Character mistake: In the scenes in San Diego, all the scenes outside the sub are taking place during daylight hours. Immediately after the crewman relays the message about the mysterious telegraph transmission, the scene shifts to the sub. The commander asks what time it is in Melbourne and is told it is 1500 hours (3PM). But if it were that time in Melbourne, it would be 10PM in San Diego, and thus not during daylight hours. (01:33:30 - 01:38:05)
On the Beach (1959)
Plot summary
Directed by: Stanley Kramer
Starring: Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Ava Gardner
The last few million humans live in the southern hemisphere -- mainly Australia. The northern hemisphere has been almost totally vaporized by nuclear war. What's left is cooking in a lethal dose of radiation, which is drifting inexorably south. We follow the lives of an American nuclear sub commander (his wife and children dead); his Australian girlfriend, Moira; an Australian naval officer with a young wife in denial and with a newborn baby; and a scientist who feels responsible. They live their familiar lives in whatever time is left, vainly hoping to find an escape.
Guy Holladay
More mistakes in On the Beach
Moira Davidson: All I want to know is: if everybody was so smart, why didn't they know what would happen?
Dwight Towers: They did.
Moira Davidson: Well, I - I can't take it. I - oh, yes, I can take it! But, it's unfair. It's unfair because I didn't do anything. And nobody I know did anything.
Trivia: Ava Gardner was not impressed with Melbourne which she regarded as a sleepy little backwater, but her supposed quote that it was "the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world." was a journalistic invention by a sub-editor on the Sydney Morning Herald.
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