During the latter half of the 1930s and the first half of the 40s, movie studios were churning out films intended to stir up morale for our troops overseas fighting for the freedom of the world. But by 1946, the war had ended, and now the world was facing a new kind of dilemma, one more personal. Troops were coming home and having to re-acclimate to a world that hadn’t waited for them. Thousands of these young men were coming home, many changed by their experiences, many physically or emotionally disabled. It was a difficult time for these men. The Best Years of Our Lives attempts to dramatize this and play on our sympathies for the men who survived the war and returned home to the lives they left behind, not all of which was welcoming.
What many people nowadays probably don’t think about is that most of the able-bodied men were in Europe or the Pacific during World War II. Those who weren’t stayed home and took over the jobs that had been vacated. When soldiers started coming home after the war, it was a flood on the job market, and not everybody could secure employment right away. Many who did manage to find work found that it was for lower wages than they were used to. Some welcome home, huh?
Even worse than that, though, was the people who were severely injured during their time overseas having to face a world at home that didn’t quite know how to deal with them. It’s human nature to fear the different; it takes real bravery and patience, though, to get past that and see those people as people, not just their limitations. Not everyone is equipped to handle that.
The Best Years of Our Lives was based on the 1945 novella Glory for Me by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist MacKinlay Kantor. The film explores the lives of three returning war veterans from the same town in America, Boone City, who meet each other initially on the flight back home. Their lives will become intersected as they try to reintegrate back into society and each face their own different struggles as they do so.
The first is USAAF bombardier captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), who is coming home to a young wife, Marie (Virginia Mayo). Marie works in the dance halls and is accustomed to the party lifestyle, but when Fred insists she stop working that kind of a job and exhausts his savings trying to please her while being unable to find a decent job of his own, he has to put an end to all the partying, too. This causes a lot of friction between them, and he begins to realize that the two of them are vastly different people, and his marriage might just be falling apart. On top of that, Fred is suffering from PTSD flashbacks, which torment him at night in his dreams.
U.S. Army sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is coming home to a position at the bank where he was formerly employed before the war. He, his wife Milly (Myrna Loy), and their two teenage children, Peggy (Teresa Wright) and Rob (Michael Hall), live in a luxury apartment. Al takes up a position at the bank where he is in charge of approving or denying loans. This has put him in a tough position where he is being told not to take any risks on those loans, including with returning soldiers who may not have collateral. This has led to him drinking more than he should and resenting his superiors for putting him in this difficult position.
Finally, there is Petty Officer 2nd Class Homer Parrish. Homer was a sailor during the war and the only one of the three leads coming home with a physical disability. While he never saw combat, he lost both of his hands in an accident. He has since become proficient in the use of his prosthetic hooks, but resents being totally dependent on someone else once those hooks are removed. He also struggles with people treating him differently just because of his loss. Kids gawk at him, his mother can’t hold back her tears at the sight of his hooks, and he fears that his fiancé Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) will not be able to handle being married to someone like him anymore. Because of this, he has grown cold and distant with her, afraid to open up to her about his insecurities and get hurt.
Homer’s is the most relatable of the three stories because, even though most of us haven’t had to deal with amputations or being disabled, we can still comprehend the idea of being treated differently. When we are introduced to Homer, he is joining Fred and Al on the transport plane back home. He shows that he is perfectly capable of doing things that you would assume would be difficult, if not impossible, for someone without hands. When he lights a match, Fred and Al are at first unsure of it, but keep quiet and let him do it on his own, sensing that he needs to be independent. Later, though, when he is alone with his family and tries to light a match, they cut him off, lighting their own for fear of letting him struggle and perhaps fail. They treat him differently and cannot help making him feel self-conscious of his disability, unlike the way Fred and Al did where they don’t call attention to it. This performance is all the more poignant knowing that actor Harold Russell was a real life amputee who was fully aware of the struggles such a condition came with.
Many returning soldiers would see themselves, or someone they knew well in the service, in one or more of these three men. We tend to think the returning men were celebrated for their heroism and service to their country, and to a degree, they were. But the realities are a bit more complicated than that. People change after going through a situation like that. Al may have been just as cold and calculating as his fellow bankers—who, incidentally, are not wrong in their assessment of things—but now he has empathy for those young men trying to start a new life back home now that the war is over. He knows he cannot gamble with the money entrusted to him and the bank, but he also knows how difficult it is for a financial institution to loan money to someone who doesn’t have collateral to cover it. This is torturing him, and even though he has a wonderful family structure backing him up, he still turns to alcohol to help get him through this.
Fred married in haste before the war, tying himself to a gold digger who was more interested in his good government paycheck than in him. She is delighted to see him when he initially returns, but that sours quickly when she is told that the active nightlife has to stop. He soon learns that there is no love between them and cannot help feeling attracted to Al’s daughter, Peggy. Her solution is to set up a social date with him and his wife, where she discovers that Marie despises her husband and is thinking of leaving him. Peggy decides to help that breakup along but is foiled by her father, who convinces Fred to break off any blossoming relationship he has going with Peggy.
Most heartbreaking of all, though, is the situation with Homer and Wilma. He has grown so distant and sullen that her parents suggest she leave the area, allowing their engagement to dissolve. He doesn’t want that, but he also cannot bring himself to put her in a position where she has to take care of him, fearing she will grow to resent having to care for a “helpless” man. This culminates in the best scene in the entire film when he finally invites her up to his room to show her just what she would have to be doing for him for the rest of her life. He fears that the realities of his situation will scare her away, but the truth is that she loves him enough to be willing to take care of him anyway. That reassurance breathes new life into Homer and provides him with the first bit of true happiness we see from him.
Because this is a movie, it closes mostly on happy endings. It may tackle difficult topics that were on people’s minds at the time, but it is not going to get so bleak that it turns off audiences. Such a direction would have been a bold choice but would have also negatively impacted the film’s box-office appeal at the time. A modern retelling may go that route, but not in the 1940s. We are meant to feel uplifted as things turn around for the main cast.
While we are many decades beyond World War II, we are not beyond war, and there are still soldiers coming home from service overseas dealing with problems like these and a myriad of others. That makes a film like this feel timeless and still very much topical. The best films can take a subject that is relevant at the time and make it accessible to audiences years later. The Best Years of Our Lives is like that. It also makes sure that no character gets shortchanged. It is nearly three hours long, but it uses that time well. There are no unnecessary moments or scenes that go on for too long. This is three fully realized stories that all get their due, and because of that, those three hours breeze by quickly. We can identify with each of these men in uniquely different ways. That’s because of great writing, and just as importantly, because of great acting. This is a great film all around and highly deserving of its Best Motion Picture of 1946 win at the Oscars.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Motion Picture: Samuel Goldwyn (won)
Best Director: William Wyler (won)
Best Actor: Fredric March (won)
Best Supporting Actor: Harold Russell (won)
Best Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood (won)
Best Film Editing: Daniel Mandell (won)
Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: Hugo Friedhofer (won)
Best Sound Recording: Gordon E. Sawyer
Academy Honorary Award: Harold Russell (won)
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award: Samuel Goldwyn (won)
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Release Date: November 21, 1946
Running Time: 172 minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Harold Russell, and Virginia Mayo
Directed by: William Wyler
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