Thu 25 Jun 2015
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: JAMES JONES – Some Came Running (Book & Film).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[11] Comments
JAMES JONES – Some Came Running. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1957. Signet, paperback, abridged edition, 1958.
SOME CAME RUNNING. MGM, 1958. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy, Nancy Gates, Franklyn Farnum, Denny Miller, James Jones. George E. Stone . Written by John Patrick and Arthur Sheekman. Directed by Vincente Minnelli.
As I read this I kept wondering if it was indeed a Great American Novel — on the order of Look Homeward Angel or Sometimes a Great Notion — and when I finished I had to conclude: Not quite, but you can see it from there.
I was prompted to read the original full-length edition by George Kelley’s article which I recommend to your attention. Running covers a few post-war years in small-town mid-America (1947 to 1950 to be exact) and it captures a sense of ordinary people struggling to come to terms with their lives in the midst of the post-war boom — and mostly failing.
The center of the novel is Dave Hirsch, a late-arriving veteran home from the wars, failed writer and a perennial ne’er-do-well. Inadvertently returning to his home town of Parkman Illinois, he quickly manages to become the center of local gossip by insulting his respectable brother Frank (who sent him away years ago with five bucks to make his start in life) and hooking up with ’Bama Dillert, a local gambler and all-around low-life, who is also one of the greatest creations in 20th century fiction.
There are in fact, quite a few all-around low-lifes in Running: easy women, feckless young men, town tramps and unredeemed bums, all observed by Jones with a passionate objectivity that makes them real and poignant on the page. There’s also Parkman’s “better element”: the upwardly mobile Frank and his family, a minor poet and his college professor daughter, local politicos and landed gentry—not merely background characters, but vital parts of a vivid and complex story.
In fact there are no minor characters in Some Came Running, or damn few, anyway, and this is the novel’s greatest strength. When Jones brings someone on stage, he brings on a person, not a character. His people are complex, ambitious, troubled, and all too prone to screw up their lives. And when they converse, it’s a real conversation: rambling, lengthy, and real-sounding.
Which may be one reason why the novel flopped; all that depth and realism takes a lot of ink to put across: 1266 pages of it in fact, a daunting prospect for any but the most avid reader. The main problem with the book though, is that it’s a bit of a downer; without giving away too much, let me just say that most of the characters manage to mess up their lives pretty thoroughly, and by the end Jones’ gloomy outlook actually starts to seem somewhat gratuitous — as if he were trying for Melancholy and overshot the mark rather badly.
Along the way though, there’s some damn fine writing: a searing love story, a compelling look into the mind of a writer and the creative process, a road trip to make Kerouac envious, and an overall structure that keeps the reader hooked and wanting more. Despite its flaws and overall despondency, Some Came Running has a lot to reward the patient reader willing to risk a bout of clinical depression at book’s end.
MGM filmed this in 1958 and, scenting profit but wary of a bespoke flop, Signet put out an abridged edition with pictures of the movie stars on the back cover. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Lee Sandlin described the paperback as “brutally abridged” but it ain’t that bad. And at 620-some pages, it’s hardly a negligible read. I found that it cut a lot of the depth from Jones’ novel, but it added a certain momentum and focus. You needn’t be ashamed of reading it, if you don’t feel like mortgaging your summer with the unabridged text.
I suspect MGM bought the book sight unseen after the success of From Here to Eternity and only belatedly realized they had Moby Dick on their hands. Nothing daunted, producer Sol C. Siegel (whose credits range from the 1930s Lone Ranger serial to Ben-Hur) hired a Pulitzer-winning writer and a gagman for the Marx Brothers to wrest something commercially acceptable out of it, ensured box-office returns by casting Sinatra, Martin and MacLaine, then wisely hired Vincente Minnelli to balance the artistry and melodrama as only he could—and oh yes: they slathered a wonderful Elmer Bernstein score all over it to accentuate the moody quality of the thing.
Any film based on a book like this is bound to cut something out, and this one cuts more than its share. The result is a fine drama, with here and there a line or two from the book. Writers Patrick and Sheekman change the ending with a cavalier attitude, but more than that, they make subtle but important changes to the characters and overall tone of the tale. Dave Hirsch in the book is fat, awkward and a born follower. In the film, he’s “Ladies and gentlemen…. Frank Sinatra!” cool, self-assured, with a stacked deck of smooth lines he deals out with the assurance of a Big Star. Dean Martin is ideal as “Bama Dillert — one of the best bits of casting Hollywood ever did — but the biggest change comes in the character of Ginnie Morehead.
In the book, Ginnie is… well, instead of me doing all the work, why don’t you pick up a thesaurus and look up “dull”, “bland”, “repellent”, and maybe “loathsome.” You got it. Shapeless, shallow and intellectually lazy, she garners some sympathy at first as we see her, obviously starved for affection, sadly giving out sex for a few minutes of something that looks a little like love. As the book progresses though, she becomes less of a waif and more of a shrike. By novel’s end, you may actually hate her.
But that’s in the book. In the Movie, she’s Shirley MacLaine at her best: vibrant, vulnerable, and carrying the greatest purse ever in the Movies. This is more than just a Star Performance; it’s a concept that radically transforms the story.
To say they changed the ending here, is a bit like saying Custer had a bad day, but the alterations are completely in keeping with the moody tone of the film itself. Where the folks in Jones’ novel seek acceptance and find alienation, the characters in the movie seek love and find acceptance. Important characters in the book die alone, but in the film death brings them together.
I don’t know how Jones felt about the movie (he has a bit part in it.) Maybe he felt betrayed, maybe he was just glad to get the money. But Some Came Running is an easy film to enjoy.
June 25th, 2015 at 2:54 pm
Glad to see a good word for the movie version. I reviewed it a while back, and it’s a movie I really liked the first time I saw it in the theater long years ago.
June 25th, 2015 at 3:08 pm
Here’s the link:
http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2013/01/overlooked-movies-some-came-running.html
June 25th, 2015 at 4:37 pm
The movie version of SOME CAME RUNNING is underrated. The 1,200-page novel is very good but finding an unabridged version takes a little effort. There are some differences between the book and the movie as Dan can attest. But, as Bill noted in his review, the movie version is well worth watching.
June 25th, 2015 at 5:44 pm
I read this novel back in the late 1950’s. I still have the Signet paperback. My favorite part of the movie is when Frank Sinatra dumps his suitcase on the bed and it’s full of books instead of clothes.
Years later, I had my locked foot locker shipped from Ft Leonard Wood, Missouri to Trenton, NJ. I put it in the basement and forgot about it. Fast forward a bit and my wife is asking me about the locked foot locker. Like what is in it?
I didn’t remember what I put in it but I found the key to the lock and we opened it thinking it might be full of drugs or black market stuff.
It was full of scores of books that I had read in the army. My only connection with Frank Sinatra…
June 25th, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Several years ago, quite by accident, we visited Madison Indiana, where SOME CAME RUNNING was filmed. It’s a charming town, and they’ve kept the Downtown looking just it did in the movie.
June 25th, 2015 at 6:31 pm
A rarity where the changes made for a fine movie while the book stands on its own, this is my favorite Jones novel, well above FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.
I actually prefer the full version of the book, but then I like triple deckers. This one is one of the richest most acutely observed novels of the period and if not the “Great American Novel” a fine American novel with all of Jones strengths and few of his weaknesses.
The film has underrated performances by Sinatra and Arthur Kennedy, lost in the outstanding and more colorful roles played by Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. It was a star maker for both of them, but Martin’s quiet performance defined him as something more than the charming singer and foil for Jerry Lewis.
Bama got him roles I films like ADA and RIO BRAVO, and a string of serious roles in the late fifties and sixties.
It remains a favorite book and movie of mine, and thanks Dan for the insightful review. It also had a huge impact on the town where it was filmed as a documentary often shown on TCM reveals.
June 25th, 2015 at 9:58 pm
The story goes that Some Came Running was the source of the Sinatra/Martin cronyism.
Dean and Frank only knew each other casually in 1958; this was just after the Jerry Lewis breakup, and Dino was still finding his way around.
Sinatra’s company had the film rights to the novel, which Martin had apparently read, or seen the screenplay, or something;
anyway, at a function he cornered Sinatra and said something to the effect, “You’re looking for someone who can deal cards and talk real Southern, and I’m him!”
Sinatra was convinced, everybody went to Indiana – and a Rat Pack was born (or at least nurtured)…
That’s the story, anyway …
June 26th, 2015 at 5:13 am
I’ve never read Jones’ novel. And it sounds as if I should!
Thank you for this review.
Harold Bloom’s canon of mainstream literature, while vast, doesn’t include Thomas Wolfe, Ken Kesey or James Jones, all mentioned in this review as candidates for the Great American Novelist. An index of the many problems in the study of mainstream literature.
In auteurist Land, the film Some Came Running has always been considered a major work. Jean-Luc Godard had his hero keep his hat in in the bathtub in CONTEMPT (1963), as a homage to Dean Martin. The film has been much analyzed by Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Fred Camper and other auteurist critics.
There are many books on Minnelli. Two of the most informative:
Stephen Harvey: Directed by Vincente Minnelli (1989)
Mark Griffin: A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli (2010).
My own book on Minnelli is at:
http://mikegrost.com/minn.htm#Minnelli
June 26th, 2015 at 5:26 am
In 2009, “THe One-Line Review” conducted a survey, asking people to list “The 50 Greatest Films”. SOME CAME RUNNING was on my list:
http://1linereview2.blogspot.com/2009/06/mike-grost.html
June 26th, 2015 at 9:29 am
I remember reading the original version of the book and enjoying it. However, these days a paperback with that many pages would scare me off. I still have my paperback somewhere. Whenever the movie shows up on TV, I always watch it for awhile as it’s a favourite.
August 25th, 2023 at 5:40 am
This has always been one of my favorite films, though I confess I never read the novel. My favorite scene is the confrontation between MacLaine’s character and Hyer’s, in the classroom, which was recently highlighted in The New Yorker magazine — so I guess I wasn’t the only one who was blown away by MacLaine’s magnificent performance. Bernstein’s score is also noteworthy.