Good 50's Films: From Here to Eternity

1953 Romance Drama
From Columbia Pictures
Directed by Fred Zinnemann

Starring
Burt Lancaster
Montgomery Clift
Deborah Kerr
Donna Reed
Frank Sinatra
Ernest Borgnine
Philip Ober
Jack Warden

It is the first film I can recall my mom refusing to let me see.  In fact, she couldn't believe I would even want to see an adult film like this.  I can hear her saying you know, it's not a western or a musical.  I was still in a single-digit age but itching to see this adult film which required adult supervision so my viewing looked doomed.  While it seemed everyone was talking about it, my best friend's mother said she was going by herself and I asked her if I could go along.  She agreed providing I didn't tell my mother.  Hey, my lips are sealed.

The military's lips weren't sealed.  In those days, any movie featuring the military had to be approved by the Pentagon.  And they weren't approving.  They were always looking for the military being portrayed favorably, no sloppiness, no homosexuality, nothing adverse.  That last one was a concern because novelist James Jones had a rather jaundiced view of the military.  And the Pentagon would have to approve of filming at Scholfield Barracks in Honolulu, where Jones had served an as infantryman.

The book was a sensation.  It titillated with its coarse language (it was kept out of libraries for years), sadism and sex scenes.  It seemed positively indecent that its two female characters were a prostitute and an adulterous wife.  When egomaniacal Harry Cohn bought it for $82,000 for his Columbia Pictures, the joke around Hollywood was that Cohn was too crude to know it was so filthy.  Everyone was saying it was unfilmable.

Of course it didn't work out that way and I am so glad that's so.  In truth, I don't regard this as a good 50's movie but rather a great one.  The language was excised, the prostitute became a dancehall hostess, it wasn't as rough on the military as the book was, the Pentagon was won over and Schofield Barracks appropriated.  

Of course a cast was lined up with actors whose careers took big leaps after the film's release.  The top five would be nominated for Oscars and two would win.  FHTE is only one of a couple of films in Oscar history that had nominees in all four acting categories.  More on its 13 Oscar nominations later.

The story concerns life on and around Schofield a couple of months before the bombing at Pearl Harbor.  The story centers primarily on two characters, both hard-headed but for dissimilar reasons.  Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Clift) has recently been transferred to the unit because of his boxing skills.  The captain (Ober) heads the unit's boxing club and wants Prewitt to take it to new acclaim.  But the private adamantly refuses (because he blinded a friend in a match) and all the punishment meted out to him won't change his mind.

Observing it all and taking a paternal interest in Prewitt is Sgt. Milton Warden (Lancaster) who is tough and hard-headed about the unit being run his way.  He works directly for the captain whom he regards as a slacker, a suck-up and useless.  

Warden is flirting with danger and likely court-martial and expulsion from the service because he is having an affair with his captain's bored and sexually-frustrated wife, Karen (Kerr), who is well-known to many of her husband's associates. 

A day or so after Warden and Karen meet at the base, he shows up at the captain's residence, fully aware that he is not home.  Watching the two circling one another in their primal dance is just hot...

Karen (standing at her screen door, keeping Warden out in the rain):  If you're looking for the captain, he's not here.

Warden:  And if I'm not...? 

Scene 106 is the most memorable in the film and one of the iconic scenes in all of movieland.  A wave comes crashing onto shore and knocks Karen off her sergeant as they're making out in the sand.  It is a surprisingly short scene and hardly as frothy seen today but in 1953 it took movie eroticism to a new level.  (Kerr and Lancaster, in the first of their three films together, took their parts so seriously that they had an affair.)

Warden and Karen retreat to their towels and she breaks an embrace saying no one ever kissed me the way you do.  He asks how many have there been and it's obvious he's troubled not by what they're doing but by her past.  Nonetheless they fall in love.

While worn out from all the bullying he's experiencing by not boxing, Prew engages a dancehall girl, Lorene (Reed) and they, too, fall in love and talk of a future together (although she's reticent about returning to the states).

Prew also has a friend, Maggio (Sinatra) a runty, loudmouthed, proud Italian who introduces Prew to Honolulu nightlife and upholds him on the base.  Maggio suffers at the hands of the brutal sergeant of the guard at the camp stockade (Borgnine). 

I've always questioned how men regarded this film since it is clearly more about romance than war.  Only at the end do we see the planes arriving.  The last scene is of the two women, Karen and Lorene, who don't know one another (and the actresses had no other scenes together) as they stand on a ship looking out at the islands that they are leaving.  The story doesn't resolve the status of Karen's marriage but neither woman's romance has worked out.

Zinnemann was a superior director and I absolutely loved his films.  Hollywoodites knew that if Zinnemann went after a project, it must have a superior script for that was number one in his book.  He also seemed to have a knack for casting.  He loved casting against type and when he imagined someone in a role, he just had to have that actor.  He loved realism and as a result preferred working in black and white.  I know he said that FHTE was his favorite film up to that time.  I wonder if another ever supplanted it.

Tyrannical Harry Cohn was clear on who he wanted in his film... Edmond O'Brien (!) as Warden, Aldo Ray as Prewitt, Rita Hayworth as Karen, Julie Harris as Lorene and Eli Wallach as Maggio.  Frankly, I could have seen Hayworth and Ray, maybe even Wallach, but am glad it didn't work out.

Zinnemann and Cohn battled over the role of Prewitt, in my mind the lead role, certainly the one who drives the emotional tempo of the film.  Cohn was a big fan of Ray who was under contract to the studio and would come cheaply.  His second choice was John Derek, another contractee.  But Zinnemann was fierce about getting Clift, whom he had directed in The Search, and told Cohn he would quit the film if Clift were not hired.  

Clift had read the book and was dying to be Prewitt but despite rewarding roles in Red River and A Place in the Sun, he had a contempt for Hollywood, was not popular with the brass and would not play the game.  Cohn didn't like whatever game the actor was playing, sarcastically calling him too sensitive and saying he was all wrong for the role.  Zinnemann could hardly contain himself over Clift's gargantuan talent, finding his sensitivity as precisely what was required.

Clift and Lancaster were wary of one another.  Most of the company was nervous about working with Clift whom they considered acting royalty.  Lancaster said that his legs shook in their first scene together.  Ponder that.  Burt Lancaster!  I loved their scenes together... two actors I was so taken with and who were so different from one another in every way I could detect.  Their acting styles were world's apart and Clift didn't think Lancaster was such a good actor.  I don't get that, but okay.  More to the point, Clift didn't like Lancaster, calling him the most unctuous man he'd ever met.  Some of the rift probably came from billing... Clift thought he should have been top-billed.  Lancaster's praise of Clift didn't go beyond acting.  He thought Clift was odd and troubled.  Fair enough.  By the time they worked together again in Judgment at Nuremberg eight years later, all appeared to have been left in the past.

Robert Mitchum wanted to play Sgt. Warden but Howard Hughes, to whom he was under contract, would not allow it.  It didn't much matter because, of the five leads, only Lancaster was considered for his role from the beginning.  Zinnemann thought the actor was perfect to play a tough, no-nonsense military man's man who could also enjoy a tender romance and look buff in a swimming suit.  But Zinnemann didn't like him any more than Clift did.  Lancaster was famous for giving directors a hell of a hard time and although Zinnemann was no exception, he once told Lancaster to do it the way I've instructed or go screw yourself.  It was the only time they would work together.

A great deal of the press surrounded Kerr playing the lusty, adulterous wife.  Who in the world came up with that?!?  Well, her agent did.  Quite a number of actresses coveted the role.  Joan Crawford nearly signed but ultimately had a falling out with Columbia over costumes and the fact that she wanted her own cameraman.

The idea to cast Kerr was presented to Zinnemann and Cohn at the same time. The agent said that the prim Scottish actress was tired of lady-like roles.  She offered to leave her tiara at home and come audition.  Cohn screamed no way, she must be mad, he wasn't going to hire MGM's virgin and Zinnemann said, now wait just a minute.  He was a director with a penchant for hiring against type and he thought she would be perfect for the part.    

Sinatra got his share of press on playing Maggio and estranged wife Ava Gardner helped him out by sweet-talking Cohn.  Eli Wallach had been offered the role but had not yet signed on the dotted line.  Sinatra's career was in the toilet.  His movies were not doing well and no recording dates were in sight, not to mention his vocal chords had hemorrhaged.  To add to his woes were the nearly-daily salacious newspaper rumblings about the Sinatra marriage.

Then Wallach said he needed to do a Tennessee Williams play and when Sinatra again begged for the part and said he would do it for scale (8k), Cohn brought him aboard.  He caught fire in the part, winning a supporting Oscar and was back in the public's loving bosom.  He said he owed everything to Clift and Lancaster who had his back the entire shoot.  He and Lancaster became friends for life.

As it turned out, Zinnemann was against Reed.  He wanted Julie Harris with whom he'd just worked in The Member of the Wedding but Cohn was adamant that he wanted Reed.  His reasons were purely financial since she was under contract but he also had no intention of giving into his director one more time.  He should have been happy because, like Kerr, Reed was also cast against type.  If she didn't quite exude the lady-like demeanor that Kerr did, she had certainly cornered the market on wholesome.  MGM never really let her bust out and do anything dark or earthy.  

And c'mon, Donna Reed (of that future gooey TV show) playing a hooker?  Well, she was.  They might have softened it to a dancehall hostess but those who read the book knew better.  Her part wasn't as showy as the others but she still delivered and this has always been my favorite Reed role.  She, too, won a supporting Oscar, and won over Zinnemann as well.

Borgnine, still at the start of his career, made everyone hiss at his  bad hombre character called Fatso.  That he got his comeuppance was karma.  He had a powerful scene with Sinatra and Lancaster and the latter also took a special interest in him.  Lancaster and his production company put him under contract and hired him for his next film, Vera Cruz, in 1954.  The following year Lancaster gave him the title role in Marty and Borgnine won an Oscar.  

A mention, too, should go to character actor, Philip Ober, who played Kerr's sleazy captain husband.  He made a habit of playing authority figures (frequently military bigwigs) and he usually commanded one's attention.  Trivia buffs may know him as Vivian (Ethel Mertz) Vance's husband at the time.  

Regular readers know that I like to snivel about those Oscars from time to time and the Oscars of 1953 is one such time.  The good news is that From Here to Eternity garnered 13 nominations and  won eight.  Along with Sinatra and Reed, Zinnemann won for best director and Daniel Taradash's tightly-adapted screenplay got gold.  Sound, editing and costumes (take that, Joan Fussypants Crawford) also went home winners.  Best of all, the film won best picture... a most deserved win.  

So where's my sniveling?  Who didn't win were Lancaster, Kerr and Clift... and that pisses me off.  Well, unless they tied, the two men couldn't both have won, so I'm tearing loose Lancaster.  Not that he wasn't perfection... c'mon, he always was and he added a depth to this character that was impressive.  This man never turned in a bad performance but Sgt. Warden was not a stretch by any means.  

Clift on the other hand reached for the skies, turned himself inside out, laid it all bare.  He made us ache for his scorched Prew and such emotionally-wrought performances often win the prize.  He was robbed, I tell you.  He should have recovered from the billing and his perceived problems with Lancaster but he deserved that friggin' Oscar.  Dammit.  And to think that those old-fogey Oscar voters gave it to William Holden for his good-but-not-great showing in Stalag 17.  Geez, it pains me because I bloody love William Holden.

I'm not done yet.  Casting-against-type often gets Oscars, too, and Kerr, when she picked up her special Oscar in 1994 should have said... thank you for this, but screw you for not giving this to me for From Here to Eternity.  I say she put it all on the line for this film.  She wanted to prove she could really act and she certainly did and of course she would go on to give wonderful performances in many screen classics.

To think that she was a mere runner-up to Audrey Hepburn for her turn as the independent princess in Roman Holiday just appalls me.  Oh I can hear you Hepburn lovers (and I am one of you)... how dare I?  But I offer this:  she was adorable, I agree, but was playing an elegant, classy princess a stretch for Audrey Hepburn?  It was her first American film and those pesky voters just wanted to show how elegant and classy they were.  If they'd been thinking about the best acting by an actress in that year, it would have gone to Deborah Kerr for her searing, lustful portrayal of adulteress Karen Holmes.  

Funny, too... I loved Sinatra and Reed's performances but neither was as good as Lancaster, Kerr and Clift.  Oh, the irony...

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