Program Notes

William Inge’s 1950 play Come Back, Little Sheba dealing with the wasted lives, despair, and people for whom the memories of youth are all that is left, was transferred to the screen by producer Hal B. Wallis in 1952. Shirley Booth repeated the role she had successfully created in the Theatre Guild production as a pitiful, slovenly, middle-aged housewife wed to “Doc” an alcoholic (Burt Lancaster) who sacrificed his medical education and took to the bottle because of a forced marriage. Lola, his wife, uses her little lost dog Sheba as a symbol to relive past days.

Waxman’s Reminiscences support Lola’s reveries and Doc’s remembrances of things past. Two of the three themes are drawn from the film’s score and the third, is a piece, not used previously, that Waxman felt worked in a complementary context, There is an underlying sense of sadness in the musical reflections.