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I put the diamond in the coat..... and I PUT THE COAT ON HER!! |
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—Caledon Hockley to Spicer Lovejoy | ||
Caledon "Cal" Hockley is the main antagonistic character of the 1997 film Titanic. He is the son of a millionaire steel tycoon who boards the Titanic with his fiancée, Rose DeWitt Bukater, to go to New York and claim his fortune from his father.
He was portrayed by Billy Zane.
His name is first mentioned in 1997 by Brock Lovett, who sends one of his submarines into Titanic and is looking for the 'Heart of the Ocean'. He searches in the Parlour Suites and then remarks: "That's Hockley's bed. That's where the son of a bitch slept."
Biography[]
Boarding Titanic[]
In 1912, the son of Pittsburgh steel tycoon, Nathan Hockley, Caledon Hockley is on the Maiden Voyage of the RMS Titanic from Southampton to New York City in order to marry his 17-year-old fiancée, Rose DeWitt Bukater. Rose does not want the marriage and despises Hockley, but the man either is oblivious to this or chooses to ignore it. Rose is unable to act because she is trapped between Cal, who wants to marry her so he can claim his fortune and her mother, so that she can pay off the debts left with the family by her late husband. In order to seal his relationship with Rose, he purchases a rare diamond once owned by King Louis XVI called the "Heart of the Ocean" and presents it to her. Caledon is not aware that Rose is driven to consider suicide during the voyage and that she is saved only by the intervention of a young Third Class passenger, Jack Dawson, with whom she falls in love. Hockley, initially unaware of this, invites Jack to dine with him as thanks for saving Rose's life (as far as he is concerned, she had accidentally fallen off the rail and was rescued by Jack). Hockley's bodyguard, a former Pinkerton's detective named Spicer Lovejoy, is the only one who doubts Rose and Jack's story because of some rudimentary deduction (he questions how Jack was able to remove his shoes so quickly).
Cal begins to reveal his true nature after Rose attends an Irish dance party in Third Class, violently knocking over a tea table while reminding Rose that she is his fiancée, that she is his wife in practice, and she will honor him. On April 14, Jack goes into First Class again to talk to Rose, In the late afternoon, they hold a Service in the Dining Saloon.
Cal peeks one moment at the entrance from a distance while when he has Lovejoy first try to buy off Jack, who was stopped by the two doormen and then remind him he holds a Third Class ticket and has overstayed his welcome in First Class. |Which is historically reasonable, as Jack really didn't belong there and it was a one-off occasion when he was a guest of honor. Perhaps now, Cal begins to suspect Rose might have feelings towards Jack, and vice versa.
April 14[]
Eventually, Caledon begins to suspect that Rose's affections lay with Jack and becomes possessive of her, with Rose's mother Ruth also having warned her to not see 'that boy' again. That afternoon, Jack sneaks aboard the A-Deck Promenade, while stealing a jacket and hat from A.L. Ryerson. He blends in with the surroundings while Cal, Ruth, Rose and Andrews go on a tour, with Andrews showing the facilities on his ship. At the lifeboats, they discuss Rose's question, as she had calculated that not enough lifeboat capacity was onboard. Cal, who's walking with Ruth, then snarkily remarks that's it's a waste of deck space anyway, given Titanic's deemed status as invincible. Jack is disguised, leaning against a lifeboat as he suddenly draws Rose's attention and grabs her into the Gymnasium. There, he declares his love for her and shares his philosophy about her being trapped. She denies him, and then moves on.
Rose changed her mind however, and after a humiliating tea moment in the Writing and Reading Room, where she sees a young girl being scolded for her position at table, as well as her mom gossipping about her choice of lavender as color for the bridesmaids dresses, she searches for Jack and finds him at the bow at sundown. Between Rose and Jack, a steamy romance develops and leads to Jack drawing Rose in her own Suite, while only wearing the necklace. Caledon meanwhile is at his usual place in the Smoking Room, worried and wondering where she is, while he angrily employs Lovejoy to get a reading on where she is.
When Jack is finished drawing, Rose evilly taunts Cal by leaving the drawing with a teasing note in Cal's safe, which infuriates the latter after he discovered it a long time later, with his butler having chased Rose and Jack to the bottom of the ship, with them escaping by locking them into a pressure chamber. As Cal stumbles upon the drawing, he is about to rip the paper, but then he concocts something. WIth Lovejoy, he contrives a plan to have Jack moved out of the way.
The sinking
As the Titanic is starting to sink after having struck an iceberg later on, Rose and Jack overhear the seriousness of the situation when they hear Captain Smith and Andrews talking to the carpenter. Rose takes Jack with her back to her room where Cal, Lovejoy and Ruth are waiting, along with the Master-At-Arms, who searches Jack when Lovejoy has slipped the diamond in the coat when Jack doesn't notice, back in the hallway. They have Jack arrested and locked deep below decks. Jack is left by Lovejoy to drown as the ship's bow starts to flood, but is later rescued by Rose. Caledon is very displeased by Rose's behaviour. Out of nowhere, he unexpectedly slaps her in the face, while a steward interrupts them to inform them of Captain's orders to get lifejackets on and find their way up deck.
Caledon, Ruth and Rose are wandering around the Grand Staircase as they await further instructions. Caledon is annoyed by the way of the English, who do things like evacuating in such a methodical way. Caledon doesn't either seem to understand, hear or phatom what Andrews said after Rose demands the truth from the latter. He looks around bewildered when Andrews leaves.
The group eventually ends up at the forward lifeboats on port side. When Ruth arrogantly asks for segregation and no overcrowding, Rose loses it and tells her to shut it. Rose reminds her that half of the people on the ship won't make it. Caledon proves to be very sinister in his sense of humor when he responds with "Not the better half.", following up with a sarcastically lamenting for not having kept a hold on that drawing, which would be worth more by the next day. Rose looks at him in disbelief, knowing fully well what this means. Jack is in danger. Rose is invited into lifeboat 6 with Molly Brown and mother Ruth, but she refuses to join. She says goodbye to her dear mother, and walks off. But Caledon brutally stops her, knowing fully well where she's going, and doesn't let go until Rose spits in his eye. Ruth screams for her daughter, but it's too late. The lifeboat lowers away.
Throughout the sinking Cal is shown to be determined, almost hell bent, to survive. He looks down the sides of the ship after hearing screams, witnessing the scene of lifeboat 15 almost landing on top of number 13. His assistant Lovejoy brings Caledon to an idea as he figures that Murdoch is a practical man so he advices Cal to stay with him. He is now going so far as to bribe First Officer Murdoch in hopes of getting a place in Collapsible C. However, just as he’s about to get in Lovejoy tells him of Rose, who is waiting to get into Collapsible D, along with Jack. Cal, out of sheer obsession, gives up his place in the boat to go find her even though Murdoch takes a look at him, expecting him to come.
When he gets there, Caledon stands next to Jack and strengthens Jack's words: Rose should get into the boat. Caledon thinks of a clever lie, and straight up fabricates a half-truth that he arranged for in order to get Rose to leave the sinking ship, but her emotions, looking at Jack, yet ignoring Cal, become too much and she jumps back on board, much to the displeasure of both Jack and Cal. Jack runs away and takes the stairs. Cal is then rushing to the Boat Deck Foyer of the Grand Staircase and sees how Rose kissing Jack and embracing him. That's when he realizes that Rose doesn't love him and is completely fed up with the whole ordeal. Even though Lovejoy tries to de-escalate the situation by trying to move Cal, Cal snatches the gun out of Lovejoy's pocket and runs to the staircase, takes a shot at the pair, the bullet cutting a carved cherub in two pieces as Jack just dodges when he sees Cal taking an aim, He is so blinded by rage that he ignores the peril he is putting himself in, however his ineptitude with a gun leads him into chasing them into the flooded First Class Reception until he runs out of bullets. Knowing he’s lost, he sarcastically shouts at them: “I hope you enjoy your time together!" when realising he's standing in rapidly rising water, which has come up the D-Deck staircase. He's realising something, and then laughs. Lovejoy has come down the stairs as well and wonders what could be so funny. Cal tells him the diamond is in the coat he gave to Rose, before scrambling up the Grand Staircase in hopes of getting onto one of the last 2 boats.
Once he gets to the Boat Deck he is pushed around by a mass of people heading towards Collapsible A. He pushes his way through the crowd to Murdoch who, by this time, has a change of heart and rejects Cals bribe by throwing the money back at him. After Murdoch's suicide Cal recognizes that his money won’t save him. He finds a little girl crying on the Boat Deck and uses her to persuade officer Wilde to let him board the collapsible lifeboat. By this time the Boat Deck is starting to flood and the boat is still attached to the falls, Cal gives the little girl to Rhoda Abbott. When it becomes clear they can’t launch it, some stewards, seamen, and Fabrizio attempt to quickly cut the falls and the boat floats off. Once the falls are cut the boat flips, spilling the occupants over the deck, however Cal scrambles onto the side of the boat and clutches a funnel stay. Once the boat rights itself, many people try to crawl on. Cal pushes them away and he and a few others gradually row away from the ship, all the while pushing people away with oars and hands. Cal is the most brutal shoving anyone even close to the boat away in a desperate bid to survive. When Titanic's first funnel collapses, he is visibly agape to see it kill Fabrizio and other swimmers. Cal’s lifeboat is washed clear of the ship. He spends the rest of the night pushing stragglers away from the boat until the people in the water die.
Cal is rescued by the Carpathia, where the little girl that Cal saved remain under Rhoda's protection.
Later life[]
Although Cal tries to find Rose on the Carpathia, he is unsuccessful (although thinks he finds her, but he didn't) and believes that she has died in the sinking, when in reality, Rose gave her name as Rose Dawson when boarding the Carpathia, hiding herself from him and her mother. Later, Hockley married someone else and inherited his family's millions, but he never got over Rose's supposed death. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 brought him further to despair, allegedly committing suicide by shooting himself in the mouth according to Rose, while his supposed widow, children, and other money-grubbing members of his family fought like hyenas over the remnants of his evaporated fortune.
Personality[]
Caledon at first appears to be gentle and sweet around his fiancée, Rose, but later in the film he gets physically and emotionally abusive with her when he finds out about her being in the Third Class party and that she was in love with Jack. When Rose left the lifeboat and returned to the ship to hug and kiss Jack. Cal watches and realized at that moment that Rose did not love him, which enrages him and he decides to take revenge by trying to shoot her and her new lover.
He has demonstrated to be very snobbish, as he views Jack as inferior to him on the sole basis of economic status, but he appears to lose this for a few moments when he invites him to dinner as a thanks for saving Rose. As the general part of the movie takes place in 1912, Cal views Rose as nothing but his property, and only wants to marry her solely because her mother wants to get out of debt. He is also very cruel, as during the landing of lifeboat 6, he jokes to Rose that Jack's painting will become worth a lot more, meaning Jack will die because usually the art of an artist increases in value after his death. Other examples are the way he talks about the English, as well as calling a steward a moron for being hesitant.
He is also easily insulted and doesn't like when people disrespect him if they're beneath him in his view. When things don't go his way, he can lose his temper and become very aggressive.
Deleted scenes[]
- At some point during the sinking, he and Lovejoy walk on A-Deck to see Chief Baker Charles Joughin throw deck chairs into the water for possible swimmers.
- Right after around 1:35 A.M., when Lowe fires shots to warn men who want to jump into lifeboat 14 from A-Deck, Lovejoy and Cal see to their surprise dogs running around on the Boat Deck, someone must have released them from the Dog Kennels. A passenger throws a package at a confused Cal, climbs over something, Cal catches it and the passenger immediately snatches it back.
3. Caledon, after giving up the chase, attempting to shoot Jack and Rose multiple times, reveals to Lovejoy that the diamond is in the coat. In a long, deleted scene, where Lovejoy becomes the main antagonist to chase down the pair through the rapidly flooding Dining Saloon, Caledon says: "I give it to you, I give it to you. If you can get it!" Then he laughs and runs of, Lovejoy mumbling that he's bastard for giving him this temptation, which Cal cannot hear.
4. On Carpathia, Cal seeks out Rose. A small part is cut out where he runs at a woman with long red hair, calling Rose's name in a relieved, joyous manner, but she is another woman, and she looks at him with an aghast look. He looks, not knowing what to do, and moves on. When Old Rose then tells the story about his fate, a part of it was cut. Right after revealing he had committed suicide after the 1929 stock market crash, she added the following: "His children fought over the scraps of his estate like hyenas, or so I read". The last sentence didn't make it into the official movie.
This line was also in the original script.
Different script[]
Caledon is made a lot more evil in the original script, where he wounds Fabrizio who tries to climb on Collapsible A moments after Titanic sank, and he gets hit on the head by the oar Cal is holding, Fabrizio exclaims in pain that he needs to go to America, but Caledon points "It's that way", and this is how Fabrizio dies instead of being crushed by a funnel.
He's also bumped into by three steerage men in the crowds, calling them 'gutter scum.'
In the later stages of the sinking, around 1:30 A.M, Caledon, joined by Lovejoy, is also meeting up with Benjamin Guggenheim and valet Victor Giglio on A-Deck, when he says that famous line: "We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as a gentleman." He responds: "That's admirable, Ben. I'll be sure and tell your wife you were honorable till the end, when I get to New York."
In the original script, Caledon finds Rose between the steerage passengers on Carpathia's aft deck. When telling her that mother and he were looking for her, she eyes at him with cold glare and interrupts. She says: "Please don't. Don't talk. Just listen. We will make a deal, since that is what you understand. From this moment you do not exist for me, nor I for you. You shall not see me again. And you will not attempt to find me. In return I will keep my silence. Your actions last night need never come to light and you will get to keep the honor that you have carefully purchased."
With a little attitude she adds his own words: "Is this in any way unclear?" (What he said when he interrogated her about her adventures belowdecks). Caledon knows she means it. He is silent for a while. But he doesn't know what to tell her mother. Rose responds he can just straight up lie that she died on Titanic. Stricken with emotion he still tries to convince her that she's precious to him. But Rose leaves it with the last remark, that jewels are precious.
Trivia[]
- Billy Zane, the actor of Cal also plays one of Biff's goons, Match, in Back to the Future Part I (1985) and Part II (1989).
Quotes[]
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Cal [to Rose]: I had hoped you would come to me last night. |
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[Cal looks at Rose for a while and slaps her across the face] |
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Ruth: Rose, come back here! Right now! |
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[Jack and rose have escaped Cal's gunshots and are now running through the dining saloon] |
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"A real man makes his own luck, Archie. Right, Dawson?" ---- Jack, Colonel Archiebald Gracie and Cal having a friendly conversation at dinner.
Sources[]
Titanic DVD Deluxe Edition - disc 3 - script