In Leitch’s discussion of what he calls fallacies in cinema adaptation theory, he invokes Hitchcock’s name under fallacy number nine, “Source material is more original then the adaptation.” Leitch centers his argument around the idea of auterism. Directors like Kubrick frequently adapted his films from pre-existing source material, yet is concerned to be a very original director. The early films from the Golden Age of Disney can all be linked together whether they are direct adaptation or original stories. All of William Shakespeare’s plays were essentially adaptations of pre-existing stories. He later points out that any work, adaptation or not draws from existing material, usually without even knowing it.

Leitch uses Hitchcock as an example of a director who manages to be an auteur with only rarely using original screenplays, noting in a footnote that Lifeboat as an unpublished novelette is up for debate as an adaptation. Despite having strayed so far from the source material that was not even published, under Leitch’s guidelines, Lifeboat still can qualify as being an adaptation. He disregards the notion that fidelity to source material (in spirit and specifics) and the idea that film adaptations are a way of connecting with the source material as ways of judging an adaptation.

Many criticize the differences without acknowledging the similarities. There’s value in noting that although the character’s names, motivations, behavior, and actions change, certain things did stay the same. Each character comes from the same background and represents the same aspect of society as in the final story. Hitchcock took away the competence away from many of the main characters, the sailors and the self-made man, whom Steinbeck idealized. Some plot elements were retained, though their context changed. Lifeboat is an interesting study for adaptation theory as it breaks with many of the false truths Leitch criticizes in his paper.

Prior to writing the novellete that would become the basis for Lifeboat, John Steinbeck wrote The Moon is Down, his first novel about the war.  Like Lifeboat, it is a heavily allegorical story that, although unrealistic to a modern audience, was well reviewed and liked by the World War II-era American public who "wanted not art but propaganda."

Lifeboat partially originated as a project that the Merchant Marines asked Hollywood to produce in order to create public awareness of the threat U-boats presented its ships.  Steinbeck's original version of the story was much truer to the Marines wishes, and much less of an allegory than the final film ended up being.  While the characters were meant to represent a microcosm of American society, the element of a disorganized Democracy set against the strong-wlled Nazi was not present.  In contrast, the self-made man shows the leadership qualities that must have been used to amass his fortunes, not the facistman who finds it so easily to give up power.  Also, the Nazi is a weak individual who after only one act of deception is killed.  The focus of the book is not the Nazi's ascension to control but of what life as a Merchant Marine and the experience of being shelled and stranded is like.

After Steinbeck completed his work on the project, three additional drafts were done, and by the end the story only vaguely represented the original.  MacKinlay Kantor's draft was thrown out early on by Hitchcock, though he is credited with increasing the allegory's prominence in the story.  One of Frank Capra's collaborators Jo Swerling stripped away a lot of the realism of the characters and provided the "Capra-corn" melodramatic elements.  Hitchcock, the master of details, rewrote the final draft shortly before shooting to "give it narrative form."

After seeing his original vision transformed so much, Steinbeck eventually wrote and asked to have his name taken off of the film, claiming that he wanted no part in something that so clearly "damaged the war effort."  Most of all, as revealed in a personal letter, it seems as if Steinbeck hated the transformation of the working class characters from ones with dignity to stereotypes, criticizing Hithcock's "middle-class" sensibilities.

In the midst of Hollywood's war time effort, incorporating pro-American propaganda into its films, it's somewhat ironic to see the process converting a film with origins in propaganda transformed by the process into what many reviewers of the time considered to be anti-American.