It stars Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix, alongside Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee.

[4][5][6] Eight British and American civilians, service members and United States Merchant Mariners are adrift in a lifeboat after their ship and a German U-boat sink each other in combat.

However, the others object, with radioman Stanley, wealthy industrialist Rittenhouse and columnist Connie Porter succeeding in arguing that he be allowed to stay.

Porter is thrilled at having photographed the battle, but her photo camera is the first of her many possessions to be lost overboard in a succession of incidents.

Mrs. Higley, a young British woman whose infant child is dead when they are pulled from the water, must be tied down to stop her from hurting herself.

Kovac takes charge, rationing the little food and water they have, but Willi, who has been consulting a concealed compass and reveals that he speaks English, wrests control away from him in a storm.

A fish bites, but Joe sights a ship, and in the rush for the oars, the line goes overboard and the bracelet is lost.

Before a launch can pick them up, both it and the supply ship are sunk by gunfire from a US warship and a brief battle is waged between the two which nearly destroys the lifeboat.

Hitchcock was to direct two films for the studio, but the second was never made, apparently because Fox was unhappy with the length of time taken to finish production on Lifeboat.

Other writers who worked on various drafts of the script include Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville, as well as MacKinlay Kantor, Patricia Collinge, Albert Mannheimer, and Marian Spitzer.

[12] In the 1940s, African-American actor and playwright Sidney Easton sued 20th Century Fox, for having used his play, Lifeboat #13, as the basis for the film.

[9] Hume Cronyn suffered two cracked ribs and nearly drowned when he was caught under a water-activator making waves for a storm scene.

[9][12] The film has no musical score during the narrative (apart from the singing of the U-boat captain and of Gus, accompanied by flute); the Fox studio orchestra was used only for the opening and closing credits.

Although he originally considered posing as a body floating past the lifeboat – an approach he later considered for his cameo in Frenzy – Hitchcock was inspired by his own success with weight loss and decided to pose for "before" and "after" photos in an advertisement for a fictional weight-loss drug, "Reduco", shown in a newspaper that was in the boat.

The production credits on the film were as follows: Variety praised the film upon its release, saying, "John Steinbeck‘s devastating indictment of the nature of Nazi bestiality, at times an almost clinical, dissecting room analysis, emerges as powerful adult motion picture fare.

Despite that it’s a slow starter, the picture, from the beginning, leaves a strong impact and, before too long, develops into the type of suspenseful product with which Hitchcock has always been identified.

"[22] Film critic Manny Farber wrote in February 14, 1944's The New Republic: "Lifeboat is eminently theatrical, but not because it is dialogue-heavy and confined to a single set.

Its theatricality lies in the fact that it is entirely an arrangement in which the audience does not, as it should, seem outside of the event, but is the main person in the boat … The event that is supposed to be taking place falls away from conviction at every point and for this reason: it simply is not taking place in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean but right in front of you on a stage … The characters are no longer driven and provoked by the situation but by the audience.

[9] Hitchcock responded to the criticism by explaining that the film's moral was that the Allies needed to stop bickering and work together to win the war, and he defended the portrayal of the German character, saying, "I always respect my villain, build[ing] him into a redoubtable character that will make my hero or thesis more admirable in defeating him or it."

Actor Canada Lee testified that he had attempted to round out the character by revising dialogue, primarily eliminating repeated "yessir"s and "nossir"s that sounded subservient,[24] and cutting some actions.

[24] Historian Rebecca Sklaroff, while writing that Joe's role was more "tokenistic" than black roles in the wartime films Sahara and Bataan, noted that Joe was also depicted as compassionate, dependable, and heroic, the only cast member stepping forward to disarm the second German sailor rescued.

[citation needed] NBC broadcast a one-hour radio adaptation of the film on Screen Directors Playhouse on November 16, 1950.

Moving the action from a lifeboat to a spaceship's escape capsule in the year 2169, the remake starred Ron Silver, who also directed, Robert Loggia, and CCH Pounder.