First, I thought it was unrealistic that a 17 year old girl in 1912 could just walk away from the Titanic and start a new life in Hollywood as an actress. She had no money (except the diamond, which she obviously never sold), and no experience of surviving on her own. Then, if she did become an actress, how is it that Rose's mother didn't discover through publicity that her daughter was still alive? What's your theory? That Rose had a superior survival instinct since Titanic, and never made it past bit player status to get enoug

-- C. Rieger (crieger@rogers.wave.bc.ca), February 22, 1998

Answers

Many people in that day and age did that. It was based on necessity and poverty. Unlike today, a 17 year old had to be out supporting the family where as today, and also so as to be not too critical, when I was 17, a job is a means to get some spending money, save for college or whatever. I have a 19 year old in college that works very hard to achieve just that but in those days, it was everybody works and everybody contributes!

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), February 23, 1998.

Look at the life of Molly Brown. She did exactly that. Picked up and moved out west, married a miner and became the toast of European Society. But the reason I'm answering is it just occurred to me. Old Rose never mentioned her mother's fate. She knew what happened to Cal, so she obviously kept some sort of track of Society pages, but no mention of her mother.

And who said that Rose's mother didn't know that Rose was alive? What use was Rose to her after she left Cal (for all intents and purposes)? Ruth probably didn't know whether Jack survived or died and may have assumed that they ran off together. Ruth seemed like a real pragmatist. Better to have a dead daughter than one that runs off with Bohemian, itinerant artists.

-- crystal smithwick (Crystal@9v.com), February 23, 1998.

I don't think Rose was totally without money--didn't Cal put at least three of those bundles of money in his coat pocket the same time he got the diamond out of the safe? He only gave one to Mr Murdoch so there should have been some left in the coat pocket, which Rose would have discovered. I know she kept the diamond, but I don't think she would have minded using the cash.

-- Laura (lrc@usit.net), February 23, 1998.

Rose was probably able to hock her engagement ring (which I believe she never returned to Cal?). It probably was worth enough to keep her alive for a while... I suspect that Cal had no use for Ruth since he did not marry Rose. Ruth probably made a very adequate seamstress but had little money left after paying the bills for luxuries like movies. This, combined with the heavy make-up that actors wore in the crude silent movies of the time, could explain why Ruth never met up with her only daughter again. OK, just to summarize Rose's noble life: Pampered until age 17 when the money ran out, she agrees to marry a walking wallet named Cal. After a shopping spree in Europe where she amasses a fine collection of modern art, she realizes that Cal is far too arrogant and is stifling her. She decides to take the brave action of suicide by drowning. The boy,Jack, who saves her is what she really wants, a free-spirit far beneath her who SHE can control. He has the boy draw her (nude of course, and wearing the multi-million dollar necklace her fiance gave her) and places the resulting "artwork" where Cal can get the subtle inference - the engagement's off! As the ship is sinking, she 1) abandons her mother for good, 2) spits in the face of her fiance (the thought of throwing the very expensive engagement ring in his face never occurred to her), and 3) jumps out of a descending lifeboat leaving an empty seat that she took from another potential survivor. When the ship sinks, since she was not in the boat, Jack can not get on the only piece of driftwood because it will support only one person. He of course dies (that's 2 so far). To get her absolution, she "never lets go" of Jack, honoring him by such selfless acts as riding a rollercoaster, learning to ride a horse "like a man" and learning to fly. To honor Jack's final request and her freedom from Cal (who later shoots himself) and her mother (who is now destitute and mourning her apparent loss) she later marries a man she has no feelings for (judging by the fact that the 3 day affair with Jack 85 yrs later carries more emotional weight with her than the more recent 20 or 30 years with him) and has "lots of babies". A day before she dies, she secretly brings the multimillion dollar necklace to the site of the sinking and (unknown to the man who had spent years searching for it, the insurance company that paid the claim, and her grandaughter who had been taking care of her for years) throws it away. Then she dies, having lived a very full and richly rewarding life of selfless altruism.

-- Dan Dalton (DDa2309070@aol.com), February 27, 1998.

Dan, I liked your analysis of Rose's altruistic behavior. That is hilarious. She pretty much has had things her way. It is odd that she kept the Heart of the Ocean all those years, yet at the end of the script (not included in film) she says something like "I thought of selling it, but it always reminded me of Cal." Wouldn't keeping it remind you more of Cal than getting rid of it? However, if she did try selling it, the insurance claim would have been found. And perhaps the insurance company would have gone after her. Maybe that is why she really didn't s

-- Carla (crieger@rogers.wave.bc.ca), March 02, 1998.

She did have Cal's money in his pocket. Also, at that time, movies were not the same thing they are today. Fery few actors and actresses became nationally famous. It is very possible that a woman like Ruth thought of movies and degrading and faddish and would never have seen one.

it was entirely possible for Rose to have acted on stage and screen and never been nationally famous. It is obvious to me that her acting did not make her famous...no one on the Keldysh ever heard of her.

It's not impossible for Rose to have pulled herself up by her bootstraps at all. Hard, but not impossible. There's alot of fan fic on the net that conjectures about this aspect of Rose's fictional life.

-- M.H. (mvhamric@midamerican.com), September 17, 1999.