Voyage of the Damned
Encyclopedia
Voyage of the Damned is the title of a 1974 book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts
, which was the basis of a 1976 drama film with the same title.
The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner
carrying Jewish refugees from Germany
to Cuba
in 1939.
by Stuart Rosenberg
, with a screenplay
by David Butler
and Steve Shagan
. It was produced by ITC Entertainment
.
The cast included Faye Dunaway
, Laura Gemser
, Lee Grant
, Oskar Werner
, Sam Wanamaker
, Lynne Frederick
, Luther Adler
, Wendy Hiller
, Julie Harris
, Nehemiah Persoff
, Paul Koslo
, Jonathan Pryce
, Max von Sydow
, Malcolm McDowell
, Orson Welles
, James Mason
, Katharine Ross
, José Ferrer
, Ben Gazzara
, Fernando Rey
, Maria Schell
, Janet Suzman
, Helmut Griem
and Denholm Elliott
.
It was also the final film starring Oskar Werner
.
, Germany
in 1939, carrying 937 Jews from Germany
to Havana
, Cuba
. By this time, the Jews had suffered the rise of anti-Semitism
and realised that this might be their last chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers who gradually become aware that their passage has been an exercise in propaganda
and that they were never intended to disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be used as examples before the world. A Nazi
official said that when the whole world has refused to accept them as refugee
s, no country can blame Germany for the fate of the Jews.
The government of Cuba refuses entry to the passengers, and as the liner waits near the Florida
coastline, they learn that the United States
has also rejected them. They have no choice but to return to Europe
. The captain tells a confidante that he has received a letter signed by 200 passengers saying they will join hands and jump into the sea rather than return to Germany. He says he is intending to deliberately run the liner aground on a reef off the southern coast of England.
Shortly before the film's end, it is revealed that the government
s of the United Kingdom
, Belgium
, France
and the Netherlands
have each agreed to accept a share of the passengers as refugees. As they cheer and clap at the good news, footnotes disclose the fates of some of the main characters, and reveal that more than 600 of the ship's 937 passengers ultimately lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps. However, the book presents a much lower number: By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimated that about 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, they estimated that of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain. (See the relevant article.)
In 1998, Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
traced the survivors from the voyage. The conclusion of their research was that a slightly higher total of 254 refugees died at the hands of the Nazis.
:
It was nominated for six Golden Globe awards, including "Best Picture". Katharine Ross
won the award for "Best Actress in a Supporting Role".
Max Morgan-Witts
Max Morgan-Witts is a British producer, director and author of Canadian origin.Morgan-Witts was a Director/Producer at Granada TV. He directed hundreds of popular television shows for Granada, including: 50 episodes of The Army Game, a forerunner of the American show Bilko and at the time Britain's...
, which was the basis of a 1976 drama film with the same title.
The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner
Ocean liner
An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes .Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes referred to as...
carrying Jewish refugees from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
in 1939.
Film version
The film was directedFilm director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by Stuart Rosenberg
Stuart Rosenberg
Stuart Rosenberg was an American film and television director whose notable works included the movies Cool Hand Luke , Voyage of the Damned , The Amityville Horror , and The Pope of Greenwich Village .-Early life and career:Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Rosenberg studied Irish...
, with a screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
by David Butler
David Butler (screenwriter)
David Butler was a Scottish writer of numerous screenplays and teleplays who won an Emmy Award and was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe...
and Steve Shagan
Steve Shagan
Steve Shagan is an American novelist, screenplay writer, TV and Movie producer. He was born in 1927 in New York. He wrote the novel, the screenplay and also co produced, Save the Tiger, the 1974 movie, for which Jack Lemmon won the Best Actor Academy Award and Shagan was nominated for Best...
. It was produced by ITC Entertainment
ITC Entertainment
The Incorporated Television Company was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.-History:...
.
The cast included Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway is an American actress.Dunaway won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Network after receiving previous nominations for the critically acclaimed films Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown...
, Laura Gemser
Laura Gemser
Laurette Marcia "Laura" Gemser is a Dutch-based actress of Indo descent, now Italian citizen. She is known for her work with director Joe D'Amato and Bruno Mattei, in particular, for doing a set of exploitation-style and Black Emanuelle films.Gemser has also been credited as Moira Chen, most...
, Lee Grant
Lee Grant
Lee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the...
, Oskar Werner
Oskar Werner
-Early life:Born Oskar Josef Bschließmayer in Vienna, Werner spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother, who entertained him with stories about the Burgtheater, the Austrian state theatre, where he was accepted at the age of eighteen by Lothar Müthel. He was the youngest person ever...
, Sam Wanamaker
Sam Wanamaker
Samuel Wanamaker was an American film director and actor and is credited as the person most responsible for the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London...
, Lynne Frederick
Lynne Frederick
Lynne Maria Frederick was an English film actress. In a career spanning ten years she made about thirty films or television drama appearances, but she is best remembered as the last wife of Peter Sellers. She was married twice after his death.-Early life:Frederick was born in Hillingdon,...
, Luther Adler
Luther Adler
Luther Adler was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway.-Life and career:...
, Wendy Hiller
Wendy Hiller
Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...
, Julie Harris
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...
, Nehemiah Persoff
Nehemiah Persoff
Nehemiah Persoff is an American film and television character actor. He was born in Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate.Born in what is now part of Israel, Persoff emigrated with his family to the United States in 1929...
, Paul Koslo
Paul Koslo
Paul Koslo is a German-Canadian actor.-Career:Koslo started his career in such 1970's cult films as Nam's Angels a.k.a. The Losers, , Mr. Majestyk, Vanishing Point, Joe Kidd and The Stone Killer...
, Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce, CBE is a Welsh stage and film actor and singer. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and meeting his longtime partner English actress Kate Fahy in 1974, he began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s...
, Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow is a Swedish actor. He has also held French citizenship since 2002. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more...
, Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...
, Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, James Mason
James Mason
James Neville Mason was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes .- Early life :Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the...
, Katharine Ross
Katharine Ross
Katharine Juliet Ross is an American film and stage actress. Trained at the San Francisco Workshop, she is perhaps best known for her role as Elaine Robinson in the 1967 film The Graduate, opposite Dustin Hoffman, which won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and her role...
, José Ferrer
José Ferrer
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...
, Ben Gazzara
Ben Gazzara
-Early life:Gazzara was born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He actually lived on E. 29th Street and participated in the drama program at...
, Fernando Rey
Fernando Rey
Fernando Casado Arambillet , best known as Fernando Rey, was a Spanish film, theatre, and TV actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States...
, Maria Schell
Maria Schell
Maria Margarethe Anna Schell was an Austrian/Swiss actress, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1956 for Gervaise....
, Janet Suzman
Janet Suzman
Dame Janet Suzman, DBE is a South African-born-British actress and director.-Early life:Janet Suzman was born in Johannesburg to a Jewish family, the daughter of Betty and Saul Suzman, a wealthy importer of tobacco....
, Helmut Griem
Helmut Griem
Helmut Griem was a German actor.Griem was primarily a German-speaking stage actor, appearing at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Staatliches Schauspielbühnen in Berlin, in the Munich Kammerspiele, and finally in the...
and Denholm Elliott
Denholm Elliott
Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...
.
It was also the final film starring Oskar Werner
Oskar Werner
-Early life:Born Oskar Josef Bschließmayer in Vienna, Werner spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother, who entertained him with stories about the Burgtheater, the Austrian state theatre, where he was accepted at the age of eighteen by Lothar Müthel. He was the youngest person ever...
.
Plot
Based on actual events, the story told of the MS St. Louis, which departed from HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1939, carrying 937 Jews from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. By this time, the Jews had suffered the rise of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
and realised that this might be their last chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers who gradually become aware that their passage has been an exercise in propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
and that they were never intended to disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be used as examples before the world. A Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
official said that when the whole world has refused to accept them as refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s, no country can blame Germany for the fate of the Jews.
The government of Cuba refuses entry to the passengers, and as the liner waits near the Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
coastline, they learn that the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
has also rejected them. They have no choice but to return to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. The captain tells a confidante that he has received a letter signed by 200 passengers saying they will join hands and jump into the sea rather than return to Germany. He says he is intending to deliberately run the liner aground on a reef off the southern coast of England.
Shortly before the film's end, it is revealed that the government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
s of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
have each agreed to accept a share of the passengers as refugees. As they cheer and clap at the good news, footnotes disclose the fates of some of the main characters, and reveal that more than 600 of the ship's 937 passengers ultimately lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps. However, the book presents a much lower number: By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimated that about 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, they estimated that of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain. (See the relevant article.)
In 1998, Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
traced the survivors from the voyage. The conclusion of their research was that a slightly higher total of 254 refugees died at the hands of the Nazis.
Awards
The film was nominated for three Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
:
- Best Supporting ActressAcademy Award for Best Supporting ActressPerformance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
- Lee GrantLee GrantLee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the... - Best Original ScoreAcademy Award for Best Original ScoreThe Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
- Lalo SchifrinLalo SchifrinLalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations... - Best Writing Adapted ScreenplayAcademy Award for Writing Adapted ScreenplayThe Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
- David Butler and Steve Shagan.
It was nominated for six Golden Globe awards, including "Best Picture". Katharine Ross
Katharine Ross
Katharine Juliet Ross is an American film and stage actress. Trained at the San Francisco Workshop, she is perhaps best known for her role as Elaine Robinson in the 1967 film The Graduate, opposite Dustin Hoffman, which won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and her role...
won the award for "Best Actress in a Supporting Role".
See also
- Anti-semitismAnti-SemitismAntisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
- The HolocaustThe HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
- Jewish refugeesJewish refugeesIn the course of history, Jewish populations have been expelled or ostracised by various local authorities and have sought asylum from antisemitism numerous times...
- Refugees
- MS St. Louis