Film That Was Feared ‘Terribly Out of Date’ in 1940s Resonates Today

‘Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation’By Alison MacorThe University of Texas Press, 240 pagesWilliam Wyler, the Academy Award-winning director of “Mrs. Miniver” (1942), set during the Blitz, was coming home from the war having filmed two documentaries, “The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress” (1944) and “Thunderbolt” (1947), about a fighter-bomber squadron. In the “waist of the bomber,” as Alison Macor puts it in her new book, Wyler “lay down on his stomach, and positioned an Eyemo camera above the lower turret, recording the devastation in Corsica and along the coastline toward Grosetto.” He would stay in that posture for the entire flight, the “loud engine noise and high-pitched screeching of the wind echoing in his ears.”After landing, the director realized he had lost his hearing. How could he resume his Hollywood career? Eventually, some of his hearing would return as Wyler rigged up a sort of on-set hearing aid. The director then took a huge risk, deciding to do “The Best Years of Our Lives,” a film about three returning veterans: Homer Parish (Harold Russell), who has lost both of his arms; Al Stephenson (Fredric March), a banker resuming his employment and helping his fellow veterans; and Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a bombardier who cannot find employment except at his old job as soda jerk.Wyler feared that Americans would want to forget about the war and would not have the patience to sit through a film almost three hours long, adapted by playwright Robert Sherwood from MacKinlay Kantor’s verse novel. The director had other problems: Except for an appearance in a government documentary, Russell, who lost his arms in a military training accident, had never acted and was anxious about performing in the company of the acclaimed Fredric March and Dana Andrews, then at the height of his popularity after the success of “Laura” (1944).Wyler had a history of fights with his employer, Samuel Goldwyn, but on this project the studio mogul backed his director, sensing that this film might be the studio’s crowning achievement. Often mocked for Goldwynisms (“include me out”), the producer becomes one of the heroes in Ms. Macor’s book, refusing to accept Sherwood’s verdict that by 1946 “this subject will be terribly out of date.”The director had a habit of punishing actors in multiple takes, such as making Andrews, who had come to the set with a hangover, repeat a scene in which he bangs his head as he gets in a car. Teresa Wright, playing Al’s daughter Peggy, winced at the cruelty.Yet Wyler showed compassion, telling Andrews they would shoot around him if he could not come to the set sober. The actor never forgot how gently the director offered that suggestion, and he made a point of never again letting down the cast and crew. As is Ms. Macor’s book, the film is a group biography: Everyone involved with the production believed in their mission not to fudge the trauma of returning home to a society unable to understand what these men went through. Andrews drew on many of his encounters with servicemen as he befriended Russell and made him part of an ensemble of actors.Who can forget the look of wonder and relief on the face of Al’s wife Milly (Myrna Loy) when he comes home; the crass reaction of Marie Derry (Virginia Mayo), who has cheated on Fred and wants him only for his uniform; the poignant empathy of Homer’s sweetheart Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell), who does not flinch when Homer shows her how he manages with his prosthetics. “The Best Years of Our Lives” was both a popular and critical hit, with Wyler, March, and Russell winning Academy Awards. It remains the best film ever made about World War II’s aftermath on the home front. Yet as Ms. Macor shows, there was nothing inevitable about the success of a film that has continued to be relevant and successful.“Making The Best Years of Our Lives” begins with an epigraph that can also serve as a conclusion. It is delivered by William Wyler, who wanted the war but also his career to mean something: “Every age, every generation, every decade, every year, has some battle of mind, of emotion — some social cause that favors the time. Why does the screen seldom find these conflicts?”Mr. Rollyson is editor of the “Hollywood Legends” series, University Press of Mississippi, and the author of “Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews”

Film That Was Feared ‘Terribly Out of Date’ in 1940s Resonates Today

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