HotToastyRag It's difficult to sum up Some Came Running in a sentence. If only allowed one sentence, I'd merely tell my readers to watch the film, no questions asked. I watched it a few years ago, and it's stayed with me, vivid and haunting, ever since.Thankfully, I can use many more sentences to praise the 1958 Oscar nominated (but not winning) film. While Shirley MacLaine, Arthur Kennedy, and Martha Hyer were nominated for their performances, Frank Sinatra was snubbed. For Best Actor and Actress of 1958, David Niven and Susan Hayward were honored. I am huge fans of both, but I would have awarded both lead performances in Some Came Running over the Academy's choices that year.It takes place in a small Americana town, where secrets simmer under the surface, but it's not in any way a dated film. Frank Sinatra plays the Prodigal Son, a veteran and an author, who returns to his hometown and his family after a 16-year absence. Unlike many stories with that beginning, the absent son is not welcomed back with open arms. His brother has become a successful, upstanding member of society, and his family looks down on Sinatra's drinking, gambling, and lowbrow friends.Sinatra gives a wonderful, tragically torn performance. He falls in love with the elegant Martha Hyer and wants to make himself worthy of her, but feels the pull of his old lifestyle bringing him down. The audience is completely invested in him, cheering when he takes a step forward, and crying out when Dean Martin, a bad influence gambler, drags him two steps backwards. Why he wasn't nominated for an Oscar that year I'll never know.Shirley MacLaine gives the performance of her career in this film. And, since she's given incredibly powerful performances in The Children's Hour, Terms of Endearment, Bernie, Two for the Seesaw, and Postcards from the Edge, I realize what a bold statement I just made. It's true. Ever since her 1983 Oscar, she's (for the most part) been typecast as a "tough broad". Modern audiences probably can't imagine her in a part where she doesn't spew memorable zingers in every scene. However gutsy and fantastic her persona is now, she wasn't always that way. In Some Came Running, Shirley MacLaine shows talents most people wouldn't dream she had. She's feminine, vulnerable, sweet, and hopeful. She's soiled but still innocent, common but reaching for class, loving, and sensitive.With a heartbreaking love triangle, some very steamy scenes at the demise of the Hays Code, incredible acting, and Vincente Minnelli's gentle direction, Some Came Running is one of the best films of the 1950s. It's a true classic.

gavin6942 In the post-war, the alcoholic and bitter veteran military and former writer Dave Hirsch (Frank Sinatra) returns from Chicago to his hometown Parkman, Indiana. He is followed by Ginnie Moorehead (Shirley MacLaine), a vulgar and easy woman with whom he spent his last night in Chicago that has fallen in love with him.Much of the film was shot in and around the town of Madison, Indiana. Shirley MacLaine reported that Sinatra was "besieged" by the local Indiana women, and that at one point a woman broke through a rope barrier around a house and flung herself at Sinatra as her husband ran to stop her, pleading "Helen, you don't even know the man!" I would not say this is a must-see film, but MacLaine in her early days was always a great actress to see, and this is the first pairing of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. This was 1958, still a few years before the glory days of the Rat Pack.

drystyx This movie is a sure cure for Insomnia, except for the most extreme cases.Sinatra and Dino play two guys that don't make a bit of sense, but we're supposed to think they do.In other words, they play the characters they always play in movies together.What they are talking about is not just outdated. It never existed. I was born in 1956, and nothing they do or say makes any sense to me.The movie makes no sense either. It is just a bunch of words strung together, apparently written by people on drugs.It's some sort of melodrama, but don't try to stay awake through it. It'll just make you hate the idiots in the movie even more.Some came running to watch the movie. All left sleeping.

nimbus13 This movie was made in Madison, Indiana when I was a teenager.I lived about 20 miles north of Madison.The production company was looking for a crowd for the street carnival scene in the movie. Some of my family thought it might be interesting to go down and mingle in the crowd and we might end up in the movie. However, something came up and we couldn't go.I saw the movie shortly after it was released and have seen it a couple of times since and was not overly impressed with the storyline or the dialog(very derivative). I was not impressed with Frank Sinatra, at all. However, Shirley Maclaine and Dean Martin were very good in the supporting roles.The cinematography, however, is excellent.Madison is located in a very green, rolling, area of Indiana on the Ohio River and is very lush, and the background of the Ohio River shot over the characters shoulders in the cemetery, in Kentucky, captures the beauty of the area. The photography at the Lanier Mansion (1844) definitely captured the affluence of the character that lives there in the movie.