Nows and Forevers

“The Best Years of Our Lives,” a movie that deserves every bit of its fame, an unflinching story about what happened after WWII (and WHILE it was happening) and one that highlights the plight of people with the emotional and physical wounds of war. It’s a story for all time because these challenges still occur, every day, even after the grand scale of the challenges for the service members after 1945.

“Best Years” hit hard, knowing what the war and its aftermath did to my grandparents’ generation.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it mirrored own family with my paternal grandfather, whose typed memoirs of his own experience from D-Day to the Bulge (and the many deaths he witnessed he could never shake) shocked us when we found it nearly 80 years later and 42 years after he died.

He was the most stoic and reserved man, a trained and decorated soldier and officer, who saw combat from D-Day to the Bulge. He returned after the war to social work and his final rotation was at a hospital, working with wounded soldiers. We know now how much emotional weight he carried til the day he died. And “Best Years” helps understand it more.

Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Russell here in this clip – Russell, who had lost his hands in WWII and not a professional actor – but a cast at its very best: Myrna Loy, Frederic March, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews and a story by Mackinlay Kantor and a screenplay by Robert Sherwood, direction by William Wyler. An all-star team.

Best picture, best actor for March,best supporting actor – Russell is the only actor to win twice for the same role (it’s an interesting story) – and it packs a punch all these years later. Hard not to mist a bit knowing that this was real life, not just a movie.