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Rating: 4.25 out of 5
Have you ever seen the film Come Back, Little Sheba? If you are like me, then it is probably new to you. I honestly thought this was a film about a cat or a child that was taken and a mother who was trying to find her child. What I wasn’t expecting was a film about alcoholism. This was the third film in a row that I watched where the main character dealt with alcoholism. The other two films were Pollock and The Country Girl.
Come Back, Little Sheba is a film directed by Daniel Mann and adapted from the 1950 play of the same title by William Inge. The film gets its title from the wife looking for her dog that had disappeared months earlier with the hope that one day. The film presents a middle-class but distant couple. Doc Delaney (Lancaster) is a recovering alcoholic married to Lola (Booth), a frumpy, middle-aged, dimwitted housewife who loves her husband, but something is missing from them. Doc was on his way to being a promising medical student but dropped out when Lola got pregnant. Lola’s dad threw her ass out of his house for the pregnancy, so Doc decided to drop out of school and marry Lola. That’s some love right there. The child didn’t make it, and Lola couldn’t have children after that. After the loss of the child, Doc hit the sauce HARD to cover up the pain, which also ruined his career, and he spent all his inheritance.
At the film’s start, Doc has been sober for one year. He is polite but extremely distant from Lola. Lola seems to have the mind of a kid, calling Doc Daddy for some odd reason. Lola tries her best to please Doc, but she is lonely and depressed because she sleeps late and doesn’t have a tidy house. Every day, she goes outside calling for her little lost dog, Little Sheba, to her neighbors’ annoyance.
Lola decides to rent a room out to add a little funds to the house. One of the first people to see the room is Marie (Moore), a FOINE-ass college student full of life and sex appeal. Doc is a little reprehensive about Marie renting with them but decides to go with it. Marie might be a little free with her life. One day, she rolls up with Turk, a star on the track team who might have the body of a Greek god. Marie is making an ad for a local athletic competition and needs Turk to model. Lola spies on them and is nosey, but when Doc comes home, he thinks that it is porn going on in his house. With the presence of Marie and the feeling that he can’t control his life, will Doc hit the bottle once again?
This film shows the effects of a variable on a household that might lead someone to relapse. Doc and Lola have a boring ass life, but when Marie rolls up, things change for the household. I don’t think Marie was bad. She was fooling around on her boyfriend, who I believe was in the army. That shows that Doc is extremely traditional. What set Doc off was Turk. He disapproves of Turk and the way he tries to get girls like Marie. Maybe Doc sees much of himself in Turk and sees the life he could’ve had if it wasn’t for Lola and his deceased kid. Doc thinks that Marie is trifling, but Lola defends her, saying that she is engaged to Bruce. I will say that Marie was extra flirtatious with Turk and did lead him on.
During the discussion, we get more insight into the fact that Lola was like Marie in her younger years. Lola confides that she is now fat and ugly and not worth Doc’s attention. What really sets Doc off is when he overhears Turk and Marie. Turk wants some ass, but Marie shoots him down. You think Doc would be proud, but he completely hits rock bottom, takes a bottle of whisky, and departs in the morning with it. Doc is gone all day and night. When he returns, you can tell dude is WASTED and a complete dick towards Lola who was extremely worried about him and knows deep down that Doc fell off the wagon. The ending scene is gut-wrenching to watch. It is a scene that hurts to watch. In a drunken rage, Doc lashes out at Lola and calls her a slut while also grabbing a knife and chasing Lola around the house. When he catches her, he starts choking the shit out of her until he passes out. I have seen a lot of films, and this scene got to me because it was extreme in a way that a nice woman was just assaulted and trying to be a loving wife.
Even though she can be annoying, Lola managed to call two of Doc’s AA friends to take him to the hospital. Lola goes to visit Doc to check up on him as he goes through withdrawal again. This is where we really see Lola’s sadness. She calls her parents and asks if she can stay with them for a while since Doc is in the hospital. Her dad straight-up denies her, but her mom says she would stay with Lola. I really felt for Lola because she was abandoned once again. When Doc returns, you can see the tension in the room. Doc apologizes to Lola for everything and begs her not to leave him. She hugs him tightly and promises to stay with him forever as she has nowhere else to go, and he is all she has. When Doc comments on the kitchen, it seems that Lola has moved on from the death of Sheba.
This film is propelled by the performances of the cast. I want to start off with Shirley Booth as Lola Delaney. Booth won a Tony two years earlier, playing the same role. Booth was known more for her stage career. This was her first feature film. Hell, she only made five films in her entire career. I was highly impressed with her performance because she annoyed me. I didn’t like her calling Doc daddy all the time. Booth showed Lola as a loving wife who deals with depression and wants to be loved. She does have great dance moves. For her performance, she won the Oscar.
Terry Moore as Marie Buckholder was equally excellent. She was FOINE and full of life as her character. I didn’t like that she was trifling and led Turk on. Well, maybe Turk was also forceful, but she seemed to lead Turk on. When she turned his Greek God body down, I applauded her because it showed that she was faithful to Bruce.
Burt Lancaster as Doc Delaney was a new role for me. I have seen several of Lancaster’s films, and he is usually loud, has a smile on his face, and is very entertaining. In this film, he shows little emotion and says few words. It’s almost as if he wasn’t in the film. At the film’s climax, you can see why Lancaster is such a great actor. He hit that switch and became a maniac towards Lola. I was taken aback because he was calm and quiet for 98% of the film. I had to applaud the performance of that one section because the switch was fast, powerful, and scary.
Come Back, Little Sheba was a surprise film for me. It wasn’t anything I was expecting, but the story was decent. It shows what happens when a person relapses and what forces them to do it. The performances propel this film, with Booth being the best part of it. Her performance was the best and should be applauded. This film is worth watching if you know someone who is dealing with alcoholism. Be a supporter and attend AA meetings with them.
