On The Beach (1959 Film) - Plot - Differences Between The Novel and Film

Differences Between The Novel and Film

• Nevil Shute was displeased with the final cut of the film, feeling that too many changes had been made at the expense of the story's integrity. Gregory Peck agreed with him, but, in the end, producer/director Stanley Kramer's ideas won out.
• In the novel, there are people still alive elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, and Australia is in radio contact with other places such as Montevideo and Cape Town. Commander Towers is in communication with the only other remaining active-duty U.S. Navy vessel: another submarine, USS Swordfish, which has been on duty in the Atlantic and, at the end, is based in Montevideo. Melbourne, where much of the novel is set, is the southernmost major city in the world and so will be the last such to go, but people in New Zealand, Tierra del Fuego and other, more southerly points are said to have a few additional weeks left to them. In the film, an unidentified radio newscaster says that, as far as is known, Australia is home to the last human life on the planet, and there is no USS Swordfish.
• In the novel, the submarine is named Scorpion. In the film, she is called Sawfish. This may be because there was an actual USS Scorpion under construction at the time the film was made. A nuclear submarine like her fictional counterpart, USS Scorpion was in service from 1960 to 1968, when she was lost with all hands, cause unknown.
• The novel describes Moira Davidson as a slender, petite pale blonde in her mid-twenties. In the film, she is portrayed by the tall, curvaceous, 37-year-old brunette Ava Gardner.
• A naval training base near Seattle is the location in the novel where the strange Morse signals are detected. The film uses an oil refinery in San Diego as its location.
• In the film, the matter of who might be sending the random Morse code signals is a great mystery, and gives rise to some hope that there are survivors in San Diego. In the novel, the idea of a survivor sending code is forthrightly dismissed as ridiculous — Towers says at one point that even someone who didn't know Morse code would sit there with a book and send at five words per minute — but everyone wants to know if there are survivors maintaining the electrical installation that makes sending the signals possible. (In the novel, it has been two years since the war ended.) It turns out that the power station has been running on its own but is beginning to break down for lack of maintenance, particularly lubrication. As in the film, it is shut down.
• Buildings in San Francisco are shown as undamaged in the film, while in the novel the city has been largely destroyed and the Golden Gate Bridge has fallen.
• The northernmost point of the submarine's journey in the novel is the Gulf of Alaska, while the film uses Point Barrow. In reality, ice cover would have made it impossible for the submarine to surface off Point Barrow.
• The nuclear scientist in the book is named John Osborne, a twenty-something bachelor. In the movie, he is portrayed by 60-year old Fred Astaire and is named Julian Osborn. The first name may have been changed and the surname spelled differently in the film to avoid any unintended reference to contemporary English playwright John Osborne.
• Moira Davidson and John Osborne are cousins in the novel, but Moira Davidson and Julian Osborn are former lovers in the film.
• Admiral Bridie and his secretary, Lieutenant Hosgood, are in the film but not in the novel.
• Moira and Dwight never sleep together in the novel; Dwight remains faithful to the memory of his wife. Moira, though disappointed at first, comes to respect his stance. Film director Stanley Kramer believed that audiences would not believe that Dwight, as played by Peck, could resist the charms of sex symbol Gardner, so a love scene was inserted. Shute disliked this change to his original storyline.
• The novel ends with a dying Moira sitting in her car, taking her suicide pills, while watching Scorpion head out to sea to be scuttled. Unlike the book, no mention of scuttling the sub is made in the film; instead Commander Towers's crew asks that he try to take them home to the United States, where they can die on their home soil. Although he realizes that they probably will not survive the passage, he does as they request. In the film, Ava Gardner is seen merely watching Dwight's submarine disappear and is not seen to commit suicide at that time.
• Unlike the novel, no blame is placed on whoever started the war; it is hinted that it may have been an accident, a few faulty vacuum tubes, or transistor circuits as in the similarly themed film Fail-Safe (1964).
• Dwight and Moira do not attend the "Australian Grand Prix" in the novel, unlike in the film. This was because they were vacationing in the mountains that day. However, during a radio news broadcast, they hear about John Osborne's first-place victory.
• In the film, it's understood that just about everybody will commit suicide rather than suffer from the effects of radiation poisoning. In the novel, it's stated that only about half the population will choose to do so.