118 FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
novel featured graphic depictions of homosexual activity between ser vicemen and
civilians in Honolulu. Jones was forced to excise most of these passages to get his
book published. As Jones’ daughter, Kaylie, points out, in the original manuscript
the number of soldiers “hanging out in the gay bars is... staggering; in fact, there
are so many of them that the Army launches a (very quiet) investigation. One sol-
dier, Bloom, realizes he enjoys sex with men, and is so terrified and ashamed of
being gay and of being called on it, that he commits suicide. The sin and the shame,
it seems, are not associated with the act itself or even in getting paid for it, but in
whether or not a soldier enjoys it. My father saw the total hy poc risy and ridicu-
lousness of this and Bloom’s death is portrayed as a tragedy, absurd and unneces-
sary” ( Jones, 2009). Already pre- censored, From Here to Eternity underwent another
round of censorship before it reached movie screens. Its vio lence whitewashed for
the cinema per DOD wishes, the novel’s language and sexual content also under-
went cleansing so the movie would not run afoul of Motion Picture Production
Code restrictions. In the novel, the New Congress Hotel is clearly a brothel and
Lorene is definitely a prostitute— seedy realities the film obscures by transform-
ing the hotel into the New Congress Club, suggestive of a more wholesome USO-
type fa cil i ty, and turning Lorene into a kind of hospitality hostess. Any filmic
reference to the homo sexuality that was rife in Honolulu in 1941 was, of course,U.S. Army Sgt. Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) and Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr), his
commanding officer’s wife, kiss in the surf near Honolulu in a famous moment from
Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (1953). (Columbia Pictures/Photofest)