A Writer’s Tale-Vincente
Minnelli’s Film Adaptation Of James Jones’ “Some Came Running” (1958)-A Film
Review
DVD Review
By Josh Breslin
Some Came Running, starring
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, directed by Vincente
Minelli, adapted from the novel by James Jones, 1958
No question I was first
drawn to Some Came Running, a film
based on the novel of the same name by James Jones whose more famous novel Here To Eternity also was adapted to the
screen and stands as one of the great classic films of the modern cinema, by
the ex-soldier’s story and then by his plight as a blocked writer. The draw of
the ex-soldier’s story reflected something that had been in my own experience
about coming back to the “real” world after the military. That seems to be the
character played by Frank Sinatra Dave Hirsh’s situation. That inability to go
to the nine to five routine, to settle down after military service had shaken
him out of his routine rang a bell. In my own military service generation, in
my own service, I ran across plenty of guys who couldn’t deal with the “real”
world coming back from Vietnam and who tried to hide from that fact as “brothers
under the bridges” alternate communities out in places like Southern
California. I see and hear about young Iraq and Afghanistan War service
personnel having the same woes and worse, having incredibly high suicide rates.
So yeah, I was drawn to Dave’s sulky, moody, misshapen view of the world.
The story line is a
beauty. Dave, after a drunken spree, finds he was shipped by bus back in that
state by some guys in Chicago to his Podunk hometown in Parkman, Indiana, a
town he had fled with all deliberate speed when he was a kid orphaned out by
his social-climbing older brother Frank because, well, because he was in the
way of that social-climb after their parents die. Dave was not alone in his
travels though since he had picked up, or had been attached to, a floozy named
Ginny, played by Shirley MacLaine, who will make life hell for him in the end.
As he became accustomed to his old hometown and while deciding whether to stay
or pick up stakes (the preferred fate of his brother and his also social-climbing
wife) he was introduced to a local school teacher Gwen, played by Martha Hyer,
who will also make hell for him in the end since he was quickly and madly in
love with her but she was seriously stand-offish almost old maid stand-offish
since she had had a few tastes of his rough-hewn low life doings. Doings which
were encouraged by a gambler, Bama, played by Dean Martin who became his
sidekick.
But here is the hook
that almost saved Dave and almost lit a spark under dear Gwen. Dave was a blocked
writer, had some time before written a couple of books that were published and
had gathered some acclaim, were well written. Gwen attempted to act as his
muse, and did prove instrumental in getting a work of his published. To no
avail since Dave was not looking for a muse, well, not a muse who wasn’t
thinking about getting under the silky sheets. No go, no go despite Dave’s
ardent efforts. Frustrated Dave turned to Ginny and whatever charms she had-and
the fact that she loved him unconditionally despite their social and
intellectual differences. In the end Dave in a fit of hubris decided to marry
Ginny after being rebuffed by Gwen enough times. The problem though was that
Ginny had a hang on gangster guy trailing her who was making threatening noises
about putting Dave, and/ or Ginny underground. In the end they were not just
threatening noises as he wounded Dave and killed poor bedraggled Ginny.
Watch this one-more than
once and read James Jones’ book too which includes additional chapters about
those soldiers who could not relate to the “real” world after their military
experiences. This guy could write, sure could write about that milieu based on
his own military service. (There is a famous photograph of Jones, Norman
Mailer, and William Styron, the three great soldier-boy American literary
lights of the immediate post-World War II war period with Jones in uniform if I
recall.)
Afterward by Greg
Green-site manager:
When
I first assigned Josh Breslin this film review my intention was for him to
discuss a bit his own, Dave-like, writer’s troubles and more importantly, his
troubles with the “real” world when he came back from his military service in
Vietnam during the 1960s. Josh had initially agreed to put some material about
that in to bring the reader into the picture about what was eating at Dave
(really author James Jones), what drove him over the edge. When it came time to
do so though Josh balked, said he couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring back those hard times without serious
mental disturbance even fifty years later.
What
I did not know at the time but which when I confronted Josh about breaking the
terms of our agreement it turned out those hard times had a name, a name which
I have since become painfully familiar with-Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe as
his old hometown growing up guys forever called him. Josh was not one of them
but had met the Scribe out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 when he
had just graduated from high school and before he was to start college at State
U up in Maine, his home state in the fall. That led to a big-time friendship
which was only broken up by the Scribe’s own military service the next year.
No,
that is not right. Their friendship in the final analysis was broken up a few
years later by that fiendish war in Vietnam which took its toll on both of
them. The Scribe, like Josh, had his problems coming back to the “real: world,
got seriously into drugs, dried out a bit, did some great stories on those
“brothers under the bridge” for which he won a bunch of awards which helped for
a while. Josh made the turn but the Scribe, for wanting habits, for his own
hubris, for kicks, for his whole freaking overblown life to hear Josh tell the
story didn’t, got caught up in the cocaine craze and made the cardinal mistake
of using what he was trying to sell. For his efforts he got a potter’s field
grave down in Sonora, Mexico courtesy of some ill-advised and deadly busted
drug deal with the emerging drug cartels that went awry. So Josh, maybe someday
you will tell us Josh, you are right to balk on your part of this assignment
now though.
