The average fan will know Michael V. Gazzo far better for his career role as Frankie Pantangeli in The Godfather Part 2, but he was so much more than a film gangster. He was an acting teacher of some renown and a writer. This multi-talented man penned A Hatful Of Rain and it ran for 398 performances during the 1955-56 season on Broadway.
Two of the players repeated their roles from Broadway, Anthony Franciosa as Polo Pope for which he won a Best Actor nomination to go with the Tony Award nomination he got for Broadway. And as the murderous drug dealer Mother, Henry Silva came over from the East Coast as well.
On what should be a happy occasion Lloyd Nolan as father to Franciosa and younger son Don Murray is up from Florida where he's coming to collect on a promise of money from Franciosa. The nest egg that Tony was sitting on is now gone. Little does Nolan dream that the money is being poured into Murray's veins. Murray his beloved younger son and war hero from Korea came home as did so many others a drug addict, hooked on morphine.
As we watch the film, bit by bit the Pope family secrets come out. The boys did not have much of a childhood, half the time they were foster care or orphanages as Nolan who was a widower just couldn't take care of them. In addition Franciosa who's bounced from dead end jobs one after another boards with Murray and wife Eva Marie Saint.
Because of his addiction Murray has been paying less and less attention to his wife and Eva Marie and Tony are finding a mutual attraction. On stage this played out in real life as Shelley Winters had the wife's part on stage. Franciosa and Winters wound up marrying.
A Hatful Of Rain was proof of further cracking of the Code because until The Man With The Golden Arm came out two years earlier, drug addiction was a forbidden subject unless it was covered in something like Reefer Madness. The post World War II film To The Ends Of The Earth that starred Dick Powell as a federal narcotics cop covered the law enforcement part of the story and other films followed that one. But addiction itself was forbidden. As Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet, Powell was also shot up with what was called 'hop' at the time, but I can't think of another film where the subject was broached.
In between A Hatful Of Rain and The Man With The Golden Arm was also Monkey On My Back, the true story of former welterweight champion Barney Ross who like Murray got addicted during recovery in a military hospital.
Although Don Murray does a fine acting job as John Pope, personally I would have much preferred to see Ben Gazzara who originated the part on Broadway. The film was shot on location in New York City and Gazzara is so much more an urban type than Murray.
The only recognition A Hatful Of Rain received from the Motion Picture Academy was Anthony Franciosa's nomination for Best Actor. He's always been a favorite of mine, he's never bad in anything he does. But sad to say that Tony ran up against The Bridge On The River Kwai. Usually a big budget film like that will always buck a small feature like A Hatful Of Rain. And Alec Guinness was not going to be denied that year.
A Hatful Of Rain though has stood the test of time. It could easily be done again today with the protagonist being a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan. We may yet see that, but believe me this film will more than do until then.
