Titanic Deleted Scenes Honor The Best True Stories Cut From The Movie - Screen Rant

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Titanic told a fictional story by using a real-life tragedy as the basis, and while its main characters aren’t based on real people, many other minor characters were, but their stories were cut and left as deleted scenes. James Cameron has explored a variety of genres in his career as a filmmaker, starting with horror with Piranha II: The Spawning and going through sci-fi with The Terminator and even action-comedy with True Lies. Cameron’s name is now linked to big-budget movies thanks to Avatar, but in 1997, he shared his biggest project to date and which continues to be one of his most important achievements: Titanic.

Titanic is an epic romance and disaster film based on the accounts of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. It tells the story of Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), two passengers from different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage. Over the course of just four days, Rose and Jack met and fell in love, and they also met different characters from different social classes, of which many were based on real-life people. However, as the focus of Titanic was the romance between Rose and Jack, the stories of most of those characters based on real passengers of the ship were cut from the movie, and so the final cut couldn’t honor the best true stories that came from that tragedy.

These stories are a combination of notable passengers of the ship, unbelievable survival stories, and passengers accepting their fate as their chances to survive became smaller and smaller. Here are the Titanic deleted scenes that honor the best true stories of characters based on real-life people.

The Chinese Man

Titanic deleted scene Chinese man rescue

One of Titanic’s deleted scenes shows Fifth Officer Harold Lowe (Ioan Gruffud) looking for survivors in the water. Before he got to Rose, he found a Chinese man floating on a door on all-fours. His name was Fang Lang, and he was one of the six Chinese survivors of the Titanic, but his problems didn’t stop once he was rescued from the freezing waters of the ocean. According to the BBC, once Fang Lang and the rest of the Chinese survivors arrived at the immigrant inspection station in Ellis Island in New York, they were expelled from the US due to the controversial Chinese Exclusion Act. They were sent to Cuba and later made their way to the UK, where they found jobs as sailors as there was a shortage of these as many British sailors enlisted in the army during World War I. Sadly, Fang Lang and the rest were vilified by the media following the sinking of the Titanic, and were called “creatures” and accused of hiding beneath the seats of the lifeboats and even dressing as women to get priority to board the lifeboats, but historians say there’s no proof of all these, and Fang Lang even helped row on the lifeboat that rescued him and ferry everyone on board to safety.

Charles Joughin aka The Drunk Baker

Perhaps one of the most fascinating and unbelievable survival stories from the Titanic is that of the drunk baker Jack and Rose saw on the bow as the ship was sinking, who in a deleted scene is shown throwing chairs off the ship and drinking (a lot). This man was Charles Joughin, an English-American chef and chief baker who was actually off-duty and in his bunk when the Titanic hit the iceberg. When he heard that officers were getting the lifeboats ready for launching, he sent his men to the boat deck with provisions for those in the lifeboats, and he later joined Chief Officer Henry Wilde by Lifeboat 10 to help women and children get to the lifeboats – and there was a point where he reportedly began throwing them into the lifeboats. He was later assigned as captain of that boat but chose not to board, so he went to his quarters to “have a drop of liqueur” which ended up being a tumbler half-full.

As seen in Titanic, Joughin ran toward the poop deck, climbed to the starboard side, and got hold of the safety rail as the ship went down, where he “rode it down as if it were an elevator”, making sure his head wouldn’t get under the water. Once in the water, he clutched to debris and paddled and trod water for about two hours, and he was later found by Collapsible B, led by Second Officer Charles Lightoller, but there was no room for him in the boat – however, cook Isaac Maynard was on board and held his hand as Joughin held onto the side of the boat, with his legs and feet still in the water. Joughin was finally rescued when another lifeboat appeared and later boarded the Carpathia with other survivors.

Now, after everything he went through, Joughin didn’t have much physical damage, and it’s still debated if the amount of alcohol in him helped him survive in the freezing water for so long or not, as large amounts of alcohol generally increase the risk of hypothermia, though it’s possible that all that liqueur give him a lot of courage, and he even admitted to hardly feeling the cold. Whether being drunk truly helped him survive or not, what’s true is that his story is one of the best survival ones from the Titanic tragedy.

Isidor & Ida Straus

In the final cut of Titanic, there’s a sequence showing some of the passengers that couldn’t make it to the lifeboats accepting their fates, including a mother putting her children to bed. Among those scenes, and one of the most heartbreaking and unforgettable ones, is that of an elderly, first-class couple embracing in bed as their room filled with water. These were Macy’s owner Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, who were offered a place in Lifeboat No. 8, but Isidor refused to board as long as there were women on the ship, while Ida refused to leave her husband. A deleted scene sees Isidor trying to convince Ida to get on the boat, with her telling him that they have been together for 40 years, and “where you go, I go”, which according to witnesses is what she told her husband. The Straus couple was last seen sitting on a pair of deck chairs, with witnesses describing the scene as the “most remarkable exhibition of love and devotion”. Sadly, only Isidor’s body was recovered.

Benjamin Guggenheim & JJ Astor

Two of the most notable passengers in the Titanic were Benjamin Guggenheim and JJ Astor. Guggenheim was an American businessman who boarded the Titanic with his mistress Léontine Aubart (which Rose pointed out when introducing Jack to the most notable first-class passengers) his valet Victor Giglio, his chauffeur René Pernot, and Aubart’s maid Emma Sägesser, of which only Aubart and Sägesser survived. John Jacob Astor IV was an American business magnate and the richest man aboard the ship (also noted by Rose in the same scene), who boarded with his wife Madeleine Force Astor, their valet Victor Robbins, Force’s maid Rosalie Bidois, and her nurse Caroline Louise Endres, as Force was pregnant. Very much like Aubart, Force survived as she was sent to a lifeboat but Astor stayed on the ship and died when it sank. A deleted scene from Titanic shows Guggenheim refusing a lifejacket, saying he and Giglio were “dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen”, which is what he reportedly said (and he then asked for a brandy, but that seems to be an addition for the movie). Immediately after, Astor walks by saying he’s “looking for my damn dog”, with Guggenheim shaking his hand and Astor, hopelessly, saying “Madeline asked me to look for the dog”. There were many rumors about Astor’s final actions aboard the Titanic, including one that says he opened the ship’s kennel to release the dogs, including his own, and this scene is a reference to that.

Charles Lightoller & The Upside Down Boat

Second Officer Charles Lightoller is probably best remembered as the officer who told Captain Smith that it would be difficult to see icebergs without breaking water, suggested they should board women and children to the lifeboats first, and later kept the passengers “in order” by brandishing a gun and threatening them. He’s later seen, although briefly, getting on an upturned lifeboat as the first funnel collapses, and in a deleted scene, he’s also seen in the same boat. Lightoller was very close to dying when the Titanic sank, but after fighting for his life (and getting rid of the revolver that wasn’t letting him swim properly), he saw the upturned boat with several passengers hanging to it and swam to it. Lightoller climbed in the boat and took charge, where he calmed and organized the survivors hanging to the boat, and they were eventually rescued by another lifeboat.

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About The Author

Adrienne Tyler (2609 Articles Published)

Adrienne Tyler is a features writer for Screen Rant. She is an Audiovisual Communication graduate who wanted to be a filmmaker, but life had other plans (and it turned out great). Prior to Screen Rant, she wrote for Pop Wrapped, 4 Your Excitement (4YE), and D20Crit, where she was also a regular guest at Netfreaks podcast. She was also a contributor for FanSided's BamSmackPow and 1428 Elm. Adrienne is very into films and she enjoys a bit of everything: from superhero films to heartbreaking dramas, to low-budget horror films. Every time she manages to commit to a TV show without getting bored, an angel gets its wings.

When she's not writing, you can find her trying to learn a new language, watching hockey (go Avs!), or wondering what life would have been like had Pushing Daisies, Firefly, and Limitless not been cancelled. Breakfast food is life and coffee is what makes the world go round.

Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once. It was great.