[One] of the really big money-makers of the winter season should be "Twilight for the Gods."… Mr. Gann, who wrote "The High and the Mighty" a few years back, is a lucky fellow. He knows just who his customers are and what they like, and he serves it up to them by the platterful. The feast calls for enormous helpings and no surprises, since each course must be as easy to recognize as it is preposterous…. Mr. Gann's slapdash novel will make a terrific movie, full of wind, waves, sharks, and gruffly tender moments. If one of the usual stable of Hollywood writers had been assigned to prepare a screen treatment, he would have been hard put to it to earn his pay. This possible embarrassment has been avoided by giving the assignment to Mr. Gann.

Brendan Gill, "Books: 'Twilight for the Gods'," in The New Yorker (© 1957 by...