Review: Come Back, Little Sheba

Shirley Booth stars as a middle-aged housewife with an inability to shut the hell up, even boring the piss out of the mailman whenever she gets the chance. Her sour but patient husband (Burt Lancaster) is a man struggling valiantly with alcoholism. Terry Moore plays the perky young boarder, a college art student set to marry one young man, but seemingly flirting with another (Richard Jaeckel, looking about 19!). She seems to arouse things in the older couple (and not necessarily the thing you’re thinking of), which will only lead to trouble. Philip Ober appears briefly as an AA colleague of Lancaster’s.

 

One of those films that just hasn’t held up over the years, this 1952 drama from director Daniel Mann (“Our Man Flint”, “Willard”, “The Revengers”) is stagy and ten minutes with Oscar and Tony-winning Shirley Booth (in her film debut after essaying the role on stage) and I honestly didn’t blame Burt Lancaster for taking to the drink. This woman seriously never shuts the hell up, and while I understand she’s clearly very lonely, it’s the kind of nauseatingly chatty, whiny performance that has ‘gimme an Oscar!’ written all over it. The sheer irritation of this lead character and performance helped distance me from the material, though Shelley Winters might’ve been able to make the role sympathetic or at least bearable. Shirley Booth fans will want to burn me at the stake, as they’ll champion her go-for-broke work here. I needed a Panadol. Oscar nominee Terry Moore is a little too ‘perky’ in her first scene, but ultimately calms the hell down, and improves the longer the film goes on. She sure is purdy, too I must say, if perhaps lacking that intangible ‘star quality’ to really break out. I could see myself liking her an awful lot in something else, but I found her occasionally annoying in this.

 

The biggest problem with the film isn’t that it’s stagy or irritating, it’s that it’s superficial. The film really needed to be a bit longer, I think, to fully deal with the heavy situations it sets up. The way things play out in the film, everything starts out so damn slowly and then gets wrapped up all too quickly at the end as a result. I just didn’t buy it, it comes off melodramatic, superficial, and silly. Perhaps that’s because it spends so much damn time with the insufferable Booth character (I’m sure I was meant to sympathise with her, but it didn’t happen), when the real story is with Burt Lancaster’s sad, inwardly struggling character. Yes, there’s been plenty of films before and since about alcoholism, but it’s a much more interesting subject than a needy, nagging, lonely wife who won’t stop her yammerin’ already.

 

The reason why the film is getting the rating I’m giving it is almost exclusively due to Burt Lancaster’s rock-solid performance. Personally, I think he’s just a tad too young (at 39 years of age, 15 years younger than co-star Booth!) for his clearly aging role, but that actually gives him the opportunity to really earn the part by acting, instead of being ‘Burt Lancaster, screen icon!’. It’s not one of Lancaster’s showier roles, but it might be one of his best-ever, certainly it’s one of the more vulnerable and subtle performances he ever gave. The fact that he’s so quiet when everyone else in the film is so incessantly chatty, probably sees me more drawn to him. He’s terrific, the film is just so-so. The other worthwhile aspect to the film is the excellent B&W cinematography by James Wong Howe (“Sweet Smell of Success”, “Hud”), which is very shadowy and contains interesting shots of faces obscured artfully, without calling too much attention and taking you out of the drama.

 

Overall, I just don’t think this one quite holds up, let alone measures up. Yes, it’s interestingly mature for 1952, but mostly it’s dreary, stagy, and when Booth’s around, seriously annoying. Based on a William Inge (“Bus Stop”) play, the screenplay is by Ketti Frings (“The Company She Keeps”, “Hold Back the Dawn”).

 

Rating: C+