***1/2 to this excellent 1958 film.
If ever you wanted to teach about social class differences in American society, you can use this fine film as a perfect example.
Ex-G.I. writer returns home. He is a very good writer, on his way up, but is confused and perplexed about his life.
He has his card playing buddies led by a boozy Dean Martin, in a tour De force performance. Where was the Academy not to nominate Dean in a supporting role? Instead, they gave the nod to veteran excellent actor Arthur Kennedy (memorable in Peyton Place the year before). Kennedy played the writer, Frank Sinatra's conventional brother, who may harbor some skeletons in his own closet.
Along the way, Sinatra meets Miss French, an upper class high school teacher. He also comes into contact with Ginny, marvelously played by Shirley Mac Laine. Ginny is common, and totally uneducated. Her atrocious English plays well up against the writer Dave and Miss French, the prototype of the American teacher.
At the spur of the moment, Dave marries Ginny but tragedy soon ensues.
Some Came Running is a story of moral decay, elite vs. a common person as well as a writer's quest for the meaning of life. It worked awfully well. Mac Laine was nominated for best actress; Martha Hyer's Miss French deservedly awarded her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress.
If ever you wanted to teach about social class differences in American society, you can use this fine film as a perfect example.
Ex-G.I. writer returns home. He is a very good writer, on his way up, but is confused and perplexed about his life.
He has his card playing buddies led by a boozy Dean Martin, in a tour De force performance. Where was the Academy not to nominate Dean in a supporting role? Instead, they gave the nod to veteran excellent actor Arthur Kennedy (memorable in Peyton Place the year before). Kennedy played the writer, Frank Sinatra's conventional brother, who may harbor some skeletons in his own closet.
Along the way, Sinatra meets Miss French, an upper class high school teacher. He also comes into contact with Ginny, marvelously played by Shirley Mac Laine. Ginny is common, and totally uneducated. Her atrocious English plays well up against the writer Dave and Miss French, the prototype of the American teacher.
At the spur of the moment, Dave marries Ginny but tragedy soon ensues.
Some Came Running is a story of moral decay, elite vs. a common person as well as a writer's quest for the meaning of life. It worked awfully well. Mac Laine was nominated for best actress; Martha Hyer's Miss French deservedly awarded her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress.