The Best Years of Our Lives (also known as Glory for Me and Home Again) is a 1946 American epic drama film directed by William Wyler and starring Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo and Harold Russell. The film depicts three United States servicemen returning from World War II and re-adjusting to societal changes and civilian life. The men come from different military branches, with different ranks that do not correspond with their civilian social class backgrounds.
The film is credited for its portrayal of post-World War II era hardships and of reincorporation of veterans into society after their often traumatic terms in the US military. It is one of the earliest films to address such issues, dealing with concerns such as PTSDDephalese, Arnaud, (2026) Trauma & PTSD in American Cinema and a resurgence of isolationist policy. There are prescient references to nuclear destruction, and to reintegration policies with veterans that extended into the Vietnam War era and beyond.
The Best Years of Our Lives was a critical and commercial success, winning seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood), and Best Original Score (Hugo Friedhofer). In addition, for his role as Parrish, Russell won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He had received an honorary Oscar for ''bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures.'' The special award was created because the Board of Governors wanted to salute Russell, a non-professional actor, but assumed he had little chance for a competitive win. It was the only time in Oscar history that the academy awarded two Oscars for the same performance.
In 1989, The Best Years of Our Lives was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was the highest-grossing film in both the United States and United Kingdom since the release of Gone with the Wind. In 2004, it was named the sixth most-attended film of all time in the UK, with over 20 million tickets sold.
Plot Three returning World War II veterans meet on a flight to their midwestern hometown of Boone City. USAAF bombardier captain Fred Derry had been a drugstore soda jerk who lived with his father and stepmother on the wrong side of the tracks. Before shipping out, Fred married gold-digger Marie after a whirlwind romance. Marie has since been working in a nightclub to fill her time (and her nightlife) in spite of Fred's generous combat pay as an Air Force officer. U.S. Army sergeant Al Stephenson is a bank executive; he, his wife Milly and their children Peggy and Rob live in a luxury apartment. U.S. Navy petty officer Homer Parrish was a star high school athlete living with his middle-class parents and younger sister, and dating his next-door neighbor Wilma, whom he intended to marry upon his return from the war.
Each man faces challenges integrating back into civilian life. Homer lost both hands in the war; he is reluctant to return home and face his well-meaning parents and their friends, who have a hard time seeing past his disability. Homer can deftly use his mechanical hooks, but hesitates to display affection for Wilma as he cannot believe she will still want to marry him. Al, tired and jaded, returns to the bank and is given a promotion, but wrestles with alcohol. Fred suffers from PTSD flashbacks by night.
Unable to locate Marie, Fred goes out on the town with the Stephensons. Both Al and Fred become drunk and Fred spends the night in the Stephenson home. Fred and Peggy develop a mutual attraction. After meeting Marie during an outing orchestrated by Peggy, she concludes Marie is shallow and materialistic, and Peggy determines to break up Fred's marriage, much to Al's consternation.
Frustrated and depressed by his loss of independence; and concerned that Wilma doesn't fully understand the difficulties of being married to him, Homer demonstrates how she'll need to assist him when he removes his prosthetic hands at bedtime, leaving him helpless. Wilma reaffirms her love and vows her commitment to a grateful and emotional Homer, who finally embraces her.
Widely respected by the bank's senior management for his past business acumen, Al is admonished after approving an unsecured loan to a farmer and fellow veteran without collateral (never realizing the land the farmer wishes to purchase could be collateral for the loan). With inhibitions lowered by excessive drinking, Al gives a speech at a work banquet that satirizes requiring a veteran to provide collateral before risking his life to take a hill in battle.
With little work experience and unable to find a better job than soda jerk, Fred returns to the same drugstore and is now supervised by his former protege. Fred and Peggy's attraction grows stronger, increasing tensions with Al. When Homer visits Fred at the drugstore, another customer criticizes US involvement in the war, telling Homer his injuries were unnecessary. Homer responds angrily, and Fred punches the customer, for which he's fired. Marie, frustrated with Fred's lack of financial success and missing her past nightlife, seeks a divorce.
Bitter and seeing no future in Boone City, especially with Al telling him to stay away from Peggy, Fred decides to catch the next plane out. While waiting at the airport, Fred walks into an aircraft graveyard, climbing into the bombardier's seat of a decommissioned B-17 bomber. He's roused from a painful flashback by a work crew foreman, who tells him the planes are being demolished for use in the growing prefab housing industry. Fred asks if they need help in the budding business and is hired.
Al, Milly, and Peggy attend Homer and Wilma's wedding, where Fred is best man. Now divorced, Fred reunites with Peggy after the ceremony and expresses his love but says things may be financially difficult if she stays with him. Peggy's smile expresses her joy and she and Fred kiss.
Cast
Casting brought together established stars as well as character actors and relative unknowns. Jazz drummer Gene Krupa was seen in archival footage, while Tennessee Ernie Ford, later a TV star, appeared as an uncredited "hillbilly singer" (in the first of his only three film appearances).
Blake Edwards, later a film producer and director, appeared fleetingly as an uncredited "Corporal". Wyler's daughters, Catherine and Judy, were cast as uncredited customers seen in the drug store where Fred Derry works. Sean Penn's father, Leo, played the uncredited part of the soldier working as a scheduling clerk in the Air Transport Command Office at the beginning of the film.
Teresa Wright was only 13 years younger than her on-screen mother, played by Myrna Loy.
Michael Hall (1926–2020), who played Rob Stephenson, was the last surviving credited cast member at the time of his death. However, he is only seen in the first third of the film. Hall's contract with Goldwyn ended during filming, but the producer was reluctant to pay extra money to rehire him.
Production Samuel Goldwyn was inspired to produce a film about veterans after reading an August 7, 1944, article in Time about the difficulties experienced by men returning to civilian life. Goldwyn hired former war correspondent MacKinlay Kantor to write a screenplay. His work was first published as a novella, Glory for Me, which Kantor wrote in blank verse.Orriss 1984, p. 119. Robert E. Sherwood then adapted the novella as a screenplay.
Director Wyler had flown combat missions over Europe in filming Memphis Belle (1944), and worked hard to get accurate depictions of the combat veterans he had encountered. Wyler changed the original casting, which had featured a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and sought out Harold Russell, a non-actor, to take on the exacting role of Homer Parrish.
For The Best Years of Our Lives, he asked the principal actors to purchase their own clothes, in order to connect with daily life and produce an authentic feeling. Other Wyler touches included constructing life-size sets, which went against the standard larger sets that were more suited to camera positions. The impact for the audience was immediate, as each scene played out in a realistic, natural way.Orriss 1984, p. 121.
Recounting the interrelated story of three veterans right after the end of World War II, The Best Years of Our Lives began filming just over seven months after the war's end, starting on April 15, 1946, at a variety of locations, including the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, Ontario International Airport in Ontario, California, Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, and the Samuel Goldwyn/Warner Hollywood Studios.
In The Best Years of Our Lives cinematographer Gregg Toland used deep focus photography, in which objects both close to and distant from the camera are in sharp focus.Kehr, Dave. "'The Best Years of Our Lives'." The Chicago Reader. Retrieved: November 6, 2022. For the passage of Fred Derry's reliving a combat mission while sitting in the remains of a former bomber, Wyler used "zoom" effects to simulate Derry's subjective state.Orriss 1984, pp. 121–122.
The fictional Boone City was patterned after Cincinnati, Ohio. The "Jackson High" football stadium seen early in aerial footage of the bomber flying over the Boone City is Corcoran Stadium located at Xavier University in Cincinnati. A few seconds later Walnut Hills High School with its dome and football field can be seen along with the downtown Cincinnati skyline (Carew Tower and Fourth and Vine Tower) in the background."Trivia: 'The Best Years of Our Lives'." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: November 6, 2022.
After the war, the combat aircraft featured in the film were being destroyed and disassembled for reuse as scrap material. The scene of Derry's walking among aircraft ruins was filmed at the Ontario Army Air Field in Ontario, California. The former training facility had been converted into a scrap yard, housing nearly 2,000 former combat aircraft in various states of disassembly and reclamation.
Reception Critical response Upon its release, The Best Years of Our Lives received extremely positive reviews from critics. Shortly after its premiere at the Astor Theater, New York, Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, hailed the film as a masterpiece. He wrote,
French film critic André Bazin used examples of Toland's and Wyler's deep-focus visual style to illuminate his theory of realism in filmgoing into detail about the scene in which Fred uses the phone booth in the far background while Homer and Butch play piano in the foreground. Bazin explains how deep focus functions in this scene:
Professor and author Gabriel Miller discusses briefly the use of deep-focus in both the bar scene and the wedding scene at the end of the picture in an article written for the National Film Preservation Board.Gabriel Miller, The Best Years of Our Lives, https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/best_years.pdf Accessed 11/14/2022