SYNOPSIS

Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a hardheaded individualist who loves the Army, but stubbornly follows his own ethics. When Prewitt is transferred to Honolulu's Schofield Barracks just prior to World War II, his new commander, Captain Holmes, subjects him to harsh treatment for his refusal to use his boxing skills to bring glory to his platoon. Prewitt is rejected by everyone on base except his sergeant, Milt Warden, and the street-smart, rebellious Private Maggio. The intertwining lives of the military men form the central plot of the drama: Warden's affair with Holmes' wife, Karen; Prewitt's love for Alma Lorene, an embittered prostitute hoping for a better life; Maggio's ultimately fatal feud with sadistic Sgt. "Fatso" Judson. The conflicts come to a head on December 7, 1941, when the base and the naval installation at Pearl Harbor are attacked by the Japanese, forcing everyone to put aside their individual desires and grievances to fight a common enemy.

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Producer: Buddy Adler
Screenplay: Daniel Taradash, based on the novel by James Jones
Cinematography: Burnett Guffey
Editing: William Lyon
Art Direction: Cary Odell
Set Design: Frank Tuttle
Music: George Duning
Cast: Burt Lancaster (Sgt. Milton Warden), Deborah Kerr (Karen Holmes), Montgomery Clift (Robert E. Lee Prewitt), Frank Sinatra (Angelo Maggio), Donna Reed (Alma Lorene), Ernest Borgnine (Sgt. "Fatso" Judson).
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Why FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is Essential

James Jones' sprawling 800-page novel, From Here to Eternity was the book no one thought could be filmed. For one thing, it was a long and complex story that would have taken hours of screen time to fully capture its sprawling narrative. More daunting was its harsh language, its frankness about sex and its portrait of Army life as a brutalizing force that can crush a man's spirit. But after paying $82,000 for the film rights, Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn was determined to complete the project, which became known almost immediately throughout Hollywood as "Cohn's Folly." Script after script was rejected until Cohn at last found what he liked in an adaptation by Daniel Taradash.

The first step was securing the assistance of the U.S. Army, because no film about military life could be effectively made at a reasonable cost without it. The Pentagon's official position was to deny help to any project based on Jones' highly critical book. But producer Buddy Adler, an ex-officer himself, was able to win cautious approval by agreeing to two important changes. First, the brutal treatment handed out to Maggio by Fatso could not be shown, and Fatso's behavior had to be seen as a sadistic anomaly and not the result of Army policy as depicted in Jones' book. Taradash and director Fred Zinnemann didn't mind making that concession and felt that Maggio's death scene in Prewitt's arms would be an even better way to tell that part of the story. They were less than pleased, however, with the second change. In the novel, the villainous Capt. Holmes is promoted to major, a plot point the filmmakers found to be appropriately ironic. But they were forced to write a scene in which the captain is called on the carpet by his superiors and given the choice of resigning from service or facing a court martial. It was, the director would write years later in Fred Zinnemann: An Autobiography, "the worst moment in the film, resembling a recruiting short."

From Here to Eternity involved the casting, a process that provided much advance buzz for an already eagerly awaited movie and which frequently saw Harry Cohn and Fred Zinnemann at odds. Happily for the film and its stars, Zinnemann triumphed over the tyrannical studio boss and gathered one of the most effective and celebrated casts ever assembled in Hollywood. When the book was purchased in 1951, Columbia announced it would be a vehicle for Broderick Crawford, Glenn Ford and John Derek. Those names fell by the wayside in the months it took to come up with a suitable script. Burt Lancaster was then cast perfectly to type as Warden ­ a rugged man's man but also a lover who could capture a woman's desires. There, however, the typecasting stopped. Cohn, of course, wanted to use players already under contract to Columbia, and he thought Aldo Ray would be perfect as Prewitt. Zinnemann balked, and suggested Montgomery Clift, who he had directed in The Search (1948). Cohn thought this an idiotic idea; Clift was no soldier, no boxer and probably a homosexual, he told Zinnemann. That he turned out to be right on all counts didn't deter the director, who seized on Jones' description of Prewitt as a "deceptively slim young man." Cohn relented.

Eli Wallach, known primarily for his stage work at the time, was announced for the role of Maggio. But when Frank Sinatra heard Wallach could not back down on his commitment to do Tennessee Williams' play Camino Real on Broadway, he set about on a relentless campaign for the role. Hard as it may be to imagine today, Sinatra in 1953 was considered washed up. His movie career had faded after a string of 1940s musicals in which he usually played second banana to Gene Kelly. His private reputation suffered from his stormy marriage to screen beauty Ava Gardner and his much-publicized financial problems. And due to the hemorrhaging of his vocal cords, Sinatra's singing days were at least temporarily over. Sinatra barraged Cohn with calls, letters, telegrams, even enlisting his wife's clout. Finally Cohn gave in and agreed to give the singer a shot at the part for a paltry $8,000 salary.

The casting of the female roles proved to be a somewhat contentious affair. Joan Crawford was initially cast as Karen, but depending on whose version you believe, she backed out over either having to take second billing to Lancaster or over her distaste for the costumes designed for the character. Zinnemann quickly seized on the idea of hiring British actress Deborah Kerr, who was usually cast as prim and proper aristocrats, and hardly the image of a smoldering sexpot (like Karen's character in the novel). Likewise, Donna Reed had a wholesome, all-American image totally counter to her role as Alma Lorene, a "dance-hall hostess" in the film, which everyone knew was code for "hooker."

The bold casting turned out to be a major coup for the picture. The performances were almost universally hailed, and the roles turned out to be lucky for all the actors. Kerr broke out of a mold she had been trapped in, opening up her career to a wider range. Sinatra won an Oscar® and found himself back on top after his near-disastrous slump. Although the role didn't do much to change Reed's image permanently, the Oscar® she won for it validated her talents and gave her the clout to launch, a few years later, her successful, long-running TV series. As for Clift, he spent long hours, obsessively learning the bugle, military drill procedures and boxing (a skill he never quite mastered). As a result, he received high critical praise for his sensitive portrayal, getting so far into the soul of Prewitt that his work seemed, in the words of a Time magazine review, "behaving rather than acting, an artless-seeming form of art...." Although he was already into the downward spiral of his personal life that would kill him at an early age, with From Here to Eternity, Clift added another performance to a legendary body of work that helped define the tortured outsider anti-hero of the 1950s and influenced a generation of actors to come.

by Rob Nixon