Some Came Running is a novel by James Jones. It is the story of a war veteran with literary aspirations who returns in 1948 to his hometown of Parkman, Indiana, after a failed writing career. (The town of Parkman was loosely based on Jones' hometown of Robinson, Illinois.)
Plot
Dave Hirsh is a cynical Army veteran who winds up in his hometown of Parkman after being put on a bus in Chicago while intoxicated. Ginny Moorehead, a woman of seemingly loose morals and poor education, has taken the same bus.
Hirsh had left Parkman 16 years before when his older brother Frank placed him in a charity boarding school and is still embittered. Frank has since married well, inherited a jewelry business from the father of his wife Agnes and has made their social status his highest priority. Dave's return threatens this, so Frank makes a fruitless stab at arranging respectability, introducing him to Professor French and his daughter Gwen.
Dave moves in different circles, however. He befriends Bama, a gambler who serendipitously has settled in Parkman. Two factors seem to offer Dave hope and redemption: he takes a fatherly interest in his niece, Frank's daughter Dawn, and falls in love with Gwen. Despite his somewhat notorious reputation, Dave Hirsh is basically a good, honest man, well aware of his own shortcomings. His cynicism is often a mask to hide the pain of rejection.
Though Ginny is not his social or intellectual match, he eventually sees the basic good in her and responds to her unconditional love. Stalked by her former boyfriend (a Chicago hoodlum), Ginny proves unequivocally the depth of her love for Dave in the end. In the novel, however, it is Dave who is the innocent victim.
Film adaptation
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in a bid to duplicate the success of the multi-Academy Award winning film adaptation of From Here to Eternity (1953), optioned the 1,200-plus-page book and cast Frank Sinatra as the lead, Dave Hirsh. Sinatra approved Dean Martin for the role of his gambling pal, Bama Dillert, in what would be their first film together. The film was shot mostly in Madison, Indiana, standing in for Parkman.
Shirley MacLaine was cast as Ginny Moorehead, who falls for Hirsh. MacLaine garnered her first Academy Award nomination which she credited to Sinatra for his insistence on the film's ending being changed. Hailed in years to come as a masterpiece of American cinema, Some Came Running was also a box office success, earning $4.3 million in rentals and being ranked by Variety as the 10th highest-earning film of 1958.
Martin Scorsese included a clip from the film for his A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies; the film's final carnival, to Scorsese, remains one of the best and most expressive uses of CinemaScope.
In his book Who the Hell's in It, director Peter Bogdanovich writes extensively about Some Came Running. He later filmed a short segment for Turner Classic Movies on its influence on cinema.
Critical reception
Released to critical plaudits, Some Came Running was praised both nationally and internationally on release, with star Frank Sinatra garnering some of the strongest notices of his career, Variety noting that "Sinatra gives a top performance, sardonic and compassionate, full of touches both instinctive and technical. It is not easy, either, to play a man dying of a chronic illness and do it with grace and humor, and this Martin does without faltering."
Awards and nominations
Some Came Running was nominated for five Academy Awards, for Best Actress in a Leading Role, (Shirley MacLaine), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Arthur Kennedy), Best Actress in a Supporting Role, (Martha Hyer), Best Costume Design, Black and White or Color (Walter Plunkett) and Best Music, Original Song, "To Love and Be Loved" (words and music by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn).
MacLaine also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama.
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