COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA

US, 1952, 92 minutes, Black and White.
Shirley Booth, Burt Lancaster, Terry Moore, Richard Jaeckel.
Directed by Daniel Mann.

Come Back Little Sheba is based on William Inge's successful play and treated the serious problems of alcoholism and frustrating marriages in an effective way in 1952.

Shirley Booth has been seen since in similar roles, especially in About Mrs. Leslie and Hot Spell, but this is the film in which she first played the good-natured but irritating middle-aged housewife who drives her husband away from her. She won the Oscar for her performance and she is excellent.

Burt Lancaster has veered throughout his career from playing flamboyant athletic heroes to quiet, dignified characters. This is one of his quiet roles in the person of Doc Delaney whose life and career have been frustrated through his marrying the pretty and pregnant Lola and who is an alcoholic.

The film has a sub-plot involving Terry Moore as a vivacious University student flirt who reflects what Doc and Lola must have been like in earlier days and who occasions Doc's return to drink and a murderous attack on Lola. This is effective and sombre adult drama.

1. What did the title of the film suggest? Was it an apt title? Why?

2. Could you tell that this film was adapted from a stage play? How? Was it a good adaptation or was it too 'stagey'?

3. Who was the principal character, Lola or Doc? Why?

4. What impression did Lola Delaney make on you on her first appearance? How would you describe her character? Did you like her? What were her virtues? What were her bad points?

5. What were your first impressions of Doc? What were his good points? His bad points?

6. How happy were the Delaneys at this stage of their lives? Why?

7. Were you impressed by the A.A. meeting; the prayer,, the birthdays, the little speeches and applause? Was Doc happy? Was Lola happy? Did she push Doc too hard? Did she nag? How well did she love Doc? How well did he love her?

8. Were you surprised at the details of the youth. courting and marriage as they emerged during the film? Why?

9. Doc saw alcoholics were disappointed men. Why was he a disappointed man? How ambitious had he been? How gallant had he been to Lola? What would you say really drove him to drink?

10. Lola said she was old, fat and sloppy. what regrets did she have about her life? What was the effect of the necessary marriage? Her loss of her child? what did her love for dancing symbolise? Her making believe at the radio programme 'Taboo'? Her spying on Marie and Turk, her dreams and longing for Little Sheba?

11. How did the film evoke a response to Lola’s personality and situation by showing her doing daily things, gossiping, chatting and fussing with Marie? what characteristics of Shirley Booth's acting made Lola a real and memorable person?

12. How important was the sub-plot of Marie, Turk and Bruce? What comment did it make on the older couple and their memories? How did they reflect what Lola and Doc must have been like? What kind of girl was Marie, how much of a flirt, how naive? Did you like Turk? Why?

13. Why was Doc obsessed with Turk? Why did he fear for Marie? How much guilt obsession was there? Why did he blame Lola? Why did it drive him back to drink?

14. Did the filming of his alcoholic torment show convincingly the agony and temptation he suffered? How?

15. How brutal was the truth told in drink? How hurt was Lola? How much of what Doc said was true? How much of it did he mean? Why did he try to kill her?

16. Did Lola understand the truth about herself and Doc? How moving was the sequence with Lola on the telephone with her mother? Why? How lonely and alone was she?

17. How sad was Doc's alcoholic condition? Did he need to ask Lola's forgiveness? In his stupor, he kept saying, "Pretty Lola".

18. What was the significance of Lola's final dream? (How effective a dramatic device were these dreams?) The roles of Turk, Doc, Lola's father and Little Sheba's death?

19. The final words concerned having to go on; each of them was all that the other had; "it's good to be home". How realistic or optimistic an ending was this? What future did they have in store? What had each learnt by their experience? (Was there any significance in the speed of Marie and Bruce's marriage?)

20. How important a role did fate have in the film, and how cruel was it - Lola's pregnancy, the marriage, her father's disowning her, the death of the child, Doc's lost career, his alcoholism, his A.A. cure. his return to drink because of a guilt feeling and a presumption of disaster?