WHAT: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, DCP)
WHEN: Monday, November 11 7 PM (1 PM matinee on November 12)
WHERE: Pickwick Theatre, Park Ridge, IL
WHAT ELSE: Pre-show music by Jay Warren at 6:30 PM.
HOW MUCH: $12/$10 advance or $10 for the 1 PM matinee on Nov. 12
Advance Tickets: Click Here and select date.
“You see, Mr. Milton, in the Army I’ve had to be with men when they were stripped of everything in the way of property except what they carried around with them and inside them. I saw them being tested. Now some of them stood up to it and some didn’t. But you got so you could tell which ones you could count on. I tell you this man Novak is okay. His ‘collateral’ is in his hands, in his heart and his guts. It’s in his right as a citizen.” ~ Al Stephenson (portrayed by Fredric March)
To those who served this country during World War II– the Greatest Generation, as we know them to be– The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is a film that resonated, reflecting the hopes and trials of servicemen readjusting to civilian life. I remember a good friend, George Schatz, who had been a bombardier during World War II and spoke of the impact this film had made on him. I hadn’t yet seen the film at that time, but George recalled the moment when Dana Andrews’ character, Fred, is walking through the airplane graveyard with its eviscerated B-17s and B-25s lined up across the field in geometric patterns. Fred, himself a bombardier, climbs up into one of the abandoned planes and is taken back to recent memories– reliving ghosts from his past– or exorcising old demons, to put it another way. This was one of the moments that George could relate to as he had flown several missions over Germany.
Sadly, most WWII veterans, like George Schatz, are gone, and we are losing more with each passing year. Before long, only a handful will remain, and then after that, their living history will pass like the WWI and Civil War veterans before them. But while some still remain in our own community, we thought we’d take this opportunity to honor them. So much time has passed, in fact, that those who simply remember seeing The Best Years of Our Lives in a movie theatre have become a rare breed. Those who recall the 1940s realize it’s an era that is gradually being forgotten– with pieces of history that are not even taught.
On Monday, November 11– Veterans Day– the Pickwick Theatre Classic Film Series will proudly present this Best Picture winner directed by William Wyler. The film won seven Academy Awards (plus two honorary) and was a tremendous success at the box office. Though it’s been nearly eighty years since the war ended, the relevancy is still there albeit in different forms. Vets still come home in some cases with emotional, physical or psychological challenges. In The Best Years of Our Lives, characters might not use terms like “PTSD,” but the experience is the same.
Readjusting to how things had once been, dealing with how they have changed, and living with a perspective few can truly understand are issues vets continually face every day. This Veterans Day, we acknowledge this. In The Best Years of Our Lives, there are no battle scenes save for those characters may be reliving internally. These actors aren’t showing mock heroics on a studio backlot. But this is a war film that hits home (literally) in a way few other films have– then or now.
Dana Andrews
It was producer Sam Goldwyn’s wife who brought the story to her husband’s attention. She had read a Time magazine article called “The Way Home,” which dealt with the demobilization of Marines. Goldwyn liked the idea and enlisted novelist MacKinlay Kantor to adapt the short story into a hundred page treatment. Kantor had been a correspondent during the war and had flown on missions with the Eighth Air Force. He would later win a Pulitzer Prize for his 1955 Civil War novel Andersonville. However, Kantor gave Goldwyn a novel nearly 300 pages in length. At this point, Goldwyn was ready to shelve the idea.
Director William Wyler had served during the war and had been recently discharged himself. He was a major in the Army Air Force and flew in B-17s over Germany while capturing documentary footage. Wyler had seen men die during the war and had suffered physically, although not to the same extent as other vets. He had lost half of his hearing. Under the terms of his contract with Goldwyn, he still owed the producer one film and was drawn to the Kantor material. Wyler was looking for a more serious property, having declined Goldwyn’s offer to direct The Bishop’s Wife (1947). Wyler took Kantor’s material– which became the novel Glory For Me— and handed it over to playwright Robert Sherwood. Sherwood had been a war veteran and the head of the Office of War Information during the war. He had also been President Roosevelt’s speechwriter. Both he and Wyler were able to convince Goldwyn to proceed with the story that became The Best Years of Our Lives…
Three servicemen return home to Boone City: United States Air Force bombardier captain Fred Derry; U.S Army sergeant Al Stephenson, and U.S. Navy petty officer Homer Parrish. Each has their own challenge facing them when they arrive. Fred, struggling to find a job better than the soda jerking he left behind, discovers his wife Marie is shallow and unfaithful. Al, a stranger in his own home, returns to his banking job but reverts to drink in order to cope with the unhappiness of his position. Homer, meanwhile, returns to a loving girlfriend whom he is unable to embrace; he had lost both hands during the war, and though he was able to adapt, he finds that others are unable to treat him normally. Fred finds comfort in the arms of Al’s daughter, Peggy, but this affair is discouraged by the family given Fred’s history with women. Each character ultimately learns to cope and move forward.
Fredric March, one of the most versatile leading men of the 1930s and 1940s, won his second Academy Award for playing the borderline alcoholic Al Stephenson. March could project genuine sincerity and concern, as evidence by the scene in the bank in which he takes a risk issuing a loan to a young G.I. who has no collateral. If his first Academy Award was for a more theatrical performance with his evocation of Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), March’s turn here is sublime. One of the most poignant moments in the film comes when Al returns home and sees his wife at the end of the hallway. (This was modeled after Wyler’s own homecoming when he reunited with his wife, Margaret Tallichet.) And it’s the smaller details of March’s performance that can be appreciated on multiple viewings. There is one humorous moment where, recovering from a hangover, Al mixes the bicarbonate back and forth in two glasses but winds up taking a drink from the empty one.
Fredric March and Myrna Loy
Dana Andrews portrayed Fred and excelled at characters simmering to a boil. He brought a low-key intensity to his roles, which served him well in many of the classic film noirs he appeared in throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In Best Years, Andrews has what could be argued the most important role, yet he was not nominated for leading man. Harold Russell, who played Homer, was a former paratrooper who had lost both hands in an accident. He had previously appeared in a documentary called Diary of a Sergeant (1945), which brought him to the attention of William Wyler. In the original Sherwood script, Homer suffered from combat trauma, but this was changed to him being a double amputee when Russell joined the cast.
Top-billed Myrna Loy stars as Al’s wife, Milly. Loy was the most successful female star at that time. She thrived in light comedic roles, such as that of Nora Charles opposite William Powell in the Thin Man movies. Here, she takes on the more dramatic role of the wife holding the family together both during Al’s absence as well as during his return. Teresa Wright portrayed the Stephensons’ daughter, Peggy, who falls in love with the tormented Fred. Wright had won the Best Supporting Actress Award on Wyler’s previous movie, Mrs. Miniver (1942). Virginia Mayo, who became one of Warner Brothers’ biggest draws in the late 1940s, took on the role of Fred’s wife, Marie. Wright and Mayo lived long enough to see this film’s impact on today’s generation, often doing retrospective interviews. Both actresses passed in 2005.
Playing Homer’s piano-playing uncle, Butch, was Hoagy Carmichael, and Homer’s girlfriend, Wilma, was portrayed by Cathy O’Donnell. In the superfluous role of the Stephenson son, Rob, was Michael Hall. Goldwyn did not renew Hall’s contract when it expired during filming, thus explaining his mysterious disappearance a quarter through the film.
Harold Russell and Hoagy Carmichael
An interesting bit of trivia about the film’s production is that William Wyler had asked his cast to wear their own clothes and pick out their own wardrobe off the rack. The idea was to make the actors feel less like stars and more like the down-to-earth “average” people they were playing. There is nothing glamorous about any of these characters. This, coupled with the documentary-style footage of Boone City (modeled after Cincinnati), gives the film a more realistic look.
The Best Years of Our Lives has an exceptional pedigree not only with its cast but with its crew. William Wyler, who had won his first Academy Award with Mrs. Miniver, was one of Hollywood’s elite and most celebrated filmmakers. The Best Years of Our Lives is told with such sensitivity and intelligence that not even the censors could take issue with it. When Homer invites Wilma upstairs to his bedroom to help her better understand the nightly ordeal of removing his “hooks,” Wyler lays out the moment with such understanding and delicacy.
In addition to Wyler’s direction, the film benefits from the cinematography of legendary cameraman Gregg Toland, who had shot Citizen Kane (1941). Of note, Wyler and Toland make use of deep-focus photography which allows characters in the front, middle and rear of the frame to remain in focus. An example of this is the scene at Butch’s in which Al Stephenson watches Fred make a phone call at the back of the bar while Homer and Butch play the piano in the foreground.
In addition to its Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor, The Best Years of Our Lives won for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Score. It was also given an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. And finally, Harold Russell was given an Honorary Academy Award for depicting his disability onscreen and “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance.” The expectation from the presenters was that this would be his only award. However, Russell, to everyone’s surprise, went on to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar too, making him the only actor in Academy history to win two Oscars for the same role.
The Best Years of Our Lives is a drama that uses observational storytelling to convey truth. The film’s value and meaning are derived from the shared experiences it depicts of those who had survived the war. Wyler, along with many in the cast and crew, knew what war was all about because they had lived it. With this film, they brought their own experience to how the story was shaped and presented. Some in the cast could authentically portray a certain moment or feeling given what they themselves had felt in wartime. Best Years is infused with an authority that can’t be generated today. Even Fredric March was a veteran of the First World War and could call back to those feelings of coming home again.
In his essay on the film, author Gabriel Miller writes, “The film also touches on the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb and the reality that the war’s end had not brought real peace abroad, since the alliance with Russia had unraveled even before Roosevelt’s death. Wyler even deals with the sleek new consumerism enveloping America, as Bullard’s Drugstore has been transformed into a mecca of toys, cosmetics, and perfumes. As Al remarks to Milly, ‘Last year it was kill the Japs; now it’s make money.'”
So much of what the film depicts is still with us. One of the film’s smaller moments is one that we can certainly re-imagine in 2024. The Nazi sympathizer who challenges Homer in the drugstore (and who is subsequently knocked out by Fred) goes by a different name these days. He represents the individual who should know better– the one who puts his faith in news sources that undermine American values and who voices his opinion loud enough as though his was the only one that mattered.
The Best Years of Our Lives reflects the ethos of its time. On the surface, it doesn’t have the cynicism of later war films, such as those depicting the Vietnam War, but that doesn’t mean everything ends with a nice bow on top. At the conclusion, one couple marries, another is headed to the altar, and the third watches on, but each pair faces their own, unstated challenge ahead. The years before them may be difficult for Fred and Peggy as he tries to make a living. In a way, he himself is being salvaged for a better purpose like the junk planes he saw in the field. But this does not mean his nightmares will end. Homer and Wilma, meanwhile, will learn to love despite his limitations, which will be a daily struggle. And Al and Milly will go on, coping with Al’s drinking and dissatisfaction at the bank. There may be more trials to come for them, but as they told their daughter, they will learn to fall in love with each other all over again. The ending is hopeful, but not necessarily tidy.
~MCH
