Best Years of Our Lives, The

Film directed by William Wyler, 1946

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) chronicled the difficulties that three World War II veterans experienced in readjusting to civilian life. Directed by William Wyler, the film dealt directly with the nation's postwar concerns about welcoming home combat veterans. Both a commercial and critical success, the film won seven Academy Awards in 1946, including Best Picture and Best Director.

After reading a 1944 story in Time about the lukewarm homecoming given to some wounded Marines, Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn asked writer Mackinlay Kantor to develop a story outline on the topic. Goldwyn tabled the project when Kantor presented him with a 400-page blank verse novel entitled Glory for Me. However, when Wyler returned from his wartime stint as an Air Force cameraman, he convinced Goldwyn that public concern about returning and wounded veterans gave the story commercial appeal. Wyler adapted Kantor's novel for the screen along with screenwriter Robert Sherwood and hired a film crew solely of veterans, assembling a cast of well-known actors, newcomers, and amateurs. Wyler even filmed on location in Cincinnati, Ohio, to capture the authentic feel of an American town—an unusual decision at a time when most films were shot exclusively on Hollywood sound stages.

The Best Years of Our Lives centers on the return of three veterans who meet during their flight home to Boone City, Iowa. They immediately bond while discussing their nervous excitement about seeing their loved ones again. [Page 78]Over the next year, their lives continue to intersect even though they come from quite different social backgrounds.

Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) worked as a drugstore clerk before the war and married a gold-digging woman (Virginia Mayo) while on leave. Yet Fred's problems are larger than his doomed marriage. Returning home with high expectations of finding a better job, he soon realizes that his promotion to captain in the Air Force for his skill in sighting bombing targets was poor preparation for a white-collar job in the civilian economy. Fred finds himself back at the drugstore working at the perfume counter.

Al Stephenson (Fredrick March, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor) was a successful banker who returned home to a steady job and devoted family. Al's financial stability only partly blunts the emotional turmoil of returning home. He soon resorts to heavy drinking to ease his discomfort at intimate family gatherings and public functions celebrating him as a war hero. Beneath the good-humored banter of Al and his wife Millie (Myrna Loy) lurks the tension they feel in recognizing that the family has thrived despite Al's long absence. Al also feels out of place at work, where he struggles to interject a more caring attitude toward deserving veterans in his new job overseeing bank loans under the auspices of the GI Bill.

Al and Millie eventually find a common cause as they seek to end the love affair between the still-married Fred, who had developed a friendship with Al, and their daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright). The lovers meet when Fred winds up at the Stephenson household to sleep off the effects of a drinking binge with Al. A disheveled Fred awakens alone in the virginal Peggy's lace-covered bed, which signals the budding sexual tension between them. This scene, including the combatrelated nightmares that plague his sleep and his immediate impulse to check for his wallet when he awakens in a strange woman's room, also gives some clues about Fred's military past. The romance between Fred and Peggy signals the end of Fred and Al's veteran-based friendship. Al's paternal impulses revive and, in a final salute to their dying friendship, Fred complies with Al's request to end his relationship with Peggy.

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