A Writer’s Tale-Vincente Minnelli’s Film Adaptation Of James Jones’ “Some Came Running” (1958)-A Film Review

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.      

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[This little piece of fluff, this little boyhood remembrance had originally been written as my swan song as a film reviewer, as the film editor here. And to an extent that is /was true when I penned the stuff. That before the big internal struggle that roiled this publication for several months and which finally led to the purge and exile of Allan Jackson, long-time site manager and my oldest friend from high school days. “Purge” and “exile” no exaggeration although I don’t have time for the details here except that when the deal went down I voted with the rebel younger writers to give my old friend the boot under the idea that as with my own retirement it was time to “pass the torch.” I still think I was right and that although Allan and I have reconciled things probably better today under the new leadership. The part that is wrong though is that my swansong was premature. As part of the dust up the younger writers (and here I was neutral) insisted that new site manager Greg Green have an Editorial Board that he would run things by unlike the one-man rule of Allan Jackson. I was tagged for the chairmanship of the Board and so since I am still around I have decided on occasion as here that a few pithy words might come from my pen. S.L]

As everybody familiar with this space knows (or with the on-line version of the American Film Gazette )I have retired from the day to day grind of writing film reviews and have handed over that chore, at least temporary, to my in the not too distance future retiring old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon. I noted when I posted my retirement notice that I, like old time military men, would just fade away. I also noted that I would as the occasion warranted write a little something, a little commentary if the subject interested me. That is my purpose today.        

Recently Sandy Salmon reviewed a 1947 film, a murder mystery of sorts that had a long prior pedigree, Seven Keys To Baldpate, which had been based on a play by the same name back in the early 20^th century which in turn was based on a crime novel by the great crime writer Earl Derr Biggers (whose popular Charlie Chan series is perhaps much better known). Sandy did a good job of reviewing this film which hinged on the idea of a guy, a crime writer, making a bet with his publisher for five thousand cash that he could write a crackerjack mystery novel in twenty-four hours. As he attempted to do such out in the boondocks at an allegedly closed down inn with the only key to the place all hell broke loose, a couple of off-hand murders and such, by people who had collectively mysteriously come up with the six other keys of the title. One of those six people was a ringer, was the good-looking blonde with well-turned legs secretary to the guy who the crime writer made the bet with. No, not a sex lure like would be included in such a plotline now, at least not publicly, not in 1947 but to distract him anyway she could to make him miss his deadline. What the hell that ain’t fair, no way, especially when after the smoke cleared and the crime writer solved the whole mystery of why the other five people were there she flopped herself on his lap when he went to write that story to win the bet and dared him to ignore her. Needless to say the other guy won the bet        

Sandy mentioned at the start of his review that some guys will bet on anything, any proposition to pass the time. That got me to thinking after I had read the review about what the deal was in the old days in my growing up hometown of North Adamsville about forty miles west of Boston when me and my high school corner boys who hung around Sal’s Pizza Parlor would to while away the lonesome, girl-less, no dough, no serious dough to not be girl-less bet on all kinds of propositions for a couple of bucks, maximum five probably. Certainly not five thousand which as Sandy mentioned is nothing but walking around money now but then was a number which we could not get around, couldn’t believe existed, not in our neighborhood where rubbing nickels together was a tough enough battle.

Now a lot of the bets with guys like Sammy Young, Billy Riley, Jack Callahan the great school football player before Chrissie McNamara did her own flop down on his lap and dared him to move her which he had had absolutely no inclination to do, Sid Green, Pat Murphy and Ian Smith were on the outcome of various sports events. You know back in those days whether the hapless Red Sox would finish last in the American League (or how long a losing streak the team would go on once they started their inevitable losing), how many points would the golden age Celtics score (or allow). We also did our fair share of betting on football games, no so much the games themselves as each play, pass or run, stuff like that, which sounds exotic but except for one time when I got on a bad streak and lose twenty-two bucks which took me about six weeks of caddying for the Mayfair swells to pay was usually the difference of two or three dollars.         

Other bets were a bit racier. Like whether Sally, who was going out with Pat, would let him “touch” her, and you know what I mean and don’t ask how we verified such bets but just know that we did do so. Or whether such and such a girl, a hot girl usually, would take the bait and give one of us a date. Hell, sometimes when the girls came into Sal’s to have some pizza, Cokes and to play the great jukebox that he had over in the corner we would bet on what song a girl would play. There was a certain art to that proposition for instance if a girl had just broken up with her boyfriend there would likely be some slow sad song chosen. You get what I mean. Sometimes it would be whether the notoriously late local bus would arrive on time or not. So anything was up for betting purposes.          

         

That ringer secretary in the film though got me thinking about the strangest bet I ever made back then, maybe ever. One Friday night, another one of those girl-less ones, Jack Callahan, this is before fetching Chrissie McNamara snagged him, bet me on how high Sal would toss the pizza dough when he was kneading and stretching it to make his great pizza pies. Jack’s idea for calling the bet, mine too for taking it, was that one of us but not both could have enough kale for a date with Laura Lawrence on Saturday night. We were both interested in her and she liked us both well enough although Jack as the football hero probably had the edge aside from the money factor. So the bet was on. Oh, I forgot to tell you that if one of the corner boys made a proposition the other guy (or guys depending on the nature of the bet) had to take the bet, or lose and pay up anyway. So naturally I said “bet.”      

The time of the bet was probably about seven o’clock so we had to wait a bit for Sal to start making more pizzas for the crowd that would be coming in around eight or so for their slice and soda before heading to some date or to the local lovers’ lane. Sal did eventually get going, maybe a half an hour later. The idea for who would win any individual bet on the toss was whether Sal flipped the dough above or below the Coke sign directly behind him. I got to call the first bet. Low. I won and the race was on taking my shots at high or low. I did pretty well for a while, was up maybe seven or eight dollars which would be enough to take Laura out, maybe a movie and something to eat. I figured I was in. Then my luck began to change, change dramatically and before long I was down about ten bucks before Sal stopped tossing the goddam stuff.

Jack smiled a knowing smile, knowing that he was going to escort Laura around and maybe get to “touch” her and you know what I mean by that and I don’t have to spell it out. Here’s where everything about that film review by Sandy comes into play. Sal was the ringer. Remember Jack was a football hero and Sal loved football, loved Jack’s prowess on the field and Jack had told him the situation earlier in the day before I showed up there. They had planned to let me win early to draw me in and had set up a silent signal about which position I had taken. How about that. Don’t you think now that I am thinking about it and getting burned up all over again that the next time I go over to Jack and Chrissie’s house in Hingham that I should ask for that ten bucks back-with interest. Yeah, Sandy had it right some guys will bet on anything.             

You Can’t Always Get What You Want -A Devil’s Bargain-With Bette Davis’ “All About Eve” In Mind

You Can’t Always Get What You Want -A Devil’s Bargain-With Bette Davis’ “All About Eve” In Mind

By Sandy Salmon

[When I first took on this assignment which was in an unusual case assigned to me by the Editorial Board and specifically from its chair Sam Lowell (whom in the interest of transparency I knew in the old days when we were both stringers at American Film Gazette) rather than directly from site manager Greg Green there was talk around the water cooler that this piece would really be autobiographical. That is emphatically not the case.

To give a little biography in high school in Newark, New Jersey I developed a very strong interest in art, in being an artist. That interest was nurtured and inflamed by Mr. Jones-Henry a transplanted Englishman whose roots included some now forgotten connection with the artist Burne-Jones. He was an alumnus of the Massachusetts School of Art in Boston and had assured me that I could get into that school on his recommendation and that the all important question of scholarship money would also be forthcoming since he had some connections in the Financial Affairs Office.     

As is hopefully clear from this vantage point I did not pursue that route, although some fifty years later I, at times, wish I had gone the “starving artist” in the Soho garret route. What happened to block me from going to art school was a very determined mother who feared unto the high heavens that I would stay down in the mud, stay poor for the rest of my life if I became a struggling artist. That factor was important to her since I was the one child in the family who looked like he (or she) would get out from under the grinding factory worker history of our extended family with its periods of unemployment and always, always, wanting habits for stuff we did not have, would never have. Although I was not as frantic as her about my future success that tipped the scales away from art school. But as can also hopefully be seen from this vantage point I did not become a civil servant which was my mother’s, and not only my mother’s, idea of success.      

I eventually came to this publication though through a connection with art so maybe I am sanctified. Back in the early 1970s while in college I got involved with an alternative newspaper, The East Coast Eye, which carried many articles and such that mainline newspapers wouldn’t or didn’t touch. I became something like the art reporter for the publication although unpaid as most of us were. That in turn after I graduated got me a job as a stringer for American Film Gazette (where I met Sam) doing all kinds of assignments including reviewing films a subject I hadn’t previously touched. I eventually became film editor there before my retirement, or rather before I was lured over to this publication as a half-way house to retirement once Sam persuaded me to finish my career on what he called a high note. Still some days, some pencil in hand doodling days during conferences, I wish I had chosen another road like old Robert Frost said in his famous poem. S.S]       

Confession: I, Jeffery Jaspers, had never wanted to be a film critic, or any kind of critic at all. What I wanted, what I dreamed of from an early age, maybe ten or eleven, after seeing a stage production of The Wizard Of Oz was to be an actor, a stage actor the only kind. To be on the Great White Way, on Broadway in New York City far away from my Cannon’s Bend, Pennsylvania roots. They say that politicians, successful politicians have made a devil’s bargain to get where they are, to gain power over people and projects but that profession is not the only one where individuals willingly consort with the devil, gladly, make their bargain for fame and a little stardom. I was willing to strike such a bargain to gain the bright lights but I never got that far, never got to go mano y mano with Satan for my soul against earthy paradise. Instead I have labored in the field of film criticism as something like the booby prize since I shared, still shared, what used to be called the legitimate theater’s, Broadway’s disdain for cinematic and television actors (to speak nothing of the contempt for huckster actors shilling for some godawful commercial products). I have never gotten over my failure to smell the sawdust and dabble with the greasepaint.             

There is a story behind this failure, a failure that I had some what suppressed for many years or so I thought until I did a recent re-watching, no, re-re-watching of a DVD of the classic inside Broadway film All About Eve starring Bette Davis, Anne Bancroft, George Sanders and a host of other very fine performers. When I was a senior in highs school I grabbed the lead in the senior year play Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I was so thrilled to get the Hamlet role that I asked my mother, nee Harriet DeWitt, to ask her uncle to come to the play and see if I had any serious acting ability. (Of course I thought I did and that uncle would only confirm such truths.)

See my granduncle was none other than the famous Broadway theater critic Addison DeWitt. For those who don’t remember that name for many years before he died about twenty years ago he was the critic for the Broadway Call. More importantly by that time he had been syndicated in most of the major newspapers in the country so that what Addison DeWitt had to say about a play carried much weight for anybody coming to Broadway or viewing an on-the-road production of such plays. If he left during the first act to relieve himself in the men’s room (really to have a cigarette for he was a serious chain-smoker in an age when such practices were considered manly and cool) the play would probably close that night. Although not before he had raked the dead thing over the coals for the next five days to make sure it never arose from that death spiral. If he liked a play or an actor, actress really, then he would smother with praise. As I will mention shortly there were ways, non- theatrical ways, to get that praise beyond honest work. He really was a Class A scoundrel.

So one Friday night he came up from New York (he dearly loved my mother, or maybe better, his sister and through her my mother) to see the production. Although he sat through the production I could see that he was fidgety, that he kept taking his cigarette case out and looked at it longingly. I think in retrospect I was only saved by the “no smoking” rule on school property. That and maybe an extra size devotion to my mother one of the few people he was kind to without regard to interest. Now that I have mentioned that tell-tale cigarette signal I don’t have to explain that he put two thumbs down on my acting career that night. Said I should be an English major since my mother (who secretly did not want me on the stage and had asked him once she knew he had panned me to plug that English major idea) had asked him to help along that path. Strangely he would be the person who got me my job at the American Film Gazette through some connections he had developed over the years although his contempt for film actors (and later television actors) was even greater than mine in those days.

The strange part of his part in my career is that when Broadway had gone through one of its down cycles (due to those films and television and later the cost of production and lack of deep pockets investors who were going elsewhere) he had actually been forced to get a second job at the Gazette where he bombed. Had on a whim I think or maybe as I found out more about the way he operated later, that non-theatrical way to get his attention something more he had touted the film To Tell No Lie when every other critic had deep six panned it. Had, and here is my non-theatrical speculation at play, touted Lola Moran as the greatest actress since Sarah Bernhardt. She was never heard again after that disaster and Uncle Addison probably moved onto the next best thing.            

                    

That school play night though he not only gave me my acting career walking papers but tried to put things in perspective- that was his word. Gave me a very long talk about having to make a devil’s bargain to get those stars beside your name on your dressing room door. He sensed I didn’t have it in me. I wasn’t hungry enough like he had been. He told me straight up that he had made his own devil’s pact and that was only so that he would be the number one theater critic. Had gladly done it. Then he proceeded to give me what I later realized, much later, was a cautionary tale. That was the night he told me about how he had ridden Eve Harrington’s talent to solidify his positon in the Great White Way. I had heard of Eve Harrington vaguely when I was researching and reading plays in high school and had remembered that she had lit up Broadway with her performance as Cora in I Remember The Night according to the liner notes after each play and the chronology of who performed various parts over time in the productions.     

Uncle Addison had a gleam in his eye when he mentioned her name that first time and made me think maybe he loved her, something like that. I was probably wrong, and it doesn’t change the story but here goes. Margo, yes, Margo no last name needed in the old days, in the 1940s, when her star flamed white hot on the Great White Way, but now Margo Channing for readers who are rightly clueless about who I am talking about, was truly the queen bee of Broadway with a series of hits beginning with her breakthrough role as the young ingénue in You Reap What You Sow. Like every other profession worth fighting over for number one status the contenders came early and often. Most fell down, went back to the small town or out of town theater circuit but some and Eve, Eve no last name needed in the old days when her star flamed white hot on the Great White Way, but now Eve Harrington for readers who are rightly clueless about who I am talking about did not, did give Margo one hell of a battle.         

Such rises and falls do not occur all at once or by happenstance as Uncle Addison would be the first to tell you. Tell you that a very well-placed critic or producer can pave your way with his favors for your favors (then women mostly for men but today who knows with all the possible sexual preferences abound in the land). What Uncle Addison failed to tell me, would fail to tell anybody especially those impressible ingenues blinded by the bright lights is that some actors will harness their own energies to step more quickly up the food chain. That may have been Margo although my uncle never mentioned her roots since he had not made her a star as he did with Eve but it defined Eve to a tee. From the minute she entered Margo’s life, as a dresser at first and go-fer too, every move she made was to both undermine Margo’s theater reputation-and her personal life including throwing herself at Margo’s well-known director writer fiancé. This was a no holes- barred metaphorical fistfight to the death with plenty of barbs and trickery and while Margo held her own for a while the new blood Eve rose to the top based on talent and talons.

That is the public story but Uncle Addison gave me the back story now that both Margo and Eve have passed. Eve, on her way up, had planned to take a well-known Broadway writer away from his wife but he cut Eve short. Eve had created, as many have for lesser reasons, a whole sob story previous life which was all fairy tale. After failing to lure Margo’s fiancé away from her she went after that married writer who was smitten by her. Uncle had found out the real shady story behind Eve’s façade and used that to keep her back from the writer and all for himself. (When I asked if Eve had gone to bed with him Uncle demurred but that meant to me that he had). Here is where things got weird though. Since fame is fleeing I asked Addison what happened to Eve whom like I said before I had never really heard of. He told a very chilling tale about how a young wannabe actor in her turn befriended Eve and would go on to undermine Eve and rise to the top herself. Since she is still alive Uncle would not give her name but from his look I knew too that he had something to do with her rise-and her bedding by him too.