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Posted on 11/11/2025 4:52:19 AM PST by DFG
In honor of Veterans Day today TCM will play The Best Years of Our Lives this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern). I want to draw from my previously posted comments on the movie to recall it briefly with a little background provided by Mark Harris.
Harris tells the highly improbable story behind the making of the film in Five Came Back, his excellent account of the prominent directors who volunteered to use their filmmaking skills in the armed forces during the World War II (John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens). Harris’s account of The Best Years of Our Lives offers a sort of capstone to the story.
The film tells the story of three veterans returning from the war. The idea for the film was Samuel Goldwyn’s; he commissioned MacKinlay Kantor to write a screenplay. Instead Kantor turned in a treatment in blank verse.
Goldwyn somehow thought to solicit playwright and Roosevelt confidant Robert Sherwood to draft a screenplay based on Kantor’s treatment. Sherwood declined, but Goldwyn persisted. Goldwyn also turned to William Wyler — one of the five who came back in Harris’s telling — to direct. Wyler enlisted the great cinematographer Gregg Toland to film it, and Toland’s contribution was invaluable.
Wyler had virtually lost his hearing while serving on the Memphis Belle in Europe during the war. Wyler’s 1944 documentary The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress is posted on YouTube.
Wyler jumped at Goldwyn’s offer and worked with Sherwood to shape the screenplay. Indeed, as Harris demonstrates, Wyler poured himself each of the film’s three leading characters. “As they collaborated,” Harris writes, “The Best Years of Our Lives gradually evolved into Wyler’s own story.”
If you’ve seen the film, you haven’t forgotten the performance of Harold Russell. While serving as an Army instructor, Russell had lost his hands handling explosives in a training accident. In the film his efforts to return to his prewar life hold a special challenge.
Goldwyn doubted that they would be able to find an amputee to play the role and said so in his pungent style: “You can’t have a Jew playing a Jew, it wouldn’t work on screen.” The disabled veterans visited by Wyler in search of the right man to play the part shared Goldwyn’s skepticism.
Wyler found Russell in a documentary made during the war. The documentary is posted on YouTube here. Harris quotes Russell’s words in the documentary: “I got [my injury] on D-Day, all right, but it was in North Carolina when half a pound of TNT exploded ahead of schedule. I didn’t have a German scalp hanging from my belt. I didn’t have a Purple Heart. I didn’t even have an overseas ribbon. All I had was no hands.” It wasn’t long before he had an Academy Award (actually, two of them) for his performance in the film, which swept the Oscars for 1946.
Russell lived a long life, dying in 2002. Here is his New York Times obituary.
Below is a clip depicting former bombardier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) confronting his demons. Like Wyler, Fred flew B17s in the war. They didn’t have a word for PTSD at the time, but Fred was wrestling with it.
Earlier this year I confessed to Jack Fowler that I’ve seen the movie over and over and it still chokes me up. Jack let me know he has me beat: “I’ve seen Best Years probably 40 times.” He added: “I think Frederic March plays the best non-comic drunk in any movie. The mom choking up when she sees her son’s hands…yeah, I choke up then too. Every time. Every scene is great…I love when Teresa Wright’s hat falls off at the end — she was in the moment.” Hoagy Carmichael is at the piano in the scene (below).
In his interview with Coleman Hughes this week (posted here on YouTube), Victor Davis Hanson recalled the scene in which Homer Parrish’s loss of his arms is denigrated in front of Fred by the soda fountain customer who earnestly instructs Homer, “We fought the wrong people, that’s all.”
Homer asks him, “Look here, Mister, what are you selling, anyway?” The customer claims not to be selling anything but “plain, old-fashioned Americanism.”
Fred is the soda jerk working behind the counter. He comes to Homer’s defense, jumping over the counter to deck the customer. He explains to his boss as he strips off his apron, “Don’t say it, chum. The customer is always right, but this customer wasn’t right.” I thought until recently that this scene might be unrealistic, but Tucker Carlson has made it real.
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About Virginia Mayo, I wrote her many times as an autograph collector and she was very nice about signing stuff.
I really hated her in this movie. She played the part well.
I got to ride in a B-17 a few years ago and one of the guys there said that was how they got in the plane back then, but he couldn’t do it now. We all laughed as none of us were in any shape to get in the plane that way either.
100%. That was one of the reasons I became so angry at the treatment of the Vietnam Veterans. It was so beneath us as a country.
LINK: Understanding the Difference Between Memorial Day vs. Veterans Day
Memorial Day: Honoring Those Who Died in Military Service
Memorial Day, which is celebrated on the last Monday in May, honors service members who have died in military service to the nation. The holiday has roots dating back to the post-Civil War era, when citizens would informally place spring flower memorials on the graves of fallen soldiers.
Veterans Day: Honoring All Those Who Served in the Military
Veterans Day, a federal holiday that falls on November 11, is designated as a day to honor the more than 19 million men and women who have served in the U.S. military.
By the way, I don't fault you for getting it backwards. A lot of people do. But it is good to know the difference.
I have no wish to be argumentative, but there were different levels of exposure to the death and misery of the war. At the very worst level were the infantry veterans who survived direct combat - the campaigns in Guadalcanal, North Africa, Sicily, New Guinea, Peleliu, Luzon, Normandy, Iwo Jima, the Bulge, Hurtgen, Aachen, Okinawa.
The survivors had a much more difficult time on their return to civilian life but if you haven't experienced it, you can't know how much different their recovery was compared to the folks who performed the many critical supporting positions that long distance wars require. They amounted to about 90% support to the 10% or so that were involved in the really heinous job of killing the enemy and watching your friends die around you.
That is the only minor quibble I have with "the Best Years of our Lives" is that Frederick March character didn't seem to suffer a bit for his long experience of infantry war in the Pacific bloodbath. In real life it was a lot harder for those men to return to normalcy.
I had absolutely the same impression of Dana Andrews hoisting himself into that plane...I have no doubt he consulted guys who knew just how to do that!
I love the female casting in the move-all of them, but most of all, Myrna Loy seemed perfectly cast for the wife of Frederick March’s character. The daughter was quite attractive as well.’’
Virginia Mayo’s character was not at all likable, and I tip my hat to her for playing it so well.
“”We all laughed as none of us were in any shape to get in the plane that way either.””
Plane or not - are any of us in the shape we were in years ago? Mentally OR physically!
I was a big fan of Virginia Mayo. She didn’t play the bad girl in many films that I have seen. I have several autographed photos of her.
I was a big fan of Virginia Mayo. She didn’t play the bad girl in many films that I have seen. I have several autographed photos of her.
A lifelong Republican, she endorsed Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, and longtime friend Ronald Reagan in 1980.
I loved Jeanne Crain too. I have never known anyone to have such poise.
That series is one of the best - and Season 10 is excellent in its portrayal of the returning veterans. I binge watched all 10 episodes today.
I liked Jeanne Craine also. I have her autograph also. I collected all the old silver screen actresses back in the day.
I think he suffered a lot. His alcoholism affected his family and his job back at the bank.
The first night back he got wasted on booze. Throughout the movie his wife kept trying to limit his drinking and his drunken rambling speech he gave in front of his boss and co-workers was awkward.
Just a few examples.
Going a little off the original topic:
Virginia Mayo was considered for the part of Lisa Douglas in Green Acres, which went to Eva Gabor.
About Theresa Wright:
Goldwyn immediately hired the young actress for the role of Bette Davis’ daughter in the 1941 adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, signing her to a five-year Hollywood contract with the Goldwyn Studios. Asserting her seriousness as an actress, Wright insisted her contract contain unique clauses by Hollywood standards:
The aforementioned Teresa Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: In shorts, playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the Fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at a turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf; assuming an athletic stance while pretending to hit something with a bow and arrow
I used to talk to WWII veterans a lot while I was in high school (oddly, they were happy to talk to me - because I showed interest, I guess) and their memories were still raw 20 years after their war.
Still, that movie does the best of all of them when they portray the returning combat vets.
She did cook breakfast for Dana Andrews.
L
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