at the beginning, that wasn’t really the focus of this particular film.

00:55:23:12 – 00:55:50:22
Dan LeFebvre
That makes perfect sense and that then these ships and my next question, because according to the movie, after hearing about this, this damage, it’s almost immediate. The Captain Smith just knows that the ship is going to go down. The very one of the very first things we see in the movie is he he orders the Ford pump start, and then he rushes to the wireless telegraph room, where he orders a Cicd to all vessels and then you know, the movie through dialog, very helpfully explains one of the officers or the telegraph operators.

00:55:50:22 – 00:56:14:23
Dan LeFebvre
Like that means a full distress. Yeah, yeah, we’re going down. Basically what Captain Smith says. So do we know I’m assuming then knew that we don’t know if Captain Smith immediately knew that they were going to sink. But then if that’s the case, would it be a fair assessment that that order that the movie points out, that he says, you know, starting the Ford pumps, that that’s basically just trying to delay the inevitable to try and buy time for the lifeboats.

00:56:14:25 – 00:56:36:03
Mark B. Perry
I think it was trying to buy time for the lifeboats. I, based on what I’ve read, what I know about it, you know, which again, it’s all speculation, but, I think, yes, they did have pumps and they could buy some time by pumping out the water, but at some point, you know, they get overwhelmed and the ship goes down.

00:56:36:05 – 00:57:00:10
Mark B. Perry
But I do think he was trying. He was he had so few options. And as soon as Andrews told him, it’s a mathematical certainty, which that’s apparently a direct quote from what he said. But he didn’t survive, of course, so who knows? But, I think once those words were said, then Captain Smith knew he had to do whatever he could possibly do to buy as much time as he could as the ship was going down.

00:57:00:10 – 00:57:06:24
Mark B. Perry
And he also simultaneously said, muster, the passengers, put them off boats, women and children.

00:57:06:27 – 00:57:30:24
Dan LeFebvre
I can only those are the kind of things I can’t wrap my head around. What that receiving that news must be, especially with that quote that you mentioned from Captain Smith. You know, just the assumption that this could never happen. And we all think of, you know, the Titanic is unsinkable and that whole aspect. And then to hear that it’s a mathematical, mathematical certainty that just has to be absolutely devastating.

00:57:30:24 – 00:57:39:11
Dan LeFebvre
I don’t I mean, I don’t know how you what sort of reaction to have to that. I mean, unfortunately we’ll never know. But that’s just it’s chilling.

00:57:39:11 – 00:58:04:08
Mark B. Perry
And I think, the actor who plays Captain Smith in Titanic 53, I think he plays that moment pretty well of the realization. And, you know, oh my God, what do we do? And the captain still today, the captain is responsible for the ship. They they are they are the last word. They are the they are the for good or bad, they’re they get the credit.

00:58:04:09 – 00:58:06:12
Mark B. Perry
They they get the blame.

00:58:06:15 – 00:58:08:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. The buck stops here as they say.

00:58:08:24 – 00:58:10:00
Mark B. Perry
Exactly.

00:58:10:02 – 00:58:27:09
Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of the the lifeboats at this time in the movie is when we find out that they don’t have enough light plus for everybody, Captain Smith’s orders the women and children in lifeboats because there aren’t enough for the men. Can you share some more historical context about the lifeboats situation on Titanic?

00:58:27:11 – 00:58:40:16
Mark B. Perry
Well, I’m going to say something controversial, which is the Titanic actually had more than a sufficient number of lifeboats. Okay, to meet the outdated regulations of the time.

00:58:40:18 – 00:58:42:00
Dan LeFebvre
Okay.

00:58:42:02 – 00:59:10:25
Mark B. Perry
Ships had grown in size so fast and mankind so arrogant, apparently, that they didn’t want to clutter the recreational space on the boat deck with, quote unquote, non-essential equipment that would block the view for the first class passengers out for a stroll on the boat deck. So there were, 16 boats, 16 wooden boats, and that’s eight on each side of the ship for forward and for aft.

00:59:10:27 – 00:59:32:13
Mark B. Perry
And there between the forward and aft boats, there was about 200ft of open deck, as you see in the film, where the passengers could enjoy the view as the ship was sinking. I don’t mean to make light, but it just so absurd to me that they didn’t take safety so as seriously as we do now.

00:59:32:13 – 00:59:35:04
Mark B. Perry
And one of the reasons we do now is because it happened.

00:59:35:06 – 00:59:40:02
Dan LeFebvre
They’re called lifeboats. I mean, that’s that’s pretty essential. Their life. It’s in the name of lifeboat, like.

00:59:40:06 – 01:00:10:07
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, all of those boats, those 16 boats, the the two in the front were smaller. There were slightly smaller, but they were still the wooden lifeboats. Those satisfied by the regulations of the day. But the Titanic was equipped with four additional collapsible lifeboats which were stowed up on one of the I don’t know what you call that. It’s one of the platforms on the boat deck, and they were lashed there and they had some trouble getting them down, but those exceeded the requirements.

01:00:10:07 – 01:00:35:23
Mark B. Perry
And that’s why I say that the Titanic actually had more than sufficient lifeboats to meet the regulations at the time, because they did have these other, these other collapsible boats that could once the other boats had been lowered from the davits, these collapsible boats could be fit into those davits and lowered away. The some of the passengers were made were aware of the disparity between the number of boats and the number of people aboard.

01:00:35:25 – 01:01:02:15
Mark B. Perry
Others were not. And it is true, according to testimony, that some of the first class gentlemen were let in on this dire news and so they could act accordingly. And as for the haphazard use of the boats, you know, going away with a handful of people, there had been no boat drill, for the ship. It wasn’t done, it wasn’t required.

01:01:02:17 – 01:01:31:11
Mark B. Perry
And even as the passengers were told to muster at their muster stations, which is where they’re supposed to gather to get on their lifeboat, the crew was still telling them that the ship was unsinkable. So imagine yourself. It’s freezing cold out. It’s like 28 degrees freezing cold. You’re standing on a solid ship. There’s there’s lights, there’s heat, there’s jaunty music playing from somewhere aft from the ship’s orchestra.

01:01:31:14 – 01:02:00:01
Mark B. Perry
And then there’s a little wooden boat hanging 70ft above the frigid water. And so a lot of people would not get in those boats. And so some of them went away with a handful of people. So, if I may, I’ll go into some, I’ll go into the weeds with the lifeboats. But, all told, there were, as I said, there were 14 largest boats could accommodate 65 passengers each.

01:02:00:03 – 01:02:16:15
Mark B. Perry
The two smaller cutters at the bow, they were called cutters. They were the wooden boats. They had a capacity of 40 people. And the four collapsible boats could handle 47 people each. And that’s a total capacity of 1180 souls. If all of them had been fully loaded.

01:02:16:17 – 01:02:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
And the movie said, I think there are 2200 overall on the Titanic, just a kind of.

01:02:21:04 – 01:02:53:03
Mark B. Perry
There are around 21, 20, 200. The the the number is still not has never really been certified because there were discrepancies in the passenger list and so forth. But there were, let’s say, 21, 20, 200 aboard the maiden voyage. So even fully loaded, the boats would still have been insufficient for some 900 people who died. And but had they been fully loaded, they would have been able to save close to 500 additional lives than what they were able to save.

01:02:53:05 – 01:02:57:03
Mark B. Perry
But hey, even God himself couldn’t think this ship, right?

01:02:57:06 – 01:03:19:07
Dan LeFebvre
What you mentioned there about how the, the crew was saying that, the ship is unsinkable. That reminds me of something that I saw in the movie where, you know, as as people are being told to line up for the lifeboats. This is movie’s version of events. Everyone’s, you know, donning the life jackets, and the crew is sending up distress flares, but then they’re still selling, telling the passenger there’s no cause for alarm.

01:03:19:12 – 01:03:47:02
Dan LeFebvre
Even as in the movie, we can hear alarms blaring across the ship, which seems pretty like a pretty stark contrast to that. And then there’s, it seems pretty obvious that they’re trying to keep everybody calm, but it doesn’t really take very long in the movie for people to start to realize what’s going on. That movie really focuses on Richard Sturgis in his family, and he tells a man they’re probably going to row out a few hundred yards where they repair the damage.

01:03:47:04 – 01:04:03:16
Dan LeFebvre
His wife, Julia, then thanks him for lying to them, and they try to seem to make up their differences in the final moments that they have. And there are a lot of tears in the movie, with only one exception of a man pretending to be a woman to get on the lifeboats. Most of the men seem to be resigned to their fate.

01:04:03:18 – 01:04:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think the movie did a pretty accurate job of portraying this tension? And then the realization among the passengers as they boarded the lifeboats?

01:04:12:16 – 01:04:33:05
Mark B. Perry
Again, I think it did capture the drama of the moment. I’m not sure if that captured the accuracy. You know, the the who was where and which person was in which boat. But there are cases that Walter Lord writes about of men reassuring their wives, as Richard does in the movie. And, you know, it’s just a precaution.

01:04:33:05 – 01:04:54:14
Mark B. Perry
And so forth. And while knowing that they themselves were doomed, as Richard Sturgis does in the film and, you know, but that gives him for the soap that and the drama that gives him that great moment with Norman when Norman sadly, tragically gets to, quote unquote, be a man, which is his whole thing in the movie. He wants to wear long pants.

01:04:54:14 – 01:05:18:07
Mark B. Perry
He’s grown up. And so he’s going to become a man, which means he’s going to perish with the other man, the other gentleman aboard the ship. And in terms of the drama and the tears and the fear and the terror, as the reality of it begins to dawn on these people, the goodbyes, the stoicism of the the men and the other people who stayed behind.

01:05:18:07 – 01:05:32:27
Mark B. Perry
I think the film captures the drama of that really well and is and is pretty powerful. But again, if you want to get into the weeds on the actual timeline, you got to look to Mr. Cameron’s opus.

01:05:33:00 – 01:05:57:20
Dan LeFebvre
That yeah, that’s fair. And it does still go back to especially especially in a moment like that, because that’s the moment when there is the most panic. Relying on the witness reports is going to be the most, for lack of a better way to say it, the most inaccurate. I mean, that’s when their most panic is. So that’s when the misremembering, you know, trying to piece together things after the fact.

01:05:57:20 – 01:06:03:24
Dan LeFebvre
I imagine that would be the most difficult element to remember, as things are flashing by so quickly.

01:06:03:27 – 01:06:14:29
Mark B. Perry
Rational thought goes out the window. It’s all about do I jump, do I stay? I mean, I cannot imagine the terror of that situation.

01:06:15:01 – 01:06:33:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we go back to the movie as as the lifeboats lowered and they row away, we the band plays nearer. My God, to the everyone left on board sings along, and the movie cuts to some shots of people in the lifeboats. They can hear the songs being sung as Titanic starts to pitch forward. All of a sudden things accelerate very quickly.

01:06:33:13 – 01:06:53:03
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie, there seems to be some sort of an explosion. The movie doesn’t really mention what’s happening here, but there’s some dialog earlier talked about, the ship being finished once the water hits the boilers. So that’s what I was assuming. The movie’s trying to portray as water hits the boilers is explosion of steam, perhaps, but in the movie we see the ball fully engulfed in the water.

01:06:53:03 – 01:07:10:03
Dan LeFebvre
The water just kind of starts bubbling at the surface. And then there’s this rumbling that knocks everybody off their feet, stops them from singing Near my God to thee. And then within a few seconds, she slips beneath the waters entirely. Do you think the movie did a pretty good job recounting what we know of Titanic’s final moments.

01:07:10:06 – 01:07:41:13
Mark B. Perry
For the time? Once again, I’m going to put everything in this film in context of what they knew at the time. So I think they tried to do a, I, they tried to do a good job, a respectful job of depicting the final moments based on what they knew and with the technology they had available at the time, which was basically models, miniatures and, you know, air canisters so they could blow, you know, the water could bubble as the ship goes down and that sort of thing.

01:07:41:15 – 01:08:01:19
Mark B. Perry
There’s always been lively debate about the whole nearer, my God to thee thing, or whether it was nearer, my God to thee or a popular tune of the time called Autumn, which was a waltz. But the nearer, my God, to thee thing is such a. I don’t know if romantic is the right word to use, but it’s so evocative.

01:08:01:19 – 01:08:22:16
Mark B. Perry
I think it’s kind of become Titanic gospel, if you will. But Walter Lord writes about it in his sequel to A Night to Remember that came out in the 80s, called The Night Lives On. And, in this film, they start playing in Titanic 53. The captain asks them to start playing, and it’s much later in the process.

01:08:22:16 – 01:08:45:10
Mark B. Perry
And in truth, the captain didn’t ask them a while. Wallace Hartley, the band leader. He was the one who instigated it, which is portrayed pretty accurately in the Cameron film. And they were playing light music of the day. They were playing ragtime. They were playing, you know, waltzes. They’re playing popular songs because the whole idea was to take people, take people’s minds off of, you know, what was going on.

01:08:45:10 – 01:09:13:22
Mark B. Perry
And keep everybody calm. Interestingly enough, Nearer My God to Thee was the original title of Titanic 53, until somebody wisely suggested that they change it. But witnesses at the time, again, with the testimony that they had, they basically said they saw the bow going under, and then that accelerated as the water rose, the decks began to slope precariously, making it impossible for people to stand.

01:09:13:22 – 01:09:37:02
Mark B. Perry
And we see all of this in the film. The musicians eventually fell, you know, and the music stopped. The lights went out. Then there was a steady roar. And in the the real witness accounts, there was a steady roar, which was apparently the sound of all the heavy machinery, the dishes, the glassware, the furniture, the pianos, everything breaking loose and hurtling toward the submerged bow.

01:09:37:05 – 01:10:05:04
Mark B. Perry
We only see some of this and 53 it is shown in horrifying, vivid detail in Cameron’s film, the dishes and everything else. As the stern rose in the air and the real, incident, the, the forward funnel detached, fell into the water. It’s depicted in Cameron’s film. They do not show that happening here. It may have been beyond their capable to make that, look realistic.

01:10:05:06 – 01:10:27:06
Mark B. Perry
Then in real life, the ship did go perpendicular, for up to two minutes, according to witnesses. And the noises stopped. And the stern then settled back slightly, then slowly began to slip. It’s picking up speed as it went. Now in Titanic 53, we don’t see it do this, but we see it stay at the angle and.

01:10:27:06 – 01:10:28:28
Dan LeFebvre
Then.

01:10:29:01 – 01:11:03:20
Mark B. Perry
Hang there for a moment and then begin to sink and pick up speed. And that settling back might well have been as the witnesses who saw it. That may well have been the ship actually breaking in two at the time. But we didn’t know that for sure until the wreck was found by Ballard in the 80s. And I find it interesting that of all the people who testified were interviewed, only three swore they saw the ship break in half and all the others said that that did not happen.

01:11:03:22 – 01:11:29:05
Mark B. Perry
And so that goes back to speaking to the reliability of eyewitness testimony. So I think it puts a big caveat on all of this. As for the explosion that’s portrayed in 1953, they were basing that on testimony of one seaman who said that he survived, and he said that he heard an explosion before the ship went down.

01:11:29:07 – 01:11:52:03
Mark B. Perry
But when Ballard found the wreck, there was no evidence of a boiler explosion. There was no evidence of an explosion. There was evidence of the ship having been strained to the point of breaking in half. And but it is possible that the bulkhead, when they were going down the bulkheads finally giving way with all of that pressure, could have made explosive sounds.

01:11:52:06 – 01:12:19:06
Mark B. Perry
And who knows what a huge ship actually sounds like when it literally breaks into. So I think they opted to rely on that one person’s testimony because it makes for drama. It it accelerates the sinking. In the movie it says this happened and that’s why this happened. And that’s how Richard Sturgis dies with his son without ever having shared his true parentage.

01:12:19:06 – 01:12:21:18
Mark B. Perry
Because, again, it’s a soap opera.

01:12:21:20 – 01:12:41:26
Dan LeFebvre
I you make a great point two, of how would we know what that would, what it actually would have sounded like. That goes back to, you know, relying on on witness reports. But even they wouldn’t they you hear this big noise, you wouldn’t be able to identify exactly what that is because there’s all these there’s a lot of noises, I’m sure, that were happening.

01:12:42:03 – 01:12:46:12
Dan LeFebvre
And being able to identify what they were not easy to do.

01:12:46:19 – 01:13:10:12
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, I, I and I give Cameron big props for and his crew and the sound mixers because if you have to imagine that and try to create that, I think they did an exceptional job because that’s a horrifying moment in the Cameron film, which I recently rewatched. And as a research before you, we have our talk today.

01:13:10:15 – 01:13:34:16
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we started our discussion today with the text at the beginning of the movie, so it seems fitting to end in a similar fashion because the movie ends with voiceover. It gives us a few details about the tragedy, and I’m going to quote the voiceover from the end of the movie. Thus, on April 15th, 1912, at oh two 20 hours, as the passengers and crew sang a Welsh hymn, RMS Titanic passed from the British registry.

01:13:34:18 – 01:13:57:28
Dan LeFebvre
712 people in 19 lifeboats survived. I found it interesting that the movie mentioned the number of survivors in lifeboats, but didn’t mention how many souls were lost. So I have a two part question. As we start to wrap up our discussion today. First is the part the movie included in the final voice over accurate. And secondly, can you fill in some of the historical details that the movie doesn’t mention?

01:13:58:00 – 01:14:24:29
Mark B. Perry
By all accounts, there were 712 survivors, and most estimates put the loss of souls at around 1500, which is an interesting omission in this film, because to me. That’s the more horrifying statistic, actually. But again, this number isn’t really known because we don’t actually know how many people were aboard the ship because they weren’t all scanned by computers.

01:14:25:01 – 01:14:44:26
Mark B. Perry
You know, they didn’t have wristbands like they do today. And there were discrepancies in the passenger list. There were people who were on the printed passenger list who did not make the voyage. And same for the crew. So I want to go back to the singing of the hymn, the because you mentioned the Welsh hymn and the movie says Welsh hymn.

01:14:44:26 – 01:15:19:14
Mark B. Perry
Well, as many, many people insist that, you know, the band didn’t play the hymn, because their goal was to calm the passengers and not, you know, serenade the arrival of death or whatever. But if they had actually played or sung nearer, my God, to thee. As Walter Lord points out, the British version has a completely different melody than the American version, and not everybody would have known the song by the same melody, so it would have been a cacophony as opposed to the way it’s depicted in Titanic.

01:15:19:14 – 01:15:43:11
Mark B. Perry
53 years ago, I bought an excellent CD called Titanic. Music is heard on The Fateful Voyage, and it’s by, Ian Whitcomb and his orchestra, and they do authentic recreations of the music from the ship, and they do a performance of this waltz called Autumn. And for me, I like to think that that’s the last tune that the band played.

01:15:43:14 – 01:16:14:09
Mark B. Perry
People may have said prayers, they may have sung hymns. But that’s what I prefer to think, because it’s a very haunting, beautiful melody. Another interesting thing is that two of those four collapsible boats that could have carried however many people I said earlier, they apparently floated away with nobody in them. And, so of the total of 18 boats, the 16 wooden, the two collapsible, that’s all that survived.

01:16:14:12 – 01:16:33:28
Mark B. Perry
But if those other boats floated off and there was a sea full of people flailing, it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t have done. One of the collapsible, as we’ve seen, was upside down, and the they managed to get aboard it and keep it afloat all night until they were rescued. So it’s hard to imagine why that happened.

01:16:33:28 – 01:17:06:12
Mark B. Perry
And I wonder, actually, if those boats were still lashed to the ship and went down with it. And that’s why there’s no account of those two. Two missing, collapsible boats. And then finally, the Titanic was never advertised as being unsinkable, but was generally referred to that way. And that was repeated enough that people believed that even apparently Captain Smith.

01:17:06:15 – 01:17:40:20
Mark B. Perry
But when you look at the persist, a fascination with this ship, all the TV shows, the documentaries, the coverage of that tragic submersible implosion that happened two years ago, going down to the dive, the wreck, the movies, the operas, the musicals, the books, nonfiction and fiction and on and on. As I said earlier, this was a hundred years ago, but it’s still this tragic confluence of events that happened that night and resulted in everything that it did.

01:17:40:23 – 01:17:58:21
Mark B. Perry
It it still resonates. It’s still it’s still relatable for people and it still fascinates. So it’s and and in that way, as Walter Lord points out, the Titanic herself may not have been unsinkable, but the legacy of the Titanic is certainly unsinkable.

01:17:58:24 – 01:18:17:27
Dan LeFebvre
But you mentioned at the very beginning that you had written your own version before Cameron’s version came out. If, let’s say that you were in charge of a new adaptation of Titanic story, is there anything you would change or anything based on the new information that’s come out since you wrote that originally?

01:18:18:00 – 01:18:22:10
Mark B. Perry
I probably wouldn’t do it.

01:18:22:13 – 01:18:28:25
Dan LeFebvre
Because it would be compared to Cameron’s. And that I mean, that’s that’s because that just seems to be the one that everybody’s like, this is what happened.

01:18:29:02 – 01:19:00:11
Mark B. Perry
Of course. I mean, Cameron, whatever we think of all the Jack and Rose stuff in the film, it made it a blockbuster hit. It’s a movie that I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody who hasn’t seen it, which is rare. And I think he has set the standard for generations to come. And it’s also known as the studio execs prophetically said to us, this will be the most expensive movie ever made, which at the time it was.

01:19:00:11 – 01:19:30:24
Mark B. Perry
And so they were right. Even ten years before. But, you know, especially a movie where everybody already knows the ending. That said, I do think that the script that Dudley and I wrote at and again, trying to be respectful but still tell an action adventure, time travel movie, I think that it removes one of those obstacles, because in our script, you don’t know what’s going to happen to the ship, because the hero has the moral dilemma of, do I try to save these people?

01:19:30:27 – 01:19:58:06
Mark B. Perry
Or do I let it? Do I let history take its course? And the ship founder and all of the positive, developments that came from the tragedy, like lifeboats for all, and, you know, 24 hour, wireless communications and people receiving wireless as well as sending them on the ships and the safety of life at sea regulations that are constantly being updated.

01:19:58:08 – 01:20:11:19
Mark B. Perry
So a lot of positive things resulted from this horrible tragedy. But, you know, in our movie, you don’t you don’t know what’s going to happen. So, you know, if somebody from Netflix is a fan of your show, maybe they’ll give me a call. I don’t know.

01:20:11:21 – 01:20:33:26
Dan LeFebvre
When you’re talking about the time travel. When I was, have you ever seen, Final Countdown? I think it’s called where they go back in time to, and they have that same sort of discretion, like, do we stop the attack on Pearl Harbor? Do we, do we stop this from happening? I mean, that was the first thing that came to mind when you talk about not even really knowing, are they going to let history play out?

01:20:33:26 – 01:20:41:16
Dan LeFebvre
Is this going to be that same sort of dilemma in the movie that takes an event that we all know what happened, but is it really going to happen this way in this movie?

01:20:41:19 – 01:20:45:01
Mark B. Perry
Right. Well, we wrote our script first.

01:20:45:03 – 01:20:46:00
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, yeah, I.

01:20:46:03 – 01:20:49:27
Mark B. Perry
We didn’t need it made.

01:20:49:29 – 01:20:51:16
Mark B. Perry
But we wrote.

01:20:51:18 – 01:21:08:09
Dan LeFebvre
Fair. Well, I’d love to switch away from the 53 Titanic movie to another story of yours, the your debut novel called and introducing Dexter Gaines. And I’ve got a link to that in some notes for everyone to pick up their own copy. And while they do that, can you share a sneak peek of your book?

01:21:08:12 – 01:21:34:23
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate you asking. In addition to my love for ships, I love old movies. I love old Hollywood, and I. I love historical fiction. And, as a side note, I also love time travel stories, obviously. But, and when I, when I decided to try my hand at fiction, I wanted to myself, time travel back to the twilight of Hollywood’s golden age.

01:21:34:23 – 01:22:00:19
Mark B. Perry
And I’m. This is not a time travel novel. I’m just saying, me as a writer, I wanted to experience it, to put my head in the heads of those characters and that time period. And I wanted specifically to set it in the early 1950s, when TV was a threat to the movie business and when the studio system was beginning to change and be phased out.

01:22:00:21 – 01:22:27:28
Mark B. Perry
And I wanted to tell an unconventional story that starts with one of the most well-known tropes, which is a young person coming to Hollywood to become a star. And, in my case, he’s a young man from Texas with matinee idol good looks and the unfortunate name of Dan Root, and he’s escaping a, troubled past. He arrives in town, he falls in with one of the most powerful couples in Hollywood.

01:22:28:00 – 01:22:52:01
Mark B. Perry
And it’s a hotshot producer at 20th Century Fox who produced Titanic 53. His name is Milford Langdon and his wife, Lillian Sinclair, who’s a glamorous movie star, who’s kind of on the cusp between fame and fade out, as happens to women in this cruel industry. And together, Millie and Lily, they mentor, Dan and transform him into a promising young actor.

01:22:52:01 – 01:23:20:24
Mark B. Perry
And they rechristened him Dexter Gaines. That’s going to be his big movie name. And it becomes an unconventional love story about heartbreak and redemption and sexual awakening. And it’s told as a kind of emotional mystery that set in, two time periods. It’s set in 1994, when he when Dan returns to Hollywood to confront his demons, and the early 1950s, when he, first gets his, first bitter taste of stardom.

01:23:20:26 – 01:23:47:01
Mark B. Perry
And we know from the very beginning of the book these are there are no spoilers here. We know from the very beginning of the book that his time in Hollywood ended up being a spectacular failure that ended in violence and attempted murder. But the story is about this man finding self absolution in the in the ultimate truth that he uncovers from the literal and figurative, ruins of his past.

01:23:47:01 – 01:24:21:15
Mark B. Perry
And I’m happy to say it’s been on one of Amazon’s, bestseller lists since it came out May 6th. And and I, I and the, the critical acclaim, the reviews I’ve gotten so far have been overwhelmingly positive. And I chose the early 50s for a couple of reasons. I wanted a real scene and a real movie that my character, my fictional character Dexter, could have been in when the film was shot and then could have been cut out of before it was released.

01:24:21:18 – 01:24:48:04
Mark B. Perry
And I was watching Titanic 53 for the 800th time, and the scene presented itself to me and I thought, oh, and then I worked backwards from that. And that’s how I, I originally I was going to start the book in 1950, but I shifted it to 1952. So that it could accommodate the maiden voyage of the United States, which is also featured in the book, and some behind the scenes stuff and the making of Titanic.

01:24:48:04 – 01:24:57:06
Mark B. Perry
So if you want to know more about that, I would encourage you to pick up a copy or listen to the wonderful audiobook that was performed by Daniel Henning.

01:24:57:09 – 01:25:01:08
Dan LeFebvre
Fantastic. I’ll make sure to add link that in the show notes. Thanks again so much for your time, Mark.

01:25:01:10 – 01:25:06:19
Mark B. Perry
Thank you. I as you can tell, I’m always happy to shoot the ship as we say.

01:25:07:20 – 01:25:13:04
Mark B. Perry
And this was really fun. Thanks for having me, Dan.