It is loosely based on Jones's experiences in the pre–World War II Hawaiian Division's 27th Infantry and the unit in which he served, Company E ("The Boxing Company"). Fellow company member Hal Gould said that while the novel was based on the company, including some depictions of actual persons, the characters are fictional, and the harsh conditions and described events are inventions. Other company members who served with Jones said that "The book 'From Here to Eternity' is 80 percent true"[2] or ninety percent true.[3] After viewing the 1953 film adaptation, company member Joseph A. Maggio sued Jones and his publishers and Columbia Pictures, claiming his character had been defamed.[4][5] Robert Lee Stewart, on whom the character Robert E. Lee Prewitt is based, complained of his dislike of Jones's novel after reading it: "I was unhappy for the simple reason I felt it was an invasion of my privacy. I would never have done it to him–he was my friend." Stewart decided against filing a lawsuit because he valued the camaraderie he and Jones had developed while serving in the Army.[6]
In February 1941, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, nicknamed "Prew", reports to his new posting at G Company, a US Army infantry unit stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Prew is a career soldier (a "thirty-year man") with six years' service and a talented bugler. He was transferred from his last unit, a Bugle Corps, with a reduction to the lowest rank after complaining that a less skilled bugler, who was a sex partner of the Chief Bugler, had been made First Bugler over him.[9]
G Company's commanding officer is Captain Dana "Dynamite" Holmes, the regimental boxing coach, who chose Prew for his unit because of Prew's past history as a talented welterweight boxer. Holmes thinks that winning a boxing championship will help his chances for promotion and concentrates on building a strong team, offering incentives such as promotions to men who box well. However, Prew swore off boxing after accidentally blinding his sparring partner and even transferred out of a past regiment to get away from boxing. Prew refuses to box for Holmes' team, resulting in his being given "The Treatment" by his platoon guide Sergeant Galovitch and others. "The Treatment" is a daily hazing ritual in which Prew is constantly singled out for extra drill exercises, unwarranted punishments, and undesirable work assignments in hopes of breaking him down through exhaustion. Despite the abuse, Prew refuses to change his mind about boxing.
Holmes' First Sergeant Milt Warden is a career soldier, who, as the ranking non-commissioned officer, does most of the work of running the company while Captain Holmes is off pursuing either his promotion or women. Warden is both efficient at his job and understanding with the men under him. He comes to respect Prew, and at one point even stays out late getting drunk with him and then makes sure he gets home safely without being disciplined. Warden has also heard that Holmes' wife, Karen, has slept with various other men in his unit and begins an affair with her himself. Warden finds out that Karen's promiscuous behavior is due to her husband's cheating and giving her gonorrhea years after their marriage, forcing her to have a hysterectomy as part of the cure. Karen and Warden fall in love, and Warden continues to see her in secret despite the risk to his career and a possible military prison sentence at Leavenworth if Holmes finds out. Holmes realizes that his wife is having an affair but does not suspect that it is with Warden. Karen wants Warden to take a training course to become an officer so she can marry him and divorce Holmes. Warden feels this would be improper on top of his already mixed feelings about officers.
Prew befriends a new young soldier, Private Angelo Maggio, whose impetuous behavior sometimes gets him into trouble. Returning from a drunken night on the town, Prew and Maggio encounter military policemen (MPs), and Maggio fights them. As a result, Maggio is sentenced to a term in the stockade, the local military prison. At a brothel catering to servicemen, Prew meets Lorene, a prostitute whose real name is actually Alma Schmidt. Lorene plans to save the money she makes and use it to establish herself in respectable society back in her Oregon hometown and eventually marry a man who is so respectable that no one would ever believe she had been a prostitute. She and Prew fall in love, but she refuses to marry him because she does not think he is respectable enough.
Before the company's big boxing match, Prew gets into a fight with Private first class Isaac Bloom, one of the boxers, and beats him so badly there is a concern that Bloom can no longer box. However, Bloom boxes and wins his match with a quick knockout. Later, Sergeant Galovitch attacks Prew with a knife while Prew is unarmed. Prew knocks out Sergeant Galovitch but refuses to testify that Galovitch had a knife; as a result, Prew is sentenced to three months in the stockade. While Prew is in the stockade, Bloom, a closet homosexual, commits suicide.
In the stockade, Prew sees prisoners routinely beaten and abused by Staff Sergeant "Fatso" Judson, the prison second-in-command. Prew reconnects with Maggio, who is in the "Number Two" barracks where the most recalcitrant prisoners are kept. Maggio has undergone repeated beatings and solitary confinement in the prison and is now hardened as a result. Prew schemes to be transferred into Number Two by committing an infraction and then being beaten and then spending time in the "Black Hole", a dark solitary confinement cell where prisoners are fed minimal bread and water rations. After coming out, he is placed in Number Two and forms a camaraderie with the other prisoners there. Maggio schemes to get out of the prison and out of the Army altogether by pretending to have gone crazy. He is repeatedly beaten for days by Judson, who suspects that he is faking and tries to get him to admit it, to no avail. Meanwhile, Maggio manages to get a message back to his friends that he is all right. Maggio is given a Section 8 dishonorable discharge, and Prew never sees him again.
Judson interrogates one of the other Number Two prisoners, Blues Berry, and ends up torturing and beating Berry to death in front of his Number Two barracks mates including Prew. Prew vows to kill Judson when he himself is released. Prew is later released and returns to Company G, which is changed. Holmes received a promotion and left the company, and Galovitch was reduced in rank after the knife fight incident. Days later, Prew goes into town, finds Judson, challenges him to a knife fight and kills him, but Prew sustains severe injuries. He goes AWOL to Alma's house to recover and stays there after he is well even though his relationship with Alma is deteriorating. Prew no longer wishes to make the Army his career but has no other ideas about what he might do, and Alma is making plans to return to Oregon without him. Prew is afraid of imprisonment for killing Judson, but during a clandestine meeting with Warden, he finds out he has not been suspected in the killing. However, Warden tells Prew he might have to serve a month in the Stockade for the time he spent AWOL, causing Prew to go back into hiding at Alma's to avoid returning to the stockade.
The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor although most of the damage is done at the harbor and Hickam Field rather than the Schofield Barracks. Prew decides he must return to his unit and says goodbye to Alma forever. On the way back, he is stopped by guards and because he has no identification, they begin to arrest him. Not wanting to go back to the stockade, he runs and is shot dead. Warden comes to identify him and collect his personal effects.
Warden bids a farewell to Karen since he will be involved in combat in World War II, and she is returning to the mainland United States. On the ship leaving Hawaii, Karen meets a girl who says that she was an executive secretary on the island and that her fiancé, named Robert E. Lee Prewitt and from "an old Virginia family", was a bomber pilot killed in the attack on Hickam Field who posthumously received the Silver Star. Karen, told by Warden about Prew, realizes that the girl is the former prostitute, Lorene.
Main characters
Private Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt – A career soldier with six years' service at 23. After the disintegration of his poor mining family in Kentucky, he was a teenage hobo during the Great Depression before enlisting in the US Army at 17. In the Army, he learned to box and play the bugle.
First Sergeant Milton Anthony "Milt" Warden – At 34, he has already served in several different countries and is an efficient administrator who takes care of the day-to-day operations of G Company. He is tough but fair and understanding with his enlisted men. He is skeptical about the abilities of commissioned officers. He has an affair with Karen Holmes and falls in love with her.
Captain Dana "Dynamite" Holmes – The commanding officer of G Company and regimental boxing coach, he hopes to get a promotion and so pushes his men to perform well in boxing and spends time ingratiating himself with his superiors. He leaves Warden to do the actual work of running the company. He is married to Karen but cheats on her and neglects her. He is eventually promoted to Major and transferred out of G Company.
Karen Holmes – Captain Holmes' beautiful wife, who was forced to have a hysterectomy as treatment for gonorrhea she got from her husband. As a result, her marriage is strained, and she has affairs, including with Stark and Warden with whom she falls in love.
Lorene/ Alma Schmidt – A beautiful prostitute who came to Hawaii from Oregon, having turned to prostitution after her rich hometown boyfriend dumped her and married someone of a higher social class. She plans to make enough money in Hawaii to establish herself in a higher social class back home and eventually marry a man of impeccable reputation so that no one would ever suspect she had been a prostitute. She falls in love with Prew but will not marry him because of his low social status.
Private Angelo Maggio – A young, hotheaded and outspoken Italian new recruit, originally from Brooklyn, who becomes Prew's good friend. To supplement his paycheck, he is a paid companion (and sometimes partner in the restored version of the novel) to homosexuals although he appears to be heterosexual. He fights with military police while drunk and is sentenced to the Stockade, where he endures beatings and abuse by "Fatso" Judson before finally getting a Section 8 discharge.
Private First Class Isaac Bloom – A Jewish infantryman who, unlike Prewitt, joins Captain Holmes' boxing team in hopes of advancing his military career. He gets into fights with both Maggio and Prewitt, and feels that people dislike him for being Jewish, among other things. Later, he is promoted to corporal, but when he is sent to noncommissioned officer training school, he gets kicked out. He secretly fears that he is homosexual and ends up committing suicide.
Mess Sergeant Maylon Stark – The company's head cook, he was previously with Capt. Holmes' troop at Fort Bliss, where he had an affair with Karen Holmes.
Sergeant/ Platoon Guide "Old Ike" Galovitch – An older soldier of Yugoslav background who gives Prew "The Treatment" when he refuses to box. He attacks Prew with a knife, causing Prew to fight back with his fists and then be sentenced to the Stockade.
Staff Sergeant James "Fatso" Judson – The sadistic second-in-command of the Stockade, Judson beats and tortures prisoners for minor infractions or insubordination and kills Blues Berry. Judson is later killed by Prew.
Jack Malloy – A charismatic prisoner in the Stockade, who was previously a labor organizer and seaman. He eventually escapes and is suspected of killing Judson.
Blues Berry – Prew and Maggio's friend and fellow prisoner in the Stockade, who is tortured to death by Judson.
The phrase "from here to eternity" was incorporated into the "Whiffenpoof Song", sung by junior students of Yale University, and it was this usage that directly inspired Jones, as he informed his editor Maxwell Perkins.[10]
Context
Three of the central characters are essentially similar in all three of Jones' World War II novels, but their names are altered. From Here to Eternity features First Sergeant Milton Warden, Private Robert Prewitt, and Mess Sergeant Maylon Stark. The Thin Red Line (1962), features similar characters named First Sergeant Edward Welsh, Private Robert Witt, and Mess Sergeant Maynard Storm. In Whistle (1978), analogous characters again reappear named Sergeant Mart Winch, Bobby Prell, and Johnny "Mother" Strange.
Late cuts
In 2009, the author's daughter, Kaylie Jones, revealed that her father had been compelled to make a number of pre-publication cuts, removing some expletives and some gay sex passages.[11][12] A new edition of the book with the previously censored passages restored was published by Open Road as an e-book in May 2011.[13] It was subsequently released in print in 2013 by Penguin as part of its Modern Classics Collection.[14][15]
Reception
From Here to Eternity won the third annual U.S. National Book Award in 1952.[7]
Up to the release of the film in August 1953, the book had sold 400,000 copies and was selling an average of 500 copies a month. After the release of the film, sales increased to 4,000 copies a week. As the film toned down the strong language used in the book, it was suggested that sales may have been partly influenced by people wanting to find out "what words James used."[16]
Joan Didion was a great admirer of From Here to Eternity and discussed its role in shaping her perceptions of Hawaii in her essay "In the Islands", included in her 1979 book The White Album.
A musical adaption of the novel opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London in October 2013.[17]
Related Research Articles
From Here to Eternity is a 1953 American romantic war drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and written by Daniel Taradash, based on the 1951 novel of the same name by James Jones. It deals with the tribulations of three United States Army soldiers, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra, stationed on Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed portray the women in their lives. The supporting cast includes Ernest Borgnine, Philip Ober, Jack Warden, Mickey Shaughnessy, Claude Akins, and George Reeves.
Carmen Jones is a 1943 Broadway musical with music by Georges Bizet and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II which was performed at The Broadway Theatre. Conceptually, it is Bizet's opera Carmen updated to a World War II-era, African-American setting. Bizet's opera was, in turn, based on the 1846 novella by Prosper Mérimée. The Broadway musical was produced by Billy Rose, using an all-black cast, and directed by Hassard Short. Robert Shaw prepared the choral portions of the show.
Alfred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director and producer. He won four Academy Awards for directing and producing films in various genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir and play adaptations. He began his career in Europe before emigrating to the US, where he specialized in shorts before making 25 feature films during his 50-year career.
Edward Montgomery Clift was an American actor. A four-time Academy Award nominee, he was known for his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men", according to The New York Times.
Adoniram Judson was an American Congregationalist and later Particular Baptist missionary, who worked in Burma for almost forty years. At the age of 25, Judson was sent from North America to preach in Burma. His mission and work with Luther Rice led to the formation of the first Baptist association in America to support missionaries.
The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, first published on 15 April 1919. It is told in episodic form by a first-person narrator providing a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist. The story is, in part, based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin.
James Ramon Jones was an American novelist renowned for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. He won the 1952 National Book Award for his debut novel, From Here to Eternity, which was adapted for film a year later and made into a television series a generation later.
Carolyn Sue Jones was an American actress of television and film. She began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957) and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising new actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for another 20 years. In 1964, Jones began playing the role of matriarch Morticia Addams in the black and white television series The Addams Family.
Lewis Edward Lawes was a prison warden and a proponent of prison reform. During his 21-year tenure at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, he supervised the executions of 303 prisoners.
Murray Hamilton was an American stage, screen and television character actor who appeared in such films as Anatomy of a Murder, The Hustler, The Graduate, Jaws and The Amityville Horror.
The Thin Red Line is a 1964 American war film directed by Andrew Marton and starring Keir Dullea, Jack Warden, James Philbrook, and Kieron Moore. Based on James Jones's 1962 novel of the same name, the film follows the lives of a number of American soldiers during the battle of Guadalcanal.
The Thin Red Line is American author James Jones's fourth novel. It draws heavily on Jones's experiences at the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse during World War II's Guadalcanal campaign. The author served in the United States Army's 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division.
If I Had a Million is a 1932 American pre-Code Paramount Studios anthology film starring Gary Cooper, George Raft, Charles Laughton, W. C. Fields, Jack Oakie, Frances Dee and Charlie Ruggles, among others. There were seven directors: Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman Z. McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, and H. Bruce Humberstone. Lubitsch, Cruze, Seiter, and Humberstone were each responsible for a single vignette, Roberts and McLeod directed two each, and Taurog was in charge of the prologue and epilogue. The screenplays were scripted by many different writers, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz making a large contribution. The film is based on the 1931 novel Windfall by Robert Hardy Andrews.
"The Face on the Poster" is the sixth episode of the eighth series of the British comedy series Dad's Army. It was originally transmitted on 10 October 1975.
"Getting the Bird" is the fourth episode of the fifth series of the British television situation comedy Dad's Army. It was originally transmitted on 27 October 1972.
"When You've Got to Go" is the second episode of the eighth series of the British comedy series Dad's Army. It was first transmitted on Friday 12 September 1975.
From Here to Eternity is a 1979 American three-part, six-hour television miniseries and a remake of the 1953 film From Here to Eternity based on the 1951 novel of the same name. All three conclude with the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. The miniseries originally aired in three two-hour installments on three consecutive Wednesdays on NBC on February 14, 21 and 28, 1979.
From Here to Eternity is a musical with music and lyrics by Stuart Brayson and Tim Rice and a book by Bill Oakes. Based on the 1951 novel of the same name by James Jones, the musical made its West End and world premiere in 2013, at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London.
Donald Gene Dubbins was an American film, stage and television actor.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
