Amazon.com Essentials:
The first time Frank Sinatra acted in an adaptation of a James
Jones novel, he won an Oscar--it was in From Here to
Eternity. The resurgent Sinatra found one of his best
subsequent roles as a bitter, boozy failed writer, the hero of Jones's
Some Came Running. Returning to his hometown in the Midwest, he
runs into the rampant hypocrisy of the "good" life, as embodied by his
insincere brother (Arthur Kennedy). Sinatra the cynic plumps for the
company of a floozy (Shirley MacLaine) and a misogynist gambler (Dean
Martin), while making a desperate bid for the affection of a
strait-laced teacher (Martha Hyer). Director Vincente Minnelli (Meet Me in
St. Louis) infuses the material with a slow-burning tension,
and the climax at a carnival is an eye-filling piece of orchestrated
chaos. Elmer Bernstein's moody score is another plus. Footnote to film
history: the hero of Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt says he wears
his hat in the bathtub as an hommage to Dean Martin in Some Came
Running. --Robert Horton
