People are voting emotionally.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

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.

The main interest of the film is its keen insight into the reality of alcoholism once it gets cured while the permanent risk of a relapse keeps hanging over you until it drops, which it doesn't always do, but it certainly does sometimes, like here, when the tenant of the Delaneys allows too much liberty to a playboy friend, which starts Burt Lancaster off into a terrible misdirection. The trigger was pulled, and the gun just went off.It's definitely Shirley Booth's film, but Burt is superb supporting her. She makes a pathetic wreck of a woman with a marriage on her hands that couldn't be avoided only because it went wrong from the beginning. Burt is not equally pathetic, after all, he took his responsibility and married her and stayed faithful, but it's a pathetic tragedy of an aborted marriage nonetheless, but they make the best of it and actually succeed.The other actors all play in the shadow of this relationship, which is gloriously documented and dissected indeed. The lost youth, the failed motherhood, the AA obligations, the bottle in the cupboard, that must not be touched... It's a wonderful chamber play totally indoors and void of all glamour and Hollywood tinsel but perfectly real - and tremendously exciting, because you are all the time afraid of what will happen, the sleeping volcano of Burt Lancaster erupts in every film, and so it happens. That's because every film of his is worth seeing and more than once.

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 (of "Hazel" fame) and Burt Lancaster are married, but don't really communicate in "Come Back, Little Sheba." The film opens on Shirley who gets out of bed and moves about with no motivation to do anything, to dress, to clean. She has a likable disposition, but she doesn't have much drive. Her husband is a chiropractor, who never finished his medical schooling as a doctor, for reasons that are shown to us slowly throughout the film. Little Sheba is a dog they had that ran away and that Shirley has been praying will return. Burt Lancaster is excellent as the husband who just goes through the motions day by day without feeling. Terry Moore is a boarder who they take in for more income, of whom Burt takes a liking to. And, also, he is an alcoholic who has been sober for years and whose world will soon shatter. But this is Shirley Booth's picture, as she breaks your heart. She is both pitiful yet strong in conjuring up the depths of depression. Shirley deservedly won an Oscar for this film. What secrets are behind this façade? Will she come out of her delusions? This film is definitely worth your time. Please look for "Come Back, Little Sheba." It's an experience you won't forget.