The unconventional casting of From Here to Eternity made for some unexpected but very real chemistry in front of and behind the camera. Prim Deborah Kerr was an unlikely choice for the role of the adulterous Karen; while posing for cheesecake bathing suit publicity shots, she quipped, "I feel naked without my tiara." But early on in the shooting, it became apparent the unusual combination of Kerr and rugged Burt Lancaster was producing some welcome on-screen heat.

Oddly enough, Montgomery Clift connected best with Frank Sinatra. They were an odd couple ­ the gay, upper-crust WASP and the skinny Italian hood from New Jersey. The two became great drinking buddies while on location in Hawaii, going off on monumental benders, often joined by an even more unlikely partner, the pugnacious James Jones. Although Sinatra had always been a heavy drinker who could handle himself when necessary, Clift's growing substance abuse problem became more and more evident during the production. In one scene where he actually had to play drunk, he was far too intoxicated to pull it off.

Sinatra had personal problems of his own. The collapse of his marriage to Ava Gardner weighed heavily on him; it got so bad he announced to Clift one night that he was going to kill himself. But the younger actor was even more troubled, and Sinatra became a kind of big brother/protector for him. On the other hand, Clift was an acting mentor for Sinatra. The two had totally different styles of working. Sinatra was best in the first take or two; after that he tended to lose his spontaneity. Clift, on the other hand, used each take to build on what he had done before, getting deeper and deeper into the character and the situation with each go-round. Director Fred Zinnemann later said that was one of his biggest challenges on the picture, getting the best performance from both of them in the same take.

Sinatra wasn't the only one impressed with the way Clift attacked a role. Donna Reed remembered his concentration as being "positively violent." Clift's intensity extended to an obsessive drive to have every detail down right. He spent long hours of practice on military drills. He copied Jones' mannerisms and speech patterns. He insisted on playing his bugle loudly and repeatedly, even though he was dubbed, so that he would accurately appear to be playing it on screen. Renee Zinnemann, the director's wife, said, "He worked so hard at all of this that he was almost worn out by the time they started shooting."

Although Clift told friends he thought Burt Lancaster was a terrible actor and "a big bag of wind" (an attitude perhaps fueled by his resentment over having to take second billing), Lancaster had great regard for the younger man's talent. "The only time I was ever really afraid as an actor," Lancaster once said, "was that first scene with Clift. It was my scene, understand. I was the sergeant, I gave the orders, he was just a private under me. Well, when we started, I couldn't keep my knees from shaking....I'd never worked with an actor of Clift's power before. I was afraid he was going to blow me right off the screen." Lancaster's anxiety manifested itself in a pattern of difficult behavior, nitpicking over his lines, the camera angles, and his appearance. During breaks in filming he would go off by himself to jog or do push-ups. He argued so much with the normally even-tempered Zinnemann, he finally provoked the director into telling him to go "screw" himself.

Amid all these arduous details, Zinnemann managed to bring the film in as ordered, on time (41 total shooting days) and within budget ­ and at no more than two-hours running time. To keep from overrunning studio boss Harry Cohn's 120-minute dictate, he was forced to forego some scenes he particularly prized. One was a scene near the end where Prewitt mistakenly believes Pearl Harbor is being attacked by Germans. But Zinnemann had his victories, too. He lobbied for and was allowed to include a sequence featuring a group of soldiers improvising a song ­ "Re-Enlistment Blues", which Zinnemann hoped would be as popular and recognizable a movie song as Tex Ritter's "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling" had been for his earlier film, High Noon (1952). Despite the catchy tune, the song didn't become a top forty hit. But of all the battles he had to fight with the Columbia front office, the one he was proudest of winning was against "the boys in New York," i.e., the sales department. The marketing people thought the film would gross at least an extra million if it were shot in color. But Zinnemann was able to persuade Cohn that black and white was more suitable for the film's stark, gritty themes and that color would have softened and trivialized it.

by Rob Nixon