We’ll Meet Again, Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When”-In Honor Of The 100^th Anniversary Of Armistice Day-Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews and Fredric March’s “The Best Years Of Our Lives” (1946)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Best Years Of Our Lives, starring Teresa Brewer, Dana Andrews, Frederic March, Myrna Loy 1946

I have noted in the headline to this piece that on November 11, 2018 we commemorated the 100^th anniversary of Armistice Day which ended the bloody slaughter of World War I, the so-called war to end all wars. And that is a fitting honor although the subject matter of the film under review, The Best Years Of Our Lives, is the ending of a subsequent war, the bloody slaughter of World War II. There was a real scramble among the older writers here to review this Academy Award-winning film since a number of us, including myself, had fathers who served in that war and who are themselves veterans of the bloody slaughter in Vietnam, again including myself and so were, are very familiar with the subject matter of this film, the return to civilian life after the displacement of lives caused by that service. I won the “lottery” site manager Greg Green used to determine who would write the review solely on the basis of having been the only one born that year of the presentation of the film, 1946.        

Despite my “victory,” a number of the other guys, Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, and Lance Lawrence come to mind, could have written this piece with the same starting paragraphs about our own problems with what we Vietnam-era vets call returning to the “real world.” In my own case I drifted for several years around the West Coast searching for some common-sense reasons to even go on. Suicide while not near the surface at the time was not far from being contemplated. One only has to look at the statistics to know that “option” was on the very top of the surface for a number of Vietnam vets and now we see that same thing, maybe worse by percentages, happening to the younger Iraq-Afghanistan War vets. Mainly though I couldn’t adjust to the idea of a nine to five existence that I had frankly dreamed about prior to my military service after having done, having seen being done by others, having been done by the government to the people of Vietnam who I had no quarrel with.   

Let me go by the numbers. I had ill-advisedly gotten married before I left for Vietnam under the then normal idea that I would have somebody to come back to. Bad mistake, very bad in the end since when I did get back I could not get behind the nine to five job, little white house and kids and dogs scenarios that was her dream (and as I have said already said mine previously). Moreover when I got back and was unresponsive to her needs, she took up with another guy, a guy who was smack daub into that dream of hers (and they are still married the last I heard). That marriage, the first of three, over I drifted from the East back out to California where in 1967, during the days of the Summer of Love, our old late comrade and fellow veteran Pete Markin brought us to see what was going on out there. I was thinking that a fresh start would do me good.

A false fresh start since I got heavily involved, along with Markin and Josh Breslin who writes for this publication as well, in drugs and other illegal stuff. After a while unlike Markin who headed to Mexico and a fateful bloody end and Josh who headed back East to school under the GI Bill I drifted to Southern California and the hobo camps along various rivers or under bridges with other veterans mostly, although not all from my generation but some from WWII and Korea as well. After a while though that got stale and I headed back East myself and from that point, more or less, I was in a more positive direction.  Although sometimes when the moon is full I wish I was back there among the righteous hobo veterans, had not taken a turn to the nine to five world.

In a way this film is good piece of what Sam Lowell has called on other occasions “a slice of life” hook that has saved him on more than one review when he was in pitch darkness for what Hollywood thought was going on. Unfortunately after a brief survey of fellow writers who are part of the fading baby-boomer generation that got its start in the immediate post-World War II period we would never had found out from our taciturn fathers what it was like to readjust to civilian life as they were too distance, too sullen, too driven to get ahead in the dog eat dog world to let on what they were feeling. Never spoke of what they went through in their war. Strangely, despite this insight on my part, a survey of my kids from those three failed marriages finds that I too never spoke of what I went through, was distance, sullen and so on. That was tough medicine to swallow after I thought about it some.

No question this film is moderately melodramatic and maybe today it would be impossible to find backing for its production for despite the old chestnut about a good film being a good film even fifty or seventy-five years later like this one or Casablanca. Probably impossible to get the “gee whizz” notion of community that glued towns together. But enough of that and let’s get to that summary that old Sam Lowell has always cried to the heavens about that every film reviewer owes his or her reader. Starting with the proposition that good story-lines come in threes.

Three is the number of ex-GIs who had recently been discharged from the military service after various stints in the European or Pacific theaters. We have rather than Tom, Dick and Harry-Al, Fred and Homer. A combination of names befitting the times if rather old-fashioned now. A combination of ranks too somewhat counter-intuitive with the banker and middle-class partisan Al having been an NCO while from the wrong side of the tracks Fred had been an officer and Homer nothing but a swabbie what in the Army would be called a grunt-low on the totem pole. And a combination of conditions from Al’s discontent to Fred’s thwarted ambitions to Homer’s war-related physical condition having lost his hands when his ship was sunk out in the China seas.      

What cinematically brings the threesome together is they are from the same city, Boone City, and don’t bother to try to locate that on any U.S. map and have “hitched an Air Force transport ride home. This homecoming must have been somewhat after the various celebrations commemorating victories in Europe and Asia since they all went to their respective homes without fanfare. I would note that whatever public celebrations of WWII happened none were forthcoming when I, or others from my home town, came home after Vietnam service. A different time and different response to what happened in the latter war.

Okay let’s set the stage. Homer had a longtime sweetheart and next-door neighbor who he did not until the very end of the film realize still loved him and will wind up marrying him despite his physical afflictions. There were probably a number of stories with that kind of ending although I know at least one from my own Vietnam experience, Bob Petty, who lost a leg at Danang and whose high school sweetheart just couldn’t deal with that trauma. I am sure there were more such cases. Al, middle-class banker Al, must have volunteered since he had a grown-up family and had been married for twenty years to a wife played by Myrna Loy who was troubled by Al’s behavior, his sullen discontents, coming back from the war. Al was also somewhat estranged from his two kids, the most important for the film being daughter Peggy, played by classic girl next door is Teresa Wright.

I have saved Fred for the last part since his fate intertwined with Al’s family. He, like me, and many others married on the wartime quick decision run, had known the spirited young women for only a short time before shipping out. He had been nothing but a soda jerk before his military service but he had a skill set for dropping bombs mainly in the right place and so thrived in that environment. Back home though he suffered from two serious problems, again which I have many of examples of, including my own. First, that on- the-fly wife turned out to a party girl, any man’s woman, any man with some dough and good looks, a tramp is what we would have called her back in the old neighborhood hang-outs. She married Fred for those precious allotment checks married men were entitled to. Secondly, after the war, after getting out of soda jerk routines he wanted more than to serve giddy teenagers hot fudge sundaes. But he couldn’t land anything that he could keep, that precision bombing skill set of no use in civilian life. No dough, no serious job tells it all. You know that that tramp was going to be heading to greener passages after, hell, maybe before, she divorced our Fred. Don’t worry though our Fred will have a soft landing since along the way Fred and that daughter of Al’s, Peggy fell in love and that divorce was a rather convenient device to bring them together. Yeah, Sam Lowell, was right this was a “slice of life” classic but also rang a bell for a latter- day veteran too.