The Main Library film series Ships Ahoy!! 8 Classic Seafaring Films continues with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 Lifeboat. There are many reasons to watch this minor WWII classic, but chief among them is the opportunity to catch a rare film appearance by Tallulah Bankhead. A legendary stage star whose movie career never took off, she was handed her meatiest screen role by Hitchcock and didn't let him down. She plays a self-centered writer who finds herself stranded on the title vessel after the ship on which she's traveling gets torpedoed by a German sub.