Pop Culture 101 - SOME CAME RUNNING

Some Came Running is often called the beginning of the famed "Rat Pack." Actually, the term was originally coined by Lauren Bacall in the mid-1950s and attached to her husband Humphrey Bogart and his social circle in Holmby Hills, which included Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland (and on occasion, her husband Vincente Minnelli). This informal group dissolved when Bogart died of throat cancer in 1957. The Some Came Running filming, then, can be seen as the beginning of the Sinatra-led, Las Vegas-centered Rat Pack, which consisted of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and their "Girl Friday," Shirley MacLaine. The group (Sinatra preferred "The Clan" or "The Summit" to "The Rat Pack") reached its cultural apex in 1960, as they filmed Ocean's Eleven in the daytime while performing two shows a night at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Vegas. That same summer Frank, Sammy, Peter, and Shirley sang the "Star-Spangled Banner" to open the Democratic National Convention, at which Lawford's brother-in-law John F. Kennedy received the nomination for President.

Following his first two novels, writer James Jones continued to explore WWII and the veterans of war in most of his subsequent books. Pistol dealt with the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Thin Red Line and Whistle were populated with virtually the same characters that existed in Jones' classic first novel, From Here to Eternity. Jones had good reason for this single-minded interest; as a young sailor he was stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and witnessed the surprise attack. He was later wounded at Guadalcanal and returned home to small-town Illinois, where he began writing about his experiences. He helped create the Handy Writer's Colony in Marshall, Illinois, which existed until 1964. He lived in Paris for a decade, then taught in Miami for a time before his death in 1977. The Thin Red Line, about Guadalcanal, was filmed in 1964 and again (by Terrence Malick) in 1998. James Jones also served as "script consultant" for the 1962 film about the Normandy invasion, The Longest Day.

Some Came Running features the song "To Love and Be Loved," written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. The pair was responsible for writing numerous hit songs for movies, in particular several recorded by Sinatra, such as "All the Way" from The Joker Is Wild (1957) and "High Hopes" from A Hole in the Head (1959). Van Heusen was a long-time Sinatra crony, and was one of the many guests to the house Sinatra and Dean Martin rented in Madison, Indiana, during the Some Came Running shoot.

Vincente Minnelli's daughter became an honorary member of the Rat Pack in 1988. During a final live performance tour that year featuring Sinatra, Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., Martin fell ill and Liza Minnelli stepped in for the remaining tour dates.