Sea Wife

Sea Wife (1957)

One of the Most Challenging Stories of Faith Ever Told!

In 1942, a cargo ship jammed with British evacuees from Singapore is sunk by a Japanese sub. A small lifeboat carries a beautiful woman, an army officer, a bigoted administrator, and a black seaman. Only the seaman knows the woman is a nun. The men reveal their true selves under the hardships of survival. Told in a too-long flashback frame.

Date of release
1957-08-20
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (17)
Runtime
1h 21m
Genres
Drama, Romance, Thriller, War
Director
Bob McNaught

Casting

Interesting facts

Sea Wife is a 1957 British CinemaScope drama thriller war film directed by Bob McNaught and starring Joan Collins and Richard Burton. It was written by George K. Burke based on the 1955 James Maurice Scott novel Sea-Wyf and Biscuit. It was photographed in DeLuxe Color. Taken in Jamaica, the film follows a group of survivors from a torpedoed British refugee ship.

Production

Richard Burton accepted this acting assignment only because, at the time, Roberto Rossellini had been slotted by the Fox studio as the film's director. However, before actual shooting began in Jamaica, Rossellini, whose script would have invited censorship problems, bowed out of the production and was replaced by Bob McNaught.

Sensing early during shooting that the film would wind up a dud, Burton concentrated his energies on two objectives: Joan Collins, who rejected his advances, and drinking, to fight insomnia. Yet despite waking every morning at 5 am with a terrible hangover, he was still able to contribute a full day's work.

During initial exhibition of Sea Wife, The Daily Telegraph distributed miniaturized copies of the personal ads placed by "Biscuit" as a means of promoting itself as well as the film.

The deserted-island scenes for this movie were photographed at the same Ocho Rios, Jamaica, location that had previously been used in such pictures as Saturday Island (1953) and All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953). The city of Kingston stood in for Singapore during early scenes of the film; and before the episode involving the torpedoed ship was shot, Richard Burton participated in a cricket match with some of the actors and extras who were abou…

As noted by The New York Times, the opening credits for Sea Wife state that the film was "adapted from the novel 'Sea-Wyf' by J. M. Scott"—but the person or persons who did the adaptation is/are not identified.

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