Alternative Film Guide

A Hatful of Rain (1957)

Director: Fred Zinnemann. Screenplay: Michael V. Gazzo, Alfred Hayes, Carl Foreman (originally uncredited), from Gazzo’s play. Cast: Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, Anthony Franciosa, Lloyd Nolan, Henry Silva

A BUCKETFUL OF HAMS

Based on a play by Michael V. Gazzo, A Hatful of Rain is an interesting attempt at injecting "adult" subject matters — in this case, the evils of drug addiction — into Hollywood movies. Interesting, however, does not mean successful.

Despite real, unromantic New York locations and Joseph MacDonald’s beautifully realistic black-and-white camera work, this Fred Zinnemann-directed melodrama feels anachronistically stagebound because of the overall artificiality of the dialogue and the hammy theatricality of the performances — with Eva Marie Saint as the sole naturalistic exception.

Somewhat revolutionary in its day (The Man with a Golden Arm, also about drug addiction, had come out two years prior), A Hatful of Rain depicts the plight of a young Korean War veteran, Johnny Pope (Don Murray), who has become addicted to morphine after (it is implied) his stay as a patient at a military hospital.

Oblivious to her husband’s addiction, Johnny’s pregnant wife, Celia (Saint), is concerned that her increasingly distant husband is having an affair. At that point, the self-immersed John Pope, Sr., (Lloyd Nolan), arrives in town to make things even more complicated for the young Popes and for Johnny’s younger brother, Polo (Anthony Franciosa).

Throughout the course of the film, family dynamics are reshaped as John Sr. discovers that Polo possesses unsuspected generosity and inner strength, while the-boy-most-likely-to Johnny turns out to be the one in dire need of assistance.

Perhaps best known for his Academy Award-nominated performance in The Godfather Part II, actor-writer Michael V. Gazzo adapted his own play to the big screen, with the assistance of two-time Academy Award nominee Alfred Hayes and (uncredited) blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman (he of High Noon and The Bridge on the River Kwai). The trio (or any one of them) did a solid job of opening up the play, but they forgot to make the dialogue sound more true to life — a not uncommon occurrence in stage-to-film adaptations of the 1950s.

Maybe because nearly every line screams theater!, Anthony Franciosa, Don Murray, and Lloyd Nolan act as if they were performing onstage to those sitting in the last row. As mentioned above, among the four leads only Eva Marie Saint manages against all odds to deliver an unaffected performance.

Had Saint been a lazy actress, she could easily have played Celia — sad, afraid, lonely — as a victim begging for our sympathy, but instead of emphasizing Celia’s victimhood, Saint’s portrayal focuses on her character’s honesty and dependability to excellent effect. The only problem with her subdued performance is that it seems completely out of place in the film’s scenery-chewing orgies.

Admittedly, Don Murray displays a vulnerable, honest quality that makes Johnny quite likable, and in his "normal" moments Murray’s performance is thoroughly convincing. But once the shaking starts, Johnny looks as if he’s being possessed by the lambada demon; in no way does he resemble a drug addict desperately in need of a fix. Besides, Murray looks much too handsome and healthy to be convincing as a down-and-out junkie.

Anthony Franciosa, best actor winner at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for an Oscar for reprising his stage role as Polo Pope, has some adequate moments, but the actor is incapable of delivering his stilted lines without sounding, well, stilted.

Lloyd Nolan, for one, doesn’t even try. His is an old-fashioned performance that seems to have been transported from the early, clunky days of sound films to the late 1950s. Nolan relishes the artificiality of the dialogue, declaiming each word to calculated effect while adding his own grandiose exclamation points as the mayo on the ham. (Nolan’s character does have one good speech, decrying The Age of the Vacuum: a time when no one takes responsibility for anything, no one pays attention to anything, no one takes a stand for or against anything. It sounds like the early 21st century, but he’s actually referring to the 1950s.)

Even though the screenwriters are surely at fault, most of the blame for the general inadequacy of the cast must go to director Fred Zinnemann, who by that time — he had already won an Academy Award, for From Here to Eternity — should have learned how to control his actors.

By letting them run loose, Zinnemann allows the tragic truth of A Hatful of Rain — a self-absorbed society’s utter disregard for the fate of a war veteran — disappear under the histrionics of his cast.

Saint valiantly tries to bring a core of truth to the proceedings, but she’s one lone fighter battling hammy actors, a misguided director, and even Bernard Herrmann’s obnoxious jazzy score. In A Hatful of Rain, Saint could easily have become a film martyr — except that she comes out on top in this one.

Synopsis:

Johnny Pope (Don Murray) is a young New Yorker who spends too many nights away from his apartment in a housing project. His pregnant wife, Celia (Eva Marie Saint), thinks that he has been having an affair with another woman, but it turns out that the truth is something quite different: Johnny, a Korean War veteran who spent time as a patient at a military hospital, has become a morphine addict. Worse yet, Johnny is a drug addict in a jam. He desperately needs another fix, but can’t afford to pay his nasty dealer (Henry Silva).

Making things more complicated, Johnny’s obnoxious father, John Pope, Sr., (Lloyd Nolan), has just arrived in town and is staying with the young Popes. Things go from back to worse, as the Popes share their small apartment with Johnny’s ne’er-do-well brother, Polo (Anthony Franciosa), who has always been perceived by John Sr. as being the Irresponsible One. John Sr. wants back the money he had loaned Polo, but Polo doesn’t have it anymore. Johnny has used all that money to feed his drug habit.

It’s now time for Johnny to tell his wife and his father the whole truth about his ordeal — a confession that will bring about new dynamics to that dysfunctional family.

Notes:

Meaning of "a hatful of rain":

In one scene in the film, John Pope, Sr., laughingly recalls that years earlier, on a rainy day, the young Johnny had taken his hat out while working in a field. Having been told that hard work led to financial rewards, Johnny would do a little work and then he would look for money in his pocket. After several failed attempts at finding money, a disheartened Johnny put his water-filled hat back on and got all wet. A hatful of rain was all he got for his hard day’s work.

Things didn’t get much better for Johnny when he became an adult, served in the Korean War, and developed a morphine addiction as a result.

…

According to the Internet Broadway Database, A Hatful of Rain opened at the Lyceum Theater on November 9, 1955. The play had a total run (including some time at the Plymouth Theater) of 389 performances. The cast included Shelley Winters, Ben Gazzara, Anthony Franciosa, and Frank Silvera, in the roles played on-screen by Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, Franciosa again, and Lloyd Nolan. Both Ben Gazzara and Anthony Franciosa were nominated for Tonys (Gazzara as a lead, Franciosa as a featured player). Steve McQueen later took over Gazzara’s role.

…

In 1998, 41 years after the release of A Hatful of Rain, the Writers Guild of America added the name of then blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman to the film’s credits. By that time, Foreman had been dead for 14 years. One year after his death, Foreman was awarded an Oscar for his work on The Bridge on the River Kwai. Originally, credit (and the Oscar) had been given to Pierre Boulle, the writer of the novel on which the film was based. The actual screenplay, however, had been written by Foreman and fellow blacklistee Michael Wilson.

…

A 1968 made-for-television version (as a filmed play) starred Sandy Dennis, Michael Parks, and Peter Falk in the Saint, Murray, and Franciosa roles.

Review Snippet:

"The gruesome — indeed, repulsive — subject of narcotics addiction . . . is opened for an honest exploration in Twentieth Century Fox’s A Hatful of Rain." Bosley Crowther for the New York Times, July 18, 1957.

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