Not long after my book about the making of the 1946 Academy Award-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives was released in 2022, I received an e-mail from a recently retired high school teacher. He had taught U.S. history at a private academy on the East Coast that enrolled a substantial number of underprivileged students on scholarship. These were tough kids, he told me.
Every spring, he would screen the movie for them during a unit about World War II. Given the film’s focus on three veterans from different branches of the military and their challenges in adjusting to postwar life in the U.S., Best Years offers a rich commentary about war and America in the 1940s. Because of the film’s extended running time—170 minutes—the teacher screened it in sections across one week of classes. He wrote that, without fail, when the movie came to its end, the students got to their feet and gave Best Years a standing ovation. Some even wiped away tears.
As a former college professor who taught film history for more than two decades, I had also shown the film on a regular basis. Its pedigree makes it versatile: It is an independent film, financed and produced by Samuel Goldwyn; it is a wartime film that addresses PTSD decades before the term was even coined; its sophisticated black-and-white cinematography by Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) incorporates a variety of stylistic elements from melodrama, film noir, and even horror; and it is a blockbuster, directed by Oscar-winner William Wyler, featuring an ensemble of movie stars, and setting box office records in the U.S. and abroad. In fact, my students’ positive and rich reactions to Best Years was one reason I was inspired to write the book.
World War II amputee Harold Russell (right) and World War I amputee Charles C. McGonegal compare models of artificial arms. Russell, whose only acting experience was in an army instructional film for amputees, was working at a YMCA when he was tapped to play Homer Parrish in The Best Years of Our Lives. His performance earned him an Academy Award for best supporting actor.
—Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
Why does a movie made more than 75 years ago continue to resonate? For starters, the film’s frank discussion of war trauma connects to the ongoing conversation about PTSD and the alarming statistics that keep it in the news. When I began the project in 2018, one in five veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom had been diagnosed with PTSD, and every day approximately 20 veterans and active-duty military were taking their own lives. At the time of the book’s publication four years later, a new study revealed that the COVID pandemic had only exacerbated post-9/11 veterans’ existing mental health issues.
But in order for a movie (especially an older one) to connect with viewers, it needs to be entertaining as well as topical. Best Years features powerful yet understated performances from stars like Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, and Teresa Wright. These veteran actors are joined by Harold Russell, a thirty-two-year-old paratrooper who had his hands blown off while preparing to teach a demolitions course at Camp Mckall in 1944. Russell’s only other “credit” was as the lead in an Army training film meant to motivate other disabled veterans, which he made as he transitioned out of Walter Reed General Hospital and back into civilian life.
Wyler, who directed Best Years following his own return from the war, also insisted on using black-and-white film to enhance the story’s realism, even though by 1946 some movies were being photographed in color. As Teresa Wright said of this choice, “Willy Wyler and Gregg Toland wanted the picture to have the look of an American newsreel. They wanted it to have the feel of a live newspaper article.”
The movie was inspired, in fact, by an article that appeared in Time magazine in August 1944. The unnamed reporter who wrote the piece spent six days and nights with 370 marines traveling by train from the West Coast to their homes around the country. Frances Goldwyn, married to producer Sam, read the article and showed it to her husband. A month or so later, Goldwyn reached out to noted author MacKinlay Kantor about adapting the article into a book. Throughout his career, Goldwyn shaped his reputation as someone who used esteemed works—books, plays, and so on—as the basis for his films’ scripts. In the case of Best Years, the screenplay would be inspired by Kantor’s novel about the war, which became Glory for Me. Kantor chose to write the book in blank verse, however, a format that wouldn’t adapt easily to the screen. Other challenges were the novel’s bitter tone and its monstrous depiction of one of its key characters, a disabled veteran.
Homer’s uncle Butch’s bar in Boone City is a frequent gathering place for the veteran friends. Here Hoagy Carmichael, who portrays Butch, plays piano while Homer and Al Stephenson, played by Fredric March, look on.
—RKO / Album Stock Photo
Eventually, Goldwyn hired playwright and presidential speechwriter Robert E. Sherwood to adapt Kantor’s novel. When Wyler came home from the war—discharged early because he had lost hearing in one ear while making a wartime documentary in Europe—he owed Goldwyn a final film under his contract. That project became Best Years.
Together Wyler, Sherwood, and even Russell helped shape the screenplay inspired by Kantor’s novel. For instance, a moving hallway-reunion scene between Sergeant Al Stephenson (March) and his wife, Milly (Myrna Loy), was inspired by Wyler’s own wartime reunion with his wife, Talli, when they met up while he was on leave at New York’s Hampshire House.
The film went into production in April 1946. It was scheduled to shoot for about 75 days, although principal photography would extend for another month. Best Years’s budget was around $2 million, nearly four times the cost of the average feature film at the time. One of the challenges during the film’s production was the ongoing negotiations with the Motion Picture Association of America, which was Hollywood’s self-censoring entity. Led on the West Coast by Joseph Breen, this office was responsible for monitoring the content of the industry’s films. On-screen representations of drinking, marriage, and sex were of particular importance to Breen and his colleagues.
In the case of Best Years, the Breen office (as it was called) challenged the amount of alcohol consumed by Al and several of the kisses shared between the characters. One memo from the Breen office to Goldwyn read, “These (kisses) should not be prolonged, or lustful, and there should be no open-mouthed kissing.” I expected to find memos documenting pushback from the censors about the on-screen representation of Russell’s real-life hooks, which stood in for his missing lower arms and hands; I never did. In fact, one of the film’s most poignant scenes features Homer (Russell) going into painstaking detail about his hooks as he demonstrates for his girlfriend Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) how he removes them during his bedtime routine.
Peggy Stephenson, played by Teresa Wright, soothes the troubled Fred Derry after he awakes from a night terror.
—Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
Authentic scenes like this one earned the film accolades. General Omar Bradley, who by 1946 was the head of Veterans Affairs, contacted Goldwyn after attending a private screening of the film. “I cannot thank you too much for bringing this story to the American people,” wrote Bradley. “You are not only helping us to do our job, but you are helping the American people to build an even better democracy out of the tragic experiences of this war.”
Best Years had its East Coast premiere in New York City in late November 1946. It was a star-studded event at the Astor Theatre in Midtown, with most of the stars in attendance as well as other celebrities, such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who were friends of producer Sam Goldwyn.
Best Years then premiered on the West Coast on Christmas night during a torrential rainstorm. The film went into wide release just after the Academy Awards, which were held in Los Angeles in March 1947. Best Years was up against some stiff competition that year, including The Yearling and Duel in the Sun. Nonetheless it swept the field, winning seven statuettes for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Editing, and Best Score. The film also received two special Oscars—an honorary award for Harold Russell and an Irving G. Thalberg award for Samuel Goldwyn.
The film set box office records in the U.S. and overseas, earning more than $11 million by the end of its first full year in release. It became only the second film, behind Gone with the Wind (1939), in terms of gross earnings, a rank it would retain for the next ten years. In London, Best Years was so popular that lines wrapped around city blocks, and some theater managers programmed the film round the clock to satisfy audience demand.
Former Bombardier Captain Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews, wanders among a row of junked propellers in a bomber “graveyard” on location in Ontario, California, a scene that director William Wyler at one time considered for the film’s ending.
—Wyler Family
In addition to its tremendous box office and its landslide sweep at the Oscars, Best Years’s impact on how war trauma was depicted was groundbreaking. It wasn’t the first film to deal with the psychological effects of WWII, but as a critic for Life magazine wrote, “It was the first big, good movie” to do so—it had stars, it had a big budget, and it was willing to feature a main character struggling with war trauma alongside two others who were also trying to cope in different ways.
But Best Years’s triumphant legacy also has a dark side—the film’s seemingly liberal politics (as well as the political views of director Wyler and screenwriter Sherwood) made it a target of the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee investigation. The film appeared on a list of Hollywood movies that were said to be spreading Communist propaganda through their messages. Some of its cast, including Fredric March and Roman Bohnen, who plays the father of one of the main characters, were summoned to defend themselves in front of the committee or were blacklisted.
The film’s legacy also includes Harold Russell’s “second act,” which was possible because of his having a platform after appearing in the film. Not only did he become head of AMVETS in the 1950s, but he was also appointed to a presidential committee for veterans’ rights, a position that endured through eight administrations until his retirement in 1989. In fact, Russell is credited with being one of the individuals who worked behind the scenes to help with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Despite all of its accolades and the film’s beloved status among devoted fans, Best Years doesn’t enjoy the contemporary recognition of other classic films. Consider It’s a Wonderful Life, a movie that came out just three weeks after Best Years and actually floundered at the box office partly because of Best Years’s success. Today, thanks in part to its being broadcast annually during the holiday season, It’s a Wonderful Life is arguably better known than Best Years.
The cast of Best Years take a break from filming scenes at Butch’s Place to visit with General Curtis LeMay (center, between Teresa Wright and Myrna Loy) and screenwriter Sy Bartlett (far right). Danny Kaye (seated below Bartlett) would often visit the set during breaks from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, also filming on the Goldwyn lot.
—Wyler Family
Best Years is also missing from the esteemed Criterion Collection. While this omission may be related to issues with the film’s distribution rights, fans still consider it an oversight. More surprising, perhaps, is the film’s absence from Sight and Sound’s 2022 list of greatest films of all time.
Still, Best Years continues to win new fans. The first event scheduled to promote my book was a Memorial Day screening at the Austin Film Society Cinema in the Texas capital, where I live. Afterward, I signed copies of the book and chatted with attendees. As the crowd thinned, a man in his thirties approached me. He told me he was a veteran who had served in Afghanistan. He had never heard of The Best Years of Our Lives, but when he saw a mention of the screening in the local newspaper, he decided to come to the event. I asked him what he thought of the film. He was still mulling it over, he told me, calling it “powerful.” He added that he’d probably need to watch it again. I smiled. I wasn’t surprised.
