From Here to Eternity inspired a critically acclaimed mini-series of the same name in 1979. It starred William Devane as Warden, Natalie Wood as Karen, Roy Thinnes as Capt. Holmes, Steve Railsback as Prewitt, Joe Pantoliano as Maggio, Peter Boyle as Fatso and in one of her first roles, Kim Basinger as Lorene. The following year it became a short-lived, rather soapy TV series. Devane, Basinger and Thinnes returned in their roles from the mini-series. Barbara Hershey took over the role of Karen, and Don Johnson played the character based on Prewitt, although his name was changed from Robert E. Lee Prewitt to Jefferson Davis Prewitt.

The beach "make-out" scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr was considered very steamy for its time. More than the actual kissing (and the fact that Kerr was on top), censors objected to the water crashing around them and forming rather suggestive white foam over their bodies. The scene has become one of the most famous and recognizable in film history. For many years, tourist buses would make regular stops on the shore in Hawaii to show people the spot where Lancaster and Kerr made love in the waves. It has been spoofed on several occasions, notably in The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Airplane! (1980). It was given a gay twist in Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998), starring Brad Rowe and Will & Grace's Sean Hayes, and parodied by a waterlogged Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca in the 1950s TV sketch comedy series, Your Show of Shows.

Director James Ivory made A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998), based on the novel by James Jones' daughter Kaylie Jones. The film is a fictionalized account of the author, starring Kris Kristofferson as Bill Willis, an ex-soldier and hard-drinking writer. Barbara Hershey played his wife. In the TV sitcom Seinfeld, 1940s film noir heavy Lawrence Tierney (who also appeared in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs) played Elaine's (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) father, the gruff, macho, hard-drinking ex-military man and famous writer Alton Benes, a character very similar to Jones' image.

Two other books by James Jones have been turned into films: Some Came Running (1958), which starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, and two versions of The Thin Red Line, a sequel of sorts to From Here to Eternity following characters from the original through the war in the Pacific. The 1964 version starred Keir Dullea and Jack Warden and the 1998 version starred George Clooney, James Caviezel and Sean Penn in the role Warden played.

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) included a character, Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), an Italian-American singer-actor based on Frank Sinatra, who was reputed to have Mafia connections. According to Coppola's film, Fontane came to Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) for career help when studio head Jack Woltz (John Marley, a thinly veiled Harry Cohn) refused to give him a plum part the actor was begging for (much like Sinatra's campaign to be cast in From Here to Eternity). Woltz's mind is changed after Corleone makes him "an offer he can't refuse"; he wakes one morning to find the bloody, severed head of his prize racehorse in his bed. According to Fred Zinnemann's autobiography, "the author of The Godfather was using poetic license," and no such mutilation was part of the casting decision.

by Rob Nixon