“Some Came Running is the story of small-town honky-tonks, of cheap low life not without charm. I decided to use the inside of a juke box as my inspiration for my setting, garishly lit in primary colors. Madison, Indiana was selected as our version of the city in the novel and a crew of 130 people went there in early August 1958 for three weeks of filming....” Vincente Minnelli
Frank Sinatra is the prodigal son returned to his small-town home two years after World War II to find it exactly as he left it: deadening, and doomed to stagnate in bigotry and hypocrisy. He finds solace in the low life Minnelli describes, with Dean Martin, his disreputable pal, and Shirley MacLaine, who won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of an overdressed floozy who falls for Sinatra. In his first important melodrama in Cinemascope, Minnelli foresakes his characteristic boom-happy camera with its graceful movement, and replaces it with “Hollywood style” cuts that further the drab effect of his small town milieu. A Minnelli fantasy occurs in the surreal carnival sequence, but when the dream is over, realism comes home to stay.