From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity is a 1953 movie based on a James Jones novel in which characters work through ordinary bouts of intimidation and infidelity on a military base in the days preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Awards

The film won eight Oscars:
*Academy Award for Best Picture - Buddy Adler, producer
*Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor - Frank Sinatra
*Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress - Donna Reed
*Academy Award for Best Cinematography, black-and-white - Burnett Guffey
*Academy Award for Directing - Fred Zinnemann
*Best Film Editing - William A. Lyon
*Best Sound Recording - John P. Livadary
*Best Writing, Screenplay - Daniel Taradash

Nominations

It received nominations for a further five Oscars:
*Academy Award for Best Actor - Montgomery Clift
*Academy Award for Best Actor - Burt Lancaster
*Academy Award for Best Actress - Deborah Kerr
*Academy Award for Costume Design, black-and-white - Jean Louis
*Best Music Score - George Duning and Morris Stoloff

In 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the famous beach scene in From Here to Eternity.

Cast

Among the cast members without Oscar nominations are Philip Ober, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Warden, and Merle Travis. The novel's author had a small, uncredited part in the film.

Trivia

*Legend has it that Frank Sinatra got the role in the movie because of his speculated Mafia connections, and that this was the basis for a similar subplot in The Godfather. The truth is more likely to have been that Sinatra's then-wife Ava Gardner persuaded studio head Harry Cohn's wife to go to bat for him, the version related by Kitty Kelley in her comprehensive Sinatra biography.
*The famous beach lovemaking scene between Lancaster and Kerr was lampooned in the movie Airplane!, where Robert Hays' and Julie Hagerty's characters become covered in seaweed.
*The movie was also remade as a TV miniseries in 1979.
*The U.S. Army withheld its cooperation from the production until the producers agreed to several modifications, most noticeably the fate of Captain Holmes.
*William Holden, who won the Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17, felt that he didn't deserve it. Holden thought Burt Lancaster should have won for this film.

External links

*From Here To Eternity at All Movie Guide
*Script (pdf)