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TheFilmWhisperer (1)
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There sure have been some tender toes replying to this honest question. Angry wet hens, running around flapping their offended wings about.
Calling a Black person is, and always has been, 100% offensive. The story's author, John Steinbeck, himself went on record condemning the racial stereotyping in Hitchcock's version. Even the U.S. Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures recommended that Lifeboat not be distributed overseas, because of the film's stereotyping. I strongly suspect that Joe's better attributes came from Steinbeck, who said he had written Joe as a "Negro of dignity, purpose and personality" compared to what Hitchcock depicted.
As for the steward's name... it was "Joe". When Rittenhouse calls him "George", he says, "Call me Joe". Ritt asks him, "Your name Joe?" Joe replies, "Yes sir." Rittenhouse called him "George" because privileged White people had adopted the habit of calling Black Pullman Car porters "George", after the name of the company's owner, George Pullman. It was lazy and disrespectful, because they didn't care to bother to learn each porter's name, or differentiate between them. It was a "They all look alike to me" practice. The porters would eventually win the right to have name tags, and have passengers call them by their names.
Appropriately, the character's name in the credits is listed as "Joe Spencer".
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