Oh, they were sophistocated about alcohol, they just didn't enjoy the science of alcohol tolerance, and neither did the Dayton Group and others who lead each other into the only real "cure" for the terminal illness of dypsomania most drinkers never suffer from.
In the case of The Best Years of Our Lives alcohol was an imortant part of the story, for the maladjusted whose middle American families were intact, as well as the recreational drinker played by Virginia Mayo.
Few people know, for example, that Alcohol was consumed in early independent America in quantities far in excess of those times in our history most associated with high consumption, more than three and a half times the amount consumed today, per capita. Until around 1820, refusing a drink offered was a fighting offense.
The history of alcohol and America is a facinating story, and with regard to the "Greatest Generation," the consumption of alcohol in Best Years was vital to illustrate both the daunting adaptation to the end of the necessary war and the end of stratification of an imposed class military hierarchy replaced with a retyurn to the American ideal of equality.
Drink up.
I have not had problems with alcohol--or tobacco; so I'm a bit detached from it all.
I know of the large consumption of alcohol before the 20th century and the anti-alcohol movement that culminated in Prohibition.
It seems to me that with the end of Prohibition, the general population suddenly began consuming alcohol with the reckless zeal of the convert, which, to those who are not converts and never needed to be, seems silly.
There's another Myrna Loy movie--The Thin Man, I think, 1934, in which everybody drinks constantly. Myrna and her husband wake in the night to try to figure out some problem, and the first thing she says is, "Fix me a drink." In the middle of the night?
Then there's an old Lizabeth Scott flick in which she and the man go into a bar for an inportant conversation, and each belts down a few shots of whiskey. Nobody's going to do that today unless you want to get seriously smashed. Certainly not if you want to do some serious problem solving.
And in the old Father of the Bride, with Elizabeth Taylor. The guests come in, and the hose says, "Do you drink?" This seems odd by today's standards. Most people, for a casual evening, would offer the guests whatever they'd like. If it's milk, give them milk; if it's wine, then wine; whatever.
The same was true of cigarettes. They were condemned by the general society until the 20th century, but, once accepted, people smoked with the zeal of converts. There's an old Alice Faye flick from the late '30's, in which, as Alice sings, a chorus of girls behind her sings, dances, and puffs. This is laughable today, and it suggests that at the time, cigarette smoking was shocking, iconoclastic, and sophisticated.
And interesting corollary to this rant is the observation that the oppressive, neo-puritannical Left is the 21st version of this kind of puritanism. It is determined to impose its control on the general population--whether it be banning tobacco use, banning "hate speech", forcing the use of seatbelts, regulating the amount of water toilets and washing machines can use, ridiculous "environmentalist" impositions, the whole concept of "hate crimes", etc., et al.
One can picture latter-day Prohibitionists busting up bars where patrons have been smoking cigarettes--or setting fire to SUV's which--according to their demented minds--"pollute the environment" or forcing someone to sit in a stockade because he uttered "hate speech", today's version of blasphemous utterance.
I suppose there's no escape. One deficiency of representative government is that it allows the stupid to impose their foolishness upon the intelligent.