Little Sheba is a dog they had that ran away and that Shirley has been praying will return. This review recommended the film "as 'must' entertainment to the discriminating adult m… 9 - Excellent movie, a must see. Check out jpsgranville's 7/10 review of "Come Back, Little Sheba" Check out jpsgranville's 7/10 review of "Come Back, Little Sheba" Menu. And Ms. Merkerson responds with an abjectness that makes you want to rush the stage and intervene. This movie is better than those two and that's only part of the story in this picture. That he is not a sloppy drunk but one of icy anger and contempt, gives his big breakdown scene an almost unbearable harshness. Although the film version was offered to the likes of Bette Davis (who turned it down because she felt she couldn't bring to the role the "gorgeous vagueness" Booth had), Hal Wallis wisely went with Booth to recreate her stage role, casting Burt Lancaster for box-office appeal. Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) Sam Meltzer🏳️‍🌈’s review published on Letterboxd: Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster are wonderful in this sweet little movie. The film is as powerful today in its story and it's acting performances as when I first saw it and I'm certain when it was first released in 52. Movies. Days of Wine and Roses and The Lost Weekend deal with the problem of those afflicted with Alcoholism. Although this movie is more like a filmed play, I enjoyed it a lot. Booth's performance is one of the best ever to win an Oscar. 5.0 out of 5 stars Come Back, Little Sheba. / Street Date August 10, 2004 / 14.99 Starring Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, Terry Moore, Richard Jaeckel, Philip Ober, Edwin Max Cinematography James Wong Howe Art Direction Henry Bumstead, Hal Pereira Film Editor Warren Low Original Music Franz Waxman Written by Ketti … . Burt was great too! As the story begins, Marie, a young college student comes to answer an advertisement for a place to live at Lola Delaney's home. That was wise. The middle-aged Lola, running to fat and slovenliness, sees in Marie an idealized version of her younger self and encourages (and spies on) the girl in her “tall spooning” with her boyfriends (Brian J. Smith and Chad Hoeppner). She has a likable disposition, but she doesn't have much drive. She is both pitiful yet strong in conjuring up the depths of depression. The Akron Beacon Journalnoted the frankness of the script, in which the lead characters openly discuss the reason for their hasty marriage and the college students are seen as "sex-happy". miscast" Running time: 2 hours. That said, apart from what a terrible year 1952 was for Best Actress candidates, I'll never understand the devotion Booth inspired among audiences and Oscar voters. If she had never done anything else on screen she would still have earned her place in the pantheon of great performances. Booth is joined by Burt Lancaster, playing her husband "Doc", a man who is a recovering alcoholic, which is central to the story. But, like Tennessee Williams, who befriended and helped him during his stint as a newspaper drama critic, Inge's star faded and his works were eventually respected but neglected. Terry Moore is a boarder who they take in for more income, of whom Burt takes a liking to. Everyone knows a few of them. Like Ms. Merkerson’s anchoring performance, this production resounds precisely because it keeps its voice down. Come Back, Little Sheba Paramount Home Video 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 99 min. Film. Just listening to those plays, as wonderful as they might be, is something we can no longer relate to. Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, and Terry Moore shine in this very fine flick. Newsweek called the film "one of Hollywood's few outstanding movies of the year". With Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, Terry Moore, Richard Jaeckel. | "Come Back, Little Sheba" is a picture that will sneak up on you as you watch it. This is a great film. By William Inge; directed by Michael Pressman; sets by James Noone; costumes by Jennifer von Mayrhauser; lighting by Jane Cox; sound by Obadiah Eaves; music by Peter Golub; fight director, J. David Brimmer; production stage manager, James Fitzsimmons; general manager, Florie Seery; associate artistic director/production, Mandy Greenfield; production manager, Kurt Gardner. She rarely signals what Lola’s feeling; she just seems to feel, and we get it, instantly and acutely. The production is faithful to the William Inge play. Shirley Booth gives Oscar-Performance (got Kleenex? This film will stay with you for a long time. For those of you who only know Shirley Booth from the television series Hazel, I would strongly recommend you look at the list of her Broadway credits which date all the way back to the twenties. Booth won a well deserved Oscar for this performance and it is well worth the time to view it. Both are fine films. That said, the acting was spot-on. And, you'll most likely become annoyed with the wife. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Come Back Little Sheba - Burt Lancaster [DVD] at Amazon.com. "Come Back, Little Sheba" is a picture that will sneak up on you as you watch it. Through March 16. The scenes where "Doc" falls off the wagon and requires extreme hospital care are heartbreaking. When his wife (Booth) telephones her parents in her despair, and is brushed off by her mother, it is clear that the "family" has long given up on "Doc", and subsequently their own daughter. A once proud and respected person who falls by the wayside due to his drinking has picked himself up and is determined to start over again even though various demons still linger inside him. Shirley Booth won the Tony and the oscar for her portrayal. Bette Davis said later in life she was offered the part of Lola, and eventually turned it down. Shirley Booth's performance in this movie is one of the best I've seen.From the moment she appears as Lola Delaney you know almost everything you need to know about her character.It's quite rare that I get moved to tears by a performance,but Shirley Booth managed that feat. Yet Ms. Merkerson allows a kind of intimate access traditionally afforded by cinematic close-ups, when the camera finds shades of meaning in impassive faces. One of Shirley Booth's finest performances I feel. External Reviews Come Back, Little Sheba, William Inge’s first stage play, was a major success on Broadway in 1950. For a white man to marry a black woman in the Midwest of the 1950s would truly have squelched any chances for conventional success. Come Back, Little Sheba was his first Broadway play and it, like Picnic. The room for rent is ample, but Marie set her eyes on the sewing room Lola uses, off the living area. Come Back, Little Sheba . Are there really Blanche DuBois and Willie Lomans today? She’s sharper than Lola (Ms. Kazan is terrific in conveying the character’s self-consciousness), and she’s sure to wind up richer. During the week preceding the showing NBC advertised it with the clip of Lancaster going after Booth with a kitchen knife. Mr. Pressman, making his Broadway debut, subtly elicits a feminist subtext from this anxious triangle. His plays never seem to go to an intellectual level. And, as you would expect, the subject matter was of little interest to me at that age. It's an experience you won't forget. Lost dreams have been Doc's excuse for turning to the bottle, and a lost little dog (Sheba) symbolizes his wife's search for herself. The girl thinks it would be perfect because of the light. Thoreau’s much-quoted words about “lives of quiet desperation” were regularly and mistily invoked to describe the ordinary people of waning hopes in Inge’s plays, which were regularly translated to film (“Picnic,” “Bus Stop,” “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs”). How you want little Sheba to come home, how you imagine her going to sleep holding back the tears, is so touching and humiliating at the same time. Conveying everything while seeming to do nothing is no mean feat — a rare accomplishment expected, perhaps, from seasoned stage stars like Vanessa Redgrave (in “The Year of Magical Thinking”) or Lois Smith (in the recent revival of “The Trip to Bountiful”). For instance, when Inge’s protagonist, Lola Delaney, busily readies her home to welcome the long-distance boyfriend of her young boarder, Marie, it recalls …Read more Where dwelling upon the past results in an empty dwelling. She is at times heartbreakingly real - one would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by her standing on the porch saying "Come back, little Sheba" a reference to their dog that ran away. I first saw this motion picture on New Years eve back in the late 60's on NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies. Come Back, Little Sheba was written by William Inge. A couple of aspects for which the play is known is its depiction of the Midwest as well as a portrait of ordinary lives of characters for whom anyone can r Growing up in the fifties I could not help but be aware of Come Back, Little Sheba. Ms. Merkerson and this production make sure that even when Lola is talking a blue streak, we also always hear the unspeakable gray silence that lies beneath. She intends to do some work in there. And, also, he is an alcoholic who has been sober for years and whose world will soon shatter. There was a time, in the mid-20th century, when Inge (1913-1973) was spoken of in the same breath as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Shirley Booth (of "Hazel" fame) and Burt Lancaster are married, but don't really communicate in "Come Back, Little Sheba." Shirley Booth is the long-suffering wife of alcoholic Burt Lancaster, who seems to be chronically "between relapses". . revival of the Inge play "Come Back, Little Sheba" at the Biltmore Theater. That's just as well, because there's an awful lot of simple, unchallenging banality to go around in William Inge's 58-year-old pseudo-classic 'Come Back, Little Sheba.'" Sometimes, when she stops the restless chatter with which she fills her days and lets the silence take over, Lola Delaney seems to be staring at nothing in the deeply felt revival of “Come Back, Little Sheba,” which opened Thursday night at the Biltmore Theater. 8 - Great movie, don't miss it. Yet as S. Epatha Merkerson portrays this housebound wife of an alcoholic, in a performance that stops the heart, her gaze is anything but empty. & "Michael Pressman's pedestrian staging is as adequate as the play deserves, and a miscast Merkerson makes an adorable Lola - sincere, compassionate and, well . I didn't see it for many years until it aired on AMC. The Broadway legit success, Come Back, Little Sheba, has become a potent piece of screen entertainment. Though slim on plot, “Come Back, Little Sheba” could easily tilt toward giggly hysteria. This is a fine film that stands up well after more than sixty years. (which won a Pulitzer), Bus Stop and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, was successfully brought to the screen. Such emotional sincerity is the hallmark of this revival from the Manhattan Theater Club, directed with gentle compassion by Michael Pressman and featuring first-rate performances from Kevin Anderson and Zoe Kazan. Theatre Review by Matthew Murray - January 24, 2008. Shirley Booth was a remarkably versatile actress - she did comedies, musicals, and dramas - and won the adoration of critics and audiences in all. - Little Sheba, the little stray dog the couple had taken in, is never seen, and is only referred to. My older sibling and I not really old enough to know about such things joked about the scene. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Because if she did, there would really be no reason for her to keep on living. The power of that performance is beyond description. It all centres around a missing dog, Little Sheba. It’s the quietness in “quiet desperation” that Mr. Pressman and his cast highlight here in portraying a few days, both eventful and typical, in the claustrophobic lives of Lola and Doc (Mr. Anderson), a chiropractor of dashed ambitions trying to stay off the sauce. Awards I decided to buy it finally and re-watched it with my husband. At the age of twelve, when I first saw this movie, you don't bother too much about who's in it, who produced it, or who directed it. Theater Review | 'Come Back, Little Sheba'. And the resultant coming to grips with the thing, a turn around in out look, are perfect examples of "progress, not perfection" and "having had a spiritual awakening". 5.0 out of 5 stars Come Back, Little Sheba. The William Inge Play comes to life with beautiful performances by the leads. Come Back, Little Sheba, drama in two acts by William Inge, published in 1949 and first performed in 1950. Her style on the small screen is naturalistic, low-key and determinedly untheatrical. 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