Shirley Booth was 54 when she won the Academy Award as Best Actress for her performance as Lola in the screen version of William Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba". It was also her screen debut in a role that had previously won her a Tony on the stage and, quite frankly, she was magnificent. It launched her on a short-lived movie career and a slightly longer career on television. It's a fine film, well directed by Daniel Mann and adapted by Ketti Frings and it has three other good performances from Burt Lancaster as the alcoholic Doc, Terry Moore as the young lodger who, unwittingly, is the cause of Doc's hitting the bottle again and Richard Jaeckel as the athletic stud Moore is dallying with. Admittedly Lancaster, who at 39 was 15 years younger than Booth, isn't really right for his role, (he was too young for starters),but he handles it very effectively. Nevertheless, this is Booth's show. If she had never done anything else on screen she would still have earned her place in the pantheon of great performances.

Shirley Booth had already won a Tony for William Inge's focus on a married couple's problems when she made her film debut with the movie version (for which she won an Academy Award). "Come Back, Little Sheba" is a hard-hitting look at the couple's sexual frustration (apparently a common theme in Inge's works) and inability to be what was supposed to be the "proper" husband and wife. Although it has the feel of a play, there are some intense scenes. Along with Booth, Burt Lancaster turns in an outstanding performance, as expected.

All in all, a fine piece of work. It's a shame that Shirley Booth only starred in a few movies after this.

For those of you who only know Shirley Booth from the television series Hazel, I would strongly recommend you look at the list of her Broadway credits which date all the way back to the twenties. She appeared in so many Broadway plays that later went on screen without her recreating the role. For example she created parts in The Philadelphia Story, Goodbye My Fancy, and Desk Set that were later played by Ruth Hussey, Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn respectively.

Booth joined that select group of players who won both Tony and Oscars for playing the same role in Come Back, Little Sheba. The play by William Inge ran for 190 performances during the 1950 season and co-starred Sidney Blackmer with Booth. Like the Lunts when they filmed The Guardsman, we get to see but one of her performances preserved on film, maybe her best role.

William Inge's play concerns two very ordinary people, Doc and Marie Delaney, a seemingly quiet middle aged couple. But like George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, there's a lot of skeletons in the Delaney closet. Doc was forced to marry Marie when she became pregnant and then the baby was lost anyway. Both made the best of the situation. Doc, unfortunately turned to drink. But when we meet him he's been sober for a year and involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Marie is this dowdy middle aged housewife who's forever tuned into the radio and constantly reminiscing of her youth. Doc is just the opposite, he doesn't like to talk at all about the past. But he gets a bit of nostalgia going when pretty and stacked Terry Moore boards with the Delaneys.

Her presence in the house sets of a chain of events that knocks Doc off the wagon. We then see what Marie's been living with before AA.

Another reviewer remarked at how well Shirley Booth caught the attitudes and mannerisms of the wife of an alcoholic and where had she done her research for the part. The answer is she lived it. Her first husband, Ed Gardner from radio's Duffy's Tavern, was a notorious alcoholic, Booth got all the material she ever would need to create Marie Delaney with him.

For movie box office Burt Lancaster played Doc Delaney and he got rave notices himself for the part. Doc was such a change from the aggressively masculine heroes like Lancaster played in The Crimson Pirate or The Flame and the Arrow. I wouldn't doubt that his performance may have led to Lancaster being cast in From Here to Eternity and winning his first Oscar nomination. In a sense Lancaster plays two roles because the sober Doc is a totally different individual from the raging drunk when he gives in to temptation.

The title comes from their dog Sheba who up and ran away one day. Marie calls for him constantly, thinks she sees him at times. But Sheba's a metaphor for their youth which is never to return.

Cinema acting don't get much better than Burt Lancaster and Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba.