final voyage 1960

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The Last Voyage (1960)

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FIND YOUR S.Q.! What is your Suspense Quotient? How Much Suspense Can You Take?

The S. S. Claridon is scheduled for her five last voyages after thirty-eight years of service. After an explosion in the boiler room, Captain Robert Adams is reluctant to evacuate the steamship. While the crew fights to hold a bulkhead between the flooded boiler room and the engine room and avoid the sinking of the vessel, the passenger Cliff Henderson struggles against time trying to save his beloved wife Laurie Henderson, who is trapped under a steel beam in her cabin, with the support of the crew member Hank Lawson.

Andrew L. Stone

Director, Screenplay

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Robert Stack

Cliff Henderson

Dorothy Malone

Laurie Henderson

George Sanders

Capitaine Robert Adams

Edmond O'Brien

Second Engineer Walsh

Woody Strode

Hank Lawson

Jack Kruschen

Chief Engineer Pringle

Joel Marston

Third Officer Ragland

George Furness

Third Officer Osborne

Marshall Kent

Quartermaster

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Original Language English

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The Last Voyage

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Robert Stack (Cliff Henderson) Dorothy Malone (Laurie Henderson) George Sanders (Captain Robert Adams) Edmond O'Brien (Second Engineer Walsh) Woody Strode (Hank Lawson) Jack Kruschen (Chief Engineer Pringle) Joel Marston (Third Officer Ragland) George Furness (Third Officer Osborne) Richard Norris (3rd Engineer Cole) Marshall Kent (Quartermaster)

Andrew L. Stone

After a boiler explosion aboard an aging ocean liner, a man struggles to free his injured wife from the wreckage of their cabin and ensure the safety of their four-year-old daughter as the ship begins to sink.

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The Last Voyage (1960)

Decades before James Cameron sank the Titanic and twelve years before Irwin Allen took us on The Poseidon Adventure , writer/director Andrew L. Stone took a pioneering step into the disaster film genre. While Cameron and Allen certainly had more pyrotechnics at their disposal, Stone does a remarkable job utilizing a real luxury liner and building suspense throughout The Last Voyage ‘s brisk 91-minute run-time. In the second shot of the movie, the captain is informed of a fire in the engine room, and the disaster only grows from there.

Stone also predates Allen’s proclivity for all-star casts. George Sanders ( All About Eve ) plays the ship’s captain, reluctant to cause any alarm among the ship’s guests until it’s almost too late. Robert Stack ( Unsolved Mysteries ) spends the entire movie trying to rescue his wife, Dorothy Malone ( Written on the Wind ), from a pile of collapsed steel and wood. If Sanders and Malone aren’t enough Oscar glory for you, the film also stars Edmond O’Brien ( The Barefoot Contessa ) as the beleaguered ship’s engineer. Woody Strode is memorable as an engine room worker who proves invaluable to Stack’s rescue operation.

Without a budget to offer more special or visual effects, the screenplay relies a bit too much on ‘running here’ and ‘running there’ to find things or to ask the captain a question. But if you had to make a disaster movie on a budget, at a time when they weren’t yet a proven sub-genre, you probably couldn’t do much better than The Last Voyage . And in what other movie will you ever get to see Robert Stack dodge a falling grand piano?

Oscar Nominee : Best Special Effects

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The Last Voyage (1960) – A Review

A review of the 1960 disaster film The Last Voyage about the sinking of a cruise ship starring Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Edmond O’Brien and Woody Strobe

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Cliff Henderson (Robert Stack), wife Laurie (Dorothy Malone) and daughter Jill (Tammy Marihugh) are enjoying a leisurely cruise onboard the SS Claridon headed to Japan. They expect to wile away the days by playing bingo, watching puppet shows and to get in some romantic dancing between Cliff and Laurie.

Trouble erupts when an explosion in the engine room cripples the Claridon and she begins to take on more water than the pumps can handle. Laurie gets pinned under debris and now Cliff is on a frantic mission to save her.

Panic begins to erupt all over the ship. The ships engineer (Edmond O’Brien) and his team fruitlessly attempt to buy more time and make repairs, but it dawns on him it’s a hopeless situation. As the water levels begin to rise the stubborn captain (George Sanders) is unconvinced of his ships fate and to make it a priority to get the passengers into lifeboats.

But it becomes increasingly clear to everyone onboard there isn’t much time to survive on the sinking Claridon.  

The Last Voyage is one of those earlier precursor’s of the 1970’s disaster craze. Watching it you can’t help but see similarities between it and   The Poseidon Adventure . It makes me wonder if Irwin Allen took inspiration from it before he set out to make his sinking disaster epic.

Stack is very good as he runs around trying to get help from anyone and trying to think of any way to free his wife. Frustration mounts as he’s turned away or ignored completely by the ships crew who are dealing with the flooding. Tension amps up waiting to see what he will do next.

O’Brien is such a reliable character actor whenever he shows up and once again he delivers a strong supporting performance. Barking orders and yelling at anyone within earshot. And Sanders is such a stubborn fool at some points you just want to slap him.

While watching it I was very impressed with the sets. The damaged engine room, the huge flooding dinner hall, the passengers scrambling on deck for lifeboats. I kept thinking, ‘wow this all looks really, really good. A lot of this doesn’t look like it was filmed on soundstages’.

It wasn’t until after watching it and looking up information about the movie I learned   The Last Voyage was filmed on a real ship that was scheduled to be scrapped. It was leased by the studio and director Andrew L. Stone partially flooded portions of it for his movie. Despite many trivia listings about the movie saying the ship was actually sunk for the filming – that’s not true. It was only partially sunk and after filming was completed it was taken away to the scrapyard.

There is a silly moment when one of the ships funnel collapses and it seems to come out of nowhere. It was like they figured it would be cool to do, but it doesn’t look very realistic that it would happen at that moment. But what the heck, that’s one quibble amongst a lot of effective flooding scenes. Some of its sequences put modern day over-the-top effect-laden disaster movies to shame.

I’m somewhat surprised the movie doesn’t get more talked about or given more attention. I found it a surprisingly good suspenseful film that has some splendid realistic effects. It’s well worth a watch for disaster movie fans.

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4 thoughts on “ the last voyage (1960) – a review ”.

This movie does sound cool, I shall definitely keep it in mind! Good review! 🙂

I remember a shot of survivors exiting the ship as part of it was sinking. I think the door got submerged just as they went through it.

And I thought "Wow, that's a great shot." Most impressive since this was well before CGI.

I'm reminded of that story where Selznic wanted Alfred Hitchcock's American debut to be a movie about the Titanic. Couldn't do it because they couldn't find a ship to sink. But this movie gives us a taste of what could have been.

Caught this on cable a while back. Was into it primarily because of Woody Strode. After reading his biography, I was interested in the films he acted in besides "Spartacus" and "Once Upon a Time in the West."

This was a well-made, enjoyable flick with great performances all-around. Thanks for reviewing this.

I do seem to remember the initial explosion, and what is an obvious dummy in a ball gown going flying up in the air in a most dummy-like way. That, and the aggravating little girl are what i remember about this movie.

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

Suspense is spun out almost to the edge of audience hysteria in this terror-at-sea thriller.

It's great on raising the level of tension, and its special effects and unique filming style are also great.

A nifty twist on a familiar theme

Additional Info

• Genre : Drama, Action
• Release Date : February 19, 1960
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : Stereo

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Film / The Last Voyage

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The Last Voyage is a 1960 Metrocolor American disaster film written and directed by Andrew L. Stone. It stars Robert Stack , Dorothy Malone , George Sanders and Edmond O'Brien.

This film features examples of:

• Anyone Can Die : Unlike modern disaster epics, this is mostly averted; the only really unexpected death in the entire movie is the Captain, crushed by a falling funnel.
• Chekhov's Gunman : The unnamed teenaged passenger who tries to help Cliff free the trapped Laurie. He's initially just someone to cover some ground that Cliff can't do himself to show that they can't find a torch to free Laurie and then leave once things get hopeless. Then, at the end of the movie, he shows up in a lifeboat coming from the rescue ship with an acetylene torch, having alerted them to Laurie's struggles just in time to save her.
• Death by Materialism : Downplayed, but Captain Adams is crushed by a falling smokestack while trying to retrieve the ship's logbook and other papers during a frantic evacuation.
• Driven to Suicide : Laurie attempts to cut her wrists when she thinks there is no hope of rescue before she drowns. She's unable to go through with it.
• Fight to Survive : The SS Claridon suffers a boiler explosion that damages the ship so much that it begins to sink. One passenger is trapped in her cabin by a falling beam and her husband and a crewman must cut her free before the ship goes under.
• Flawless Token : Lawson is the only prominent African-American character and might be the bravest, most levelheaded character in the movie.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick : While Captain Adams has some Reasonable Authority Figure moments, First Officer Osborne reacts to the boiler explosion more quickly and decisively than his superior.
• Ignored Expert : Another aversion from later disaster movies. The captain is guilty of over-caution at times, but he does order the evacuation in time to save the passengers and (most) of the crew.
• The Last Title : The Last Voyage .
• No Antagonist : Nobody is behaving villainously; the ship they are on is simply old and thus at much higher risk for critical failures.
• No Name Given : The young passenger who tries to help Cliff free Laurie in the first act is unnamed.
• Outrun the Fireball : Averted, as the film goes for suspense far more than for action sequences.
• Primal Fear : Laurie, as the water begins to rise around her, faces drowning slowly and alone.
• Reasonable Authority Figure : The Captain, quite unlike many other shipboard examples of this trope. He is slow to react to the unfolding disaster, but he listens to his crew and when it becomes obvious the ship is doomed, orders everyone to evacuate. Nearly all of them make it off the boat safely. But not him.
• Retirony : Captain Adams is on his last sailing voyage before being promoted to commodore of the line, and the trope is played straight when he dies at the end of the movie.
• Sinking Ship Scenario : The film centers on the sinking of an aged ocean liner in the Pacific Ocean following an explosion in the boiler room.
• Too Dumb to Live : The Chief Engineer decides, with steam pouring out a dozen different cracks in the stricken boiler, to start whacking the stuck safety value atop it to try and open it. He blows himself to Ludicrous Gibs instead.
• Trash the Set : The reason the movie has such realistic effects of the cruise ship sinking is simple: the producers really did sink a ship, the The SS Île de France
• Ur-Example : One of them. Though preceded by A Night to Remember as the first major disaster epic, it took a very different course then a lot of what was to follow.
• Walking Shirtless Scene : Lawson is the most muscular character in the movie and sheds his shirt while working to aid in the rescue and damage control efforts.
• What Happened to the Mouse? : The last scene of the plucky Second Engineer Walsh - a fairly important character in the story - is jumping overboard and swimming away when the ship enters its final death throes.
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Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

THE LAST VOYAGE

After a boiler explosion aboard an aging ocean liner, a man struggles to free his injured wife from the wreckage of their cabin and ensure the safety of their four-year-old daughter as the ship begins to sink.

Watch The Last Voyage

• 1 hr 31 min
• 6.7   (2,407)

The Last Voyage is a 1960 disaster film directed by Andrew L. Stone, starring Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, and George Sanders. The film tells the story of an aging ocean liner, the S.S. Claridon, which is forced to make its final voyage before being sold to a scrapyard. The story takes place during the ship's final days, as it makes its way from New York to Europe, carrying a wide variety of passengers and crew.

One of the primary threads in the film is the relationship between the Claridon's captain, Robert Adams (played by Robert Stack), and his wife, Laurie (played by Dorothy Malone). Adams is a seasoned veteran of the sea, having spent many years navigating the world's oceans. Laurie, on the other hand, is a nervous and jittery passenger, clearly out of her element on the massive ship.

As the Claridon heads out to sea, trouble soon develops. A massive explosion in the engine room causes the ship to take on water and begin sinking. Panic quickly sets in among the passengers and crew, as they realize that their lives are in grave danger. Adams and his officers do everything in their power to maintain order and assist in the evacuation of the ship's passengers.

Throughout the film, we see the various characters dealing with the fallout of the disaster in their own way. Some are heroic, bravely helping others to safety, while others are cowardly and self-interested, looking out for their own survival at the expense of those around them. The film explores the many shades of human behavior in the face of catastrophe, painting a nuanced portrait of humanity at its best and worst.

One of the strengths of The Last Voyage is its impressive attention to detail. The film was shot on an actual ocean liner, the Ile de France, which was undergoing the process of being dismantled for scrap metal. The filmmakers utilized the ship's actual facilities, such as its engine room and dining hall, to create an authentic sense of place. The director even had his actors perform many of their own stunts, adding to the film's realism.

The Last Voyage is also notable for its use of technicolor, which gives the film a bright, vivid look that is unusual for a disaster movie. The film's color palette adds a layer of beauty to the otherwise bleak story, making it a visually striking work of art.

Another highlight of the film is the performances. Robert Stack gives a commanding turn as the captain of the ship, projecting a sense of authority and competence that anchors the film. Dorothy Malone brings a vulnerability to her role as the captain's wife, adding a human element to the story. George Sanders also stands out as a wealthy passenger who embodies the worst aspects of human nature.

In conclusion, The Last Voyage is a gripping disaster film that explores the complexities of the human psyche under extreme pressure. With its attention to detail, impressive use of technicolor, and strong performances, it is a must-see for fans of the genre.

The Last Voyage is a 1960 action movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 31 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.7.

• Genres Action Adventure Drama Thriller
• Cast Robert Stack Dorothy Malone George Sanders
• Director Andrew L. Stone
• Release Date 1960
• MPAA Rating Approved
• Runtime 1 hr 31 min
• Language English
• IMDB Rating 6.7   (2,407)

• Movies & TV
• Featured Categories
• Action & Adventure

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Product Description

An engrossing drama of a luxury ship that goes down at sea, and the inner turmoil that the crew and passengers face. The Last Voyage (1960) tells the story of an aged ocean liner, SS Claridon that meets destruction in the Pacific Ocean. Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack portray Laurie and Cliff Henderson, who are relocating to Tokyo, Japan. The ship's faulty boilers explode, and Laurie is trapped in their stateroom by wreckage. The film primarily deals with Cliff trying to free his wife and daughter (Tammy Marihugh) from their wrecked stateroom before the ship sinks. George Sanders also stars as Captain Robert Adams, Edmond O'Brien as Second Engineer Walsh, and Woody Strode as Hank Lawson, a crewman who helps rescue the endangered couple. Captain Adams is portrayed as a rather arrogant and clueless man who likes to impress his passengers and intimidate his crew and officers. The film begins with a fire in the second-class dining room, a fact Captain Adams keeps hidden from the passengers. Second Engineer Walsh lost his father on the RMS Titanic, and has a premonition that the Claridon is an unsafe ship.

Product details

• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.78:1
• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ Unrated (Not Rated)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 5.75 x 0.5 inches; 3.2 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 79425
• Director ‏ : ‎ Andrew L. Stone
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ DVD, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Color, NTSC, Subtitled
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 31 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ October 24, 2006
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien, Woody Strode
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, French, Spanish
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Warner Home Video
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000HEWEF8
• Writers ‏ : ‎ Andrew L. Stone
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #12,401 in Action & Adventure DVDs
• #21,667 in Drama DVDs

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• Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Dennis Schwartz It's great on raising the level of tension, and its special effects and unique filming style are also great.
• rec.arts.movies.reviews Shane Burridge A nifty twist on a familiar theme

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A gripping account of Captain Cook’s final voyage

‘the wide wide sea,’ by hampton sides, recounts cook’s search for the northwest passage.

I’m grateful to the Santa Fe bookseller who put Hampton Sides’s “Blood and Thunder” into my hands some years ago. With Kit Carson’s death-defying exploits at its center, the book revolutionized my concept of America’s westward expansion. Sides’s latest effort, “ The Wide Wide Sea ,” is a gripping account of Captain James Cook’s final voyage.

Cook is a controversial historical figure, especially in light of increasing consciousness about the evils of colonialism. Yet he continues to evoke curiosity and attention. As recently as last month, Popular Mechanics published an article about the rediscovery of his curated shell collection.

Sides does not skirt the rapacious appetites of the British and other European monarchies. The magic of this book, however, is in the details of the explorer’s life at sea. Sides relies on Cook’s writings as well those of other sailors on the voyage. Based on the selected bibliography he includes, Sides’s research was voluminous.

Cook had made two world voyages by the time the book opens. He was a celebrity, having “risen from virtually nothing.” At sea, he’d bucked the Royal Navy’s tradition of violence and cruelty. He’d figured out how to avoid scurvy and brought home information of incomparable value, had mastered new nautical instruments and served as an expert scientist, anthropologist and navigator. His mapmaking skills were superlative.

After only six months at home, he took off again, in search of the elusive Northwest Passage . His third expedition consisted of 180 people in two wooden ships, the Resolution and the Discovery. They left England in July 1776.

In addition to Cook’s story, other narratives weave through the book. One particularly fascinating account is that of Mai, a native of Raiatea, a volcanic island 130 miles northwest of present-day Tahiti. When Mai was a boy, warriors from Bora Bora invaded Raiatea, murdered his father, seized his family’s land and enslaved much of the population, forcing his family to take refuge in Tahiti. In 1767, a teenage Mai witnessed the English navy’s firepower when Samuel Wallis, a British navigator, arrived in the HMS Dolphin and fought the Tahitians. Vowing to avenge his people against Bora Bora, Mai concluded that English guns were the way to go. When Cook sailed in seven years later on his second Pacific voyage, Mai requested passage, becoming the first Polynesian to set foot on English soil.

Mai’s story reads as metaphor for colonialism. He learned English and was wined and dined as a celebrity. Although horrified by London’s grinding poverty, unthinkable in his homeland, he wore the local dress and adopted the manners of a foppish English gentleman. He met King George, who provided Mai and Cook with a large assortment of farm animals and domesticated birds, to cement the king’s footprint around the globe. No surprise — the animals were hell to care for. Mai had been in search of heavy artillery from King George, but for the voyage was given only an “arsenal of muskets [and] broadswords,” as well as gifts that would have been unimaginable to the Polynesians — cut-glass bows, laced hats, crockery and telescopes. If not the cache Mai hoped for, it does reflect the English royalty’s strategy for winning friends.

It isn’t possible in this short space to describe Sides’s hair-raising accounts of the journey, an itinerary that led from England to present-day South Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Hawaii, north to Alaska and beyond, and back to Hawaii. Just repairing and re-provisioning the ship required herculean efforts. The physical threats included days-long ocean storms, fog so thick it wasn’t possible to see from stern to bow and cold temperatures against which no garment could protect.

By the time Cook reached Polynesia in October 1777, the rat infestation was so great that “the vermin had all but taken over the holds, gangways, and lower decks.” At Moorea, 12 miles from Tahiti, Cook created a “swinging bridge” from ropes to lure the rats on land. A few made it to the beaches, introducing Polynesia to the European black rats, which remain a “scourge” today.

Cook understood that his men were vectors for infection. An ascetic, he occasionally stopped his men from going ashore to prevent the spread of venereal disease. At times he restrained his crew from violence; at other times, his temper was uncontrollable. After a series of petty thefts from the ship by Tongo natives, Cook ordered brutal floggings and had a villager’s ears cut off. In punishment for one Moorea person stealing a goat, Cook had the village and its cropland torched, along with its canoes. Sides suggests that over the course of this final voyage, Cook may have been suffering declining mental faculties.

By August 1778, the two ships were in the Arctic Ocean sailing toward Siberia. Cook was careful, “zagging outward if the pincers of ice began to close in on his vessels.” When he finally concluded there was no Northwest Passage, he decided to salvage his “defeat,” by doing “reconnaissance work in Hawai’i.” A man onboard wrote, “Those who have been amongst ice, in the dread of being enclosed in it, and in so late a season, can be the best judge of the general joy this news gave.”

People tend to know Cook was killed by native people in Hawaii. The events leading up to his death are gruesome and upsetting, including “cannibalism” made more explicable in Sides’s measured account.

This book captures a time when Europeans were finding unfathomable new worlds. Armed with extensive research and terrific writing, Sides re-creates the newness of the experience, the vast differences in and among Indigenous cultures, and natural phenomena that were as terrifying as they were wondrous.

Martha Anne Toll’s prizewinning debut novel, “Three Muses,” was published in 2022. Her second novel, “Duet for One,” is forthcoming in early 2025.

The Wide Wide Sea

Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

By Hampton Sides

Doubleday. 432 pp. $35

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