Masculinity in Some Came Running

Some Came Running is definitely not the first film we have seen where Sinatra portrays a returning soldier, and like The Manchurian Candidate, Sinatra is a troubled soldier, though rather than struggling with the past, he is struggling with his future. Sinatra’s character, Dave Hirsch, represents a model of masculinity that competes with the playboy masculinities of this era in a way that The Manchurian Candidate Sinatra did not. In The Manchurian Candidate, Sinatra was constantly haunted by his past in the army, but Dave undergoes no such trauma. Other than wearing the uniform, the solider persona is just an image, an excuse for him having been away all of those years. His masculinity, then, is not directly tied up in the soldier image.

Like the playboy, Dave is a single guy, staying in the nicest hotel room of Parkman. Not quite the bachelor pad (and he doesn’t stay there for long), but a temporary place, similar to the bachelor pad (for one can’t quite stay a bachelor forever). As in The Manchurian Candidate, Dave is a guy who likes to read, and the first thing he pulls from his duffle bag are books, great books by Faulkner, Steinbeck and Wolfe, these are also signifiers of culture, which is fitting for a playboy. As discussed in the playboy discourse of our class, playboys were typically writers and artist-types, and Dave happens to be a writer. Though a bitter writer who has published in a great while.

Dave has the usual interests – drinking, women, cards – but it is one particular woman who causes problems (Ginny) and one particular woman who helps him pursue his writing again (Gwen), though Dave’s main interest is in pursuing Gwen. Dave pulls all the moves on her – dancing, buying her a drink, asking her to come by his place, but she is resistant to his charms. In a sense, he is the ineffectual playboy. Dave could have Ginny at the drop of a hat, but it’s the chase that makes Gwen alluring (and though it might seem like her intellect would be the attraction, it is actually her classiness and disinterest that makes Dave fall in love with her). And – unlike the playboy type – Dave wants to marry Gwen, who resists. When Dave declares that he loves Gwen, she remarks that he says that statement with an ease, as though he has been with many women. Part of anyone’s identity  (and in this case, Dave’s masculine identity) is created by others’ perceptions. Therefore, Gwen perceives him as the playboy type, giving the playboy aspect of Dave’s identity some merit. Unlike the playboy, Dave sincerely wants to be married, and in the end, marries Ginny out of anger at Gwen. However, the marriage ends abruptly when Ginny is shot, emphasizing how Dave’s masculine image (the troubled writer, who drinks too much and pines for a cultured woman, the vulnerable tough-guy, we could say) cannot properly be linked to marriage.

Dave (Sinatra) and Ginny (Shirley MacLaine) getting married