General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Some Came Running

Some Came Running is a 1958 American drama film directed by Vincente Minnelli, produced by Sol C. Siegel for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and adapted by John Patrick and Arthur Sheekman from James Jones's novel of the same name. It stars Frank Sinatra as Dave Hirsh, a discharged soldier and lapsed novelist who returns to his Midwestern home town and becomes torn between two women, Ginny Moorhead (Shirley MacLaine) and Gwen French (Martha Hyer), while befriending the gambler Bama Dillert (Dean Martin)¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Release	World premiere in Los Angeles 18 December 1958; New York opening 22 January 1959¹
Runtime	134 or 136–137 minutes according to the AFI Catalog; other listings give 2h 14m to 2h 17m¹^•²
Source novel	James Jones's manuscript, more than 2,000 pages, bought by MGM for $200,000 in January 1957, eight months before publication; the published novel ran 1,266 pages¹
Principal cast	Frank Sinatra (Dave Hirsh), Dean Martin (Bama Dillert), Shirley MacLaine (Ginny Moorhead), Martha Hyer (Gwen French), Arthur Kennedy (Frank Hirsh)¹
Key crew	Cinematography William H. Daniels, editing Adrienne Fazan, art direction William A. Horning and Urie McCleary, score Elmer Bernstein¹
Awards	Five Academy Award nominations, no wins, in the 1959 ceremony³
Filming	Shot on location in Madison and Terre Haute, Indiana, from early August to early October 1958¹

Spoilers

Story and cast

Dave Hirsh, a hard-drinking, hard-edged novelist and army veteran, comes home after years away and takes a room at the best hotel in town. His wealthy, socially aspiring brother Frank (Arthur Kennedy) wants him to settle down and introduces him to the college English teacher Gwen French, while Dave drifts into the company of the professional gambler Bama Dillert and is followed to town by Ginny, a devoted but unsophisticated woman he had met in Chicago²^•⁶. Supporting players include Nancy Gates, Leora Dana, Betty Lou Keim, Larry Gates, Steven Peck, Connie Gilchrist, and Ned Wever¹.

Sources disagree on the town's name and state: the TCM article by Jeff Stafford places Dave's hometown as Parkham, Illinois⁷, while the DVD Talk review identifies it as Parkman, Indiana⁶.

The carnival finale and critical standing

The film is probably best remembered for its penultimate scene, in which the newly married Dave and Ginny are stalked by her jilted lover through a carnival celebration lit in garish colors. Minnelli explained his visual inspiration as "the inside of a juke box... garishly lit in primary colors." Film scholar Dana Polan, Martin Scorsese Professor of Cinema Studies at NYU, describes how the widescreen CinemaScope compositions frame Dave's emotional isolation, placing Ginny repeatedly at the frame's edge and off his visual plane, until the long lateral tracking shot at her funeral at last brings the men, stripped of their carefree insouciance, onto a level plane with what they had ignored¹².

The film appears on two canonical lists, 1001 Movies (No. 352) and the TSPDT 1000 (No. 359), and holds an IMDb rating of 7.2¹³. Reviewing a 2024 revival, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle called it the biggest of the exceptions to Sinatra's undemanding film roles and "the great film of [Minnelli's] career"¹⁴.

The novel and its sale

James Jones, whose first novel From Here to Eternity had been successfully filmed by Columbia Pictures in 1953, worked on Some Came Running for seven years, beginning around 1950; it is largely autobiographical in nature. The Yale guide to his papers records that the book was published in 1958 to less than favorable reviews but still earned a place on the bestseller lists⁴. A December 1956 news item reported that Jones was offering the film rights for $1,000,000; MGM instead purchased his manuscript for $200,000 in January 1957¹. A contemporary Kirkus Reviews notice (June 15, 1957, listing a 1,195-page Scribner edition) was scathing, calling the book "an orgy in the manure pile" and predicting a sharp disappointment for readers of From Here to Eternity⁵.

The title came from a verse in the Gospel of St. Mark (9.25) about people who pursue eternal life's meaning yet cannot attain it because materialism consumes them.¹

Production

MGM offered the film to Vincente Minnelli shortly after he returned from shooting The Reluctant Debutante (1958); for him it was an opportunity to explore small-town American life after months of filming in Europe⁷. Producer Sol C. Siegel considered casting Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando, and Sinatra in turn approved Dean Martin, recently split from his partnership with Jerry Lewis, for the role of Bama¹^•⁷.

Location friction. The cast and crew traveled to Madison, Indiana, for most of the filming. After the town's initial excitement over Sinatra's arrival, an antagonistic relationship developed after the press reported disparaging comments he had made about the city; an August 1958 Time article was critical of his behavior on location, including insulting remarks to locals and a brawl. Sinatra also clashed with Minnelli over retakes and schedules, preferring a single take and a noon-to-8 p.m. working day to Minnelli's 7 a.m. start. Their biggest confrontation came during the climactic carnival scene, when Minnelli spent too long setting up a shot and then had the Ferris wheel moved rather than the camera; Sinatra stormed off to Los Angeles until MGM's head of production coaxed him back⁷. Minnelli's own autobiography, however, says he found no fault in Sinatra's conduct in Madison¹.

At Sinatra's recommendation, Minnelli built up MacLaine's part, including changing the ending from Dave's death to Ginny dying trying to protect him¹. MacLaine later credited Sinatra for her performance; in her autobiography Dance While You Can she recalled him telling Minnelli and the studio head, "Let the kid get killed... If she dies, she'll get more sympathy. Then she'll get nominated"⁷.

The Rat Pack connection

Some Came Running marked the first joint screen appearance of members of the Hollywood circle known as the Rat Pack, of which Sinatra was the unofficial head, alongside Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford¹. The filming can be seen as the beginning of the Sinatra-led, Las Vegas-centered group; Sinatra himself preferred "The Clan" or "The Summit" to the "Rat Pack" label. MacLaine became an honorary member several years after the film's release and had a cameo in Ocean's Eleven (1960)⁸.

Reception and awards

The film received five Academy Award nominations for the 1959 ceremony: Shirley MacLaine for Best Actress (she also received a Golden Globe nomination, losing to Susan Hayward for I Want to Live!), Arthur Kennedy for Best Supporting Actor, Martha Hyer for Best Supporting Actress, Walter Plunkett for Best Costume Design, and Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn for Best Original Song, "To Love and Be Loved." It won none of them; Minnelli's other 1958 film, Gigi, took nine Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, and together his two films that year gathered fourteen nominations³^•⁷.

Critical response was divided. Time dismissed the script's moralizing, while the Variety Movie Guide called Sinatra's performance "sardonic and compassionate"³. Later assessments have been warmer: Rotten Tomatoes reports a 78% Tomatometer from 18 reviews and a Metacritic Metascore of 68²^•⁹. The Guardian called it "as good a record of postwar America's alcohol-fuelled split personality as anyone has made"¹⁰, and Time Out gave it five stars, praising Minnelli's direction and the "shocking fairground denouement"¹¹.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1950s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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