A Hole in the Head (1959) on Netflix
Tony Manetta's Miami hotel is months behind on its rent. His brother Mario will help, but on his conditions: give up his son Ally, or marry a woman Mario chooses.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.2/103,343 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tony Manetta left New York for Miami twenty years ago in search of wealth, and the success has not come. He runs the Garden of Eden, a small hotel whose rent is five months in arrears, and the landlord gives him 48 hours to find $5,300 or lose the place. Tony is a widower with a son, Ally, who is eleven. Money goes on suits and a Cadillac. His older brother Mario, a clothing store owner, has lent him cash many times. Tony asks for another loan and claims that Ally is sick.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Hole in the Head (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A Hole in the Head introduced "High Hopes" by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, the Academy Award-winning Sinatra standard, and John F. Kennedy used it as a campaign song in the presidential election the following year.
- Arnold Schulman's one-act play The Dragon's Head, staged at Westport under Lee Strasberg, was a total disaster on opening night: a normal-length play that ran about six hours, with each actor doing five minutes of "sense memory" between lines.
- Frank Capra shot very long takes knowing Frank Sinatra hated performing a scene more than once, and with cinematographer William Daniels he finished A Hole in the Head 80 days ahead of schedule. Its final production cost of $1.89 million was under budget.
- Arnold Schulman said that when the play was on the road, audiences went into hysterics at the funny material and hated the serious material, so he cut the serious parts, added jokes and a happy ending, and called it the moment he sold out.
