From Here to Eternity (1953) on Netflix
Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt refuses to box for Captain Dana Holmes's team in 1941 Hawaii, and the NCOs punish him. First Sergeant Milton Warden begins an affair with Holmes's wife.
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- IMDb7.6/1054,863 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
A bugler and former boxer, Robert E. Lee Prewitt arrives at a rifle company at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He quit the ring after blinding a sparring partner, and he refuses Captain Dana Holmes's order to join the regimental boxing team. Holmes makes his life miserable and lets the other NCOs haze him; Private Angelo Maggio is the friend who stands by him. Prewitt takes a liking to Lorene, a hostess at a social club. First Sergeant Milton Warden, meanwhile, has begun an affair with Holmes's wife Karen, whose marriage is unhappy and distant. Maggio argues with Sergeant Fatso Judson at the club.
Cast
- Merle Travisas Sal Anderson
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about From Here to Eternity (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The U.S. Navy formally banned the finished film from being shown to its own sailors on ships or naval bases, branding it "derogatory of a sister service", even as the Army and Air Force bought it for screenings and the Army itself withheld permission to use its name in the credits.
- Hollywood legend has it that Frank Sinatra got his role by means of his alleged Mafia connections, and that it was the basis for a similar subplot in The Godfather, but the cast and crew have dismissed it; director Fred Zinnemann said the legend about a horse's head was “pure invention” by Mario Puzo.
- Joan Crawford and Gladys George were both offered roles: George lost hers when the director decided to cast the female roles against type, and Crawford's demands to be filmed by her own cameraman led the studio to take a chance on Deborah Kerr, also playing against type.
SPOILER
Maggio survives and is discharged in the novel, but in the film he dies: the filmmakers combined him with two other prisoner characters from the book to add drama and make him a stronger, more tragic figure.- S. Sylvan Simon suggested to Harry Cohn that Columbia buy the rights to the novel and was assigned to make the film, but he died from a heart attack in May 1951 before he could prepare it; the author, James Jones, was hired to write the screen treatment but withdrew over disagreements with Cohn.
- Kim Stanley campaigned hard to play Lorene, the part that went instead to Donna Reed and later garnered her an Academy Award.
