Come Back, Little Sheba: A Review

 

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA

The loss of a beloved pet, especially if it takes the place in some way of a child, can be hard. For some, a pet can take the place of a child. Come Back, Little Sheba is a slice of life story, grounded in reality, with strong performances from the whole cast.

Frumpy housewife Lola Delaney (Shirley Booth) keeps a constant lookout for her precious lost dog, Little Sheba. She is devoted to her husband, Doc (Burt Lancaster), a chiropractor and recovering alcoholic whom she calls "Daddy". He is coming to his one-year anniversary of sobriety thanks to his regular attendance of Alcoholics Anonymous. Doc and Lola seem, if not happy together, at least content with life as it is.

There is, however, a new figure that has come their way. It is pretty college student Marie Buckholder (Terry Moore). She has come to rent a room from the Delaney's large home. Lola is very pleased to have a youngster and potential gal pal in the house. Doc, for his part, couldn't express his lust for their new tenant more openly if he started stripping in front of Marie. She will be a hard temptation for Doc both in the desires of the flesh and the demon rum. 

Marie, oblivious to the strife that she is causing, is also a tease, but not towards Doc, whom she considers more of a father figure than a sugar daddy. She is in a long-distance relationship with Bruce Cunningham, but she also allows hunky student Turk Fischer (Richard Jaeckel) to squire her around. He gladly poses for her drawings, but she will go only so far.

A series of circumstances create a false impression of Marie and Turk indulging in the pleasures of the flesh. Doc, who sees only part of the situation, finally cracks and hits the bottle. Lola, caught up in the elaborate dinner she has prepared for Marie and Bruce (Walter Kelly), is at first puzzled as to why Doc has not come too. She soon realizes what has happened and frantically calls Doc's AA sponsors to find him. He does show up but is so trashed that he becomes dangerous to Lola. Will Doc and Lola be able to overcome his relapse to find love with each other again? What will become of Marie and Bruce?

Shirley Booth recreated her Tony Award winning performance as Lola for the film version of William Inge's play. She is also one of the few performers to win acting awards for both the stage and screen versions of the same role. Despite the acclaim and Academy Award, Booth opted to not pursue a film career, making only five films in total. 

While Shirley Booth may be best remembered as the title character in Hazel, she showed in Come Back, Little Sheba that she was more than just a wise and wisecracking maid. Booth is absolutely wonderful as Lola, this sad, lonely woman who adores "Daddy" but is also unaware of how she also hurts him. Right from the first scene, we know what kind of woman Lola is. She appears disheveled, frumpy, a bit lost. It is a perfect marriage of actress and character.

Booth has several deeply moving moments. There is when she and Doc talk about their early years of courtship. Ketti Fring's adaptation of Inge's play does not overtly say so, but it is understood that theirs was a shotgun wedding. Booth also excels when she realizes that Doc has fallen off the wagon. Her terror when Doc comes back in a murderous rage is frightening for the audience. We feel great sympathy for Lola, a woman who genuinely cares for all but who is also unable to move forward until the end. Her scene when she is on the phone with her mother after surviving Daddy's attack will just about break your heart. 

Burt Lancaster plays against type as Doc. This is a weak man, blunt in his manner but also unable to find a healthy way to express the pain he carries. Lancaster in Come Back, Little Sheba is quite restrained, as if showing us how Doc is working to keep himself together. It is not until he falls off the wagon that we see how dangerous he has become. His unleashing about the years of regret to anger he has at Lola, who has done nothing intentionally wrong against him, lends to the terror. However, we also see how deeply regretful and remorseful he is about what he has done to others and himself.

Terry Moore's Marie is no coquette. She is actually a pretty pleasant person, one who wants to enjoy her youth while she is young. Unlike Turk, she does not look down on the older Doc and Lola. She does think of them as a bit square compared to the younger generation. However, she also has a soft spot for Lola's genuine kindness. She may be a flirt, but she is also someone who won't let even the hunky Turk take advantage of her when she does not want to. 

Director Daniel Mann has some wonderful sequences that reveal much about the characters. Of particular note is when Doc and Lola are talking about how they ended up where they were. He was a promising medical student, she a pretty young thing. As they talk about how their decisions and his drinking soon got them to be where they are, Mann shoots the scene as if Doc is in prison. It is subtle but effective, revealing more about Doc's state of mind. 

Come Back, Little Sheba also has an appropriately dramatic score from Franz Waxman, which underscores the tragedy but also the optimism of the story. The film ends with Doc back home. Lola has done something different: she has fixed up the kitchen. She also, more importantly, accepted that Little Sheba is dead and is not coming back.

"We gotta go on. We gotta go on," she says if memory serves right. She may be talking about moving on past Sheba. She could easily be talking about their lives. Come Back, Little Sheba is an underappreciated film. While its stage trappings are still there, that is a minor issue. Centered around a deeply moving and strong performance from Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba is a film that simply should be better known.

DECISION: B-