AUGUST 13, 2008
Before there was
Don Draper, there
was Frank Sinatra
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We may romanticize the 1950s as an era of innocence and morality, and believe that our cynicism and baser desires are later-20th-century innovations. But in Some Came Running, an underappreciated Frank Sinatra gem from 1958, the Chairman of the Board reminds us that there’s satisfaction in finding the bad beneath the good old days — a catharsis that’s still powerful 50 years after the fact.
Directed by Vincente Minnelli (in the same year he made Gigi), the film stars Sinatra as a war veteran and novelist who returns to his sleepy hometown of Parkman, Indiana, to discover it’s not so sleepy anymore: He seems to find (and sometimes facilitate) gambling, drinking, adultery, and all the other interesting vices wherever he goes. Featuring a surprisingly unembarrassing Dean Martin (in his first role opposite Sinatra) and a searing performance from Shirley MacLaine (as a Chicago floozy who yearns to clean up her act), Some Came Running is a still-hip lesson that there’s fulfillment — and sometimes fun — in tearing down outdated façades.
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the original trailer for Some Came Running
Some Came Running
Some Came Running from Netflix
