"All passengers go to their cabins and put on lifejackets."

Until the infamous Big Switch of 1988 – when three television stations in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market switched network affiliation – Channel Six was a popular independent channel with the call letters WCIX (for Six…how clever).

As was often the case in those pre-cable, pre-satellite dish days, independent stations had a standard-issue mix of local programming, early (10 P.M.) newscasts, and tons of reruns of such series as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Star Trek and Hogan’s Heroes.

Channel Six was also the first Miami independent station to air the “Eight O’clock Movie” bloc; Monday through Friday nights, Miami area television watchers who weren’t tuned into first-run shows airing on the Big Three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) or were old movie buffs could watch not-so-new flicks such as Creature From the Black Lagoon, War of the Worlds, Father Goose, Operation Petticoat, Objective: Burma!, Bringing Up Baby, King Kong, Houseboat, Dear Brigitte, and Zulu.

One of the movies I most remember from the old WCIX days is 1953’s Titanic, directed by the Romanian-born Jean Negulesco, who also was an uncredited co-director of George Stevens’ unfortunate The Greatest Story Ever Told, and co-written by Charles Brackett, Richard Breen, and Walter Reisch (The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing).

I remember this movie, which is one of at least six films that bear the name of the doomed White Star liner RMS Titanic not because it is particularly well-written or even historically accurate or relevant, but rather because that’s how I first learned about the tragic ending of that storied ship’s maiden voyage in April of 1912.

As in the James Cameron’s 1997 mega-blockbuster that made big stars of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett, the 1953 melodrama mixes historical figures (John Jacob Astor, Capt. E.J. Smith, Isador Strauss) with a diverse batch of fictional characters, including an alcoholic Rev. George Headley (Richard Basehart), a young male passenger named Giff Rogers (a then-hot Robert Wagner), and a not-so-happily-married American couple, Richard and Julia Sturges (Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck), who, along with their college-age daughter and pre-teen son (Audrey Dalton, Harper Carter) are sailing to New York aboard the ocean liner touted to be unsinkable.

Unlike its better-known namesake from '97, however, the 1953-vintage film is more of a soap opera-like affair than it is a gripping if fictionalized account of the Titanic’s all-too-brief transatlantic crossing. It is, more or less, a stultifying, boring examination of a marriage on the rocks; Julia has, after all, fled London with the two kids in order to get away from Richard, who has nevertheless managed to finagle his way aboard the ship in an attempt to keep his family together.

For the first 60 minutes of this Cliffs Notes account of the mid-April cruise that gets rudely interrupted by that unexpected collision with an iceberg, Negulesco and company give us glimpses of Richard being obnoxious, arguing with Julia and gambling whatever money he has, while his daughter is being wooed by Giff and Julia drops a bombshell on her must keep the family together obsessed husband: Norman is not his son.

This revelation leads to Richard being more of jerk than ever when he starts rejecting Norman, and even worse, to trite exchanges – which were inexplicably nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay – such as this:

Richard Sturges: [after Richard has rejected his son Norman when Richard discovers that he is not Norman's true father] As you pointed out, Norman and I began as strangers. So be it.
Julia Sturges: Oh, my poor Richard. How you hate me, and for the wrong reasons. Not because I committed an offense against common decency, but because Norman isn't an elegant extension of Richard Ward Sturges. For you what happened isn't a mortal sin, it's an inexcusable breach of etiquette.
Richard Sturges: Thank you, Julia. I stand reproved.

The final third of this 90-minute non-epic features, of course, the fateful crossing of paths between the very sinkable Titanic and the iceberg late on the night of April 14, 1912. For 1953, the miniature effects were pretty good, even though the way the liner is depicted is historically inaccurate. The Titanic’s crew didn’t wear, for instance, the Royal Navy uniforms that appear throughout the film, there wasn’t a klaxon blaring while the ship took on water – there were flares shot up, but no sirens – and the vessel’s final moments are based on the original 1912 reports that said Titanic went down in one piece.

Although 1958’s A Night to Remember also depicts the sinking as it was theorized in 1912, i.e., with the liner going down in one piece, it is a better film than this one, partly because it was based on a non-fiction book by Walter Lord (published, in fact, in 1953), but because Eric Ambler’s adaptation avoids the silliness of the fictional characters and situations created by producer and co-writer Brackett, whose best work had been done in collaboration with Billy Wilder, as fans of The Lost Weekend and Sunset Blvd. would probably attest to.

Even the fictionalized 1997 film, with its equally melodramatic love story featuring Jack and Rose, is way better than this slow-moving shipwreck of a movie. Watch it if you must, but don’t blame me if you end up wanting those now-missing 90 minutes of your life back.