Ship of Fools

Based on the novel by Katherine Ann Porter (which became a national best-seller within days of publication), Ship Of Fools is set in 1933 aboard a luxury liner bound from Mexico to Germany. Among the many passengers are Vivian Leigh (in only her third American film, following her Oscar-winning roles in Gone With the Wind, Best Actress 1940 and A Streetcar Named Desire, Best Actress 1952) as a divorcee desperate for love and lost youth. Also starring are Simone Signoret as a Spanish Noblewoman being deported as a political prisoner, Lee Marvin as an aging, alcoholic ballplayer, and Jose Ferrer as a budding Nazi whose brutishness foreshadows the holocaust to come. Their separate but interlocking stories, beautifully observed by director Stanley Kramer, serve as a brilliant microcosm of a world on the verge of war.