Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)

Booth and Lancaster are both fascinating to watch;
they are both affected by the arrival of
their new tenant in different ways.

Burt Lancaster and Shirley Booth play a childless couple whose lives are changed after they rent out a room to a young, energetic college student played by Terry Moore.

Lancaster's character (a recovering alcoholic) sees the new tenant as a daughter-figure and becomes overly protective. When his emotions are stirred by her jock boyfriend (Richard Jaeckel) he thinks about going back to the bottle. For Booth, the young tenant's stay causes her to reflect upon the happiness of her youth.

The loss of her beloved dog Sheba years ago played a major factor in her loneliness.

Booth won the Oscar for Best Actress, and she is wonderful in the part as the simple-minded, long-suffering housewife, not unlike the TV character that Jean Stapleton played on the 1970s series All in the Family (as the Edith Bunker character).

In the beginning of the film, Lancaster attends a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the first time a meeting of AA was depicted in a Hollywood film or mentioned by name  (source: Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Vol. 50, No. 4, 1989).

Also, Lancaster plays a chiropractor in the film; this may be one of the earliest references to the chiropractic profession in a Hollywood film (at least I'm not familiar with any chiropractors in the movies before this).

Directed by Daniel Mann (The Rose Tattoo, BUtterfield 8)

Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) | Diary of A Movie Maniac (wordpress.com)