The Best Years of Our Lives Inspired by Time Article

"According to the story, Kantor had driven up to a Tennessee mountain retreat to work on the screenplay.  He took his typewriter and a case of bourbon.  He emerged some months later with empty bottles and 'Glory for Me', written in the form of a narrative poem..." (http://www.amazon.com/Glory-For-Me-MacKinlay-Kantor/dp/B0006AQQP2)

Time magazine came out with an article on August 7, 1944 called "The Way Home", based on a trainload of Marines on furlough in New York.  Samuel Goldwyn, knowing that the world was in the closing stages of the Second World War, knew that there would be millions of Americans returning home from the battlefront in the next year.  They would have to put on a suit and tie, or a pair of overalls, after years of wearing army fatigues, no easy adjustment.

Goldwyn commissioned journalist MacKinlay Kantor, who had served with the 305th Bomb Group in England, to write a work of prose about American veterans returning from the front and adjusting to civilian life.  "According to the story, Kantor had driven up to a Tennessee mountain retreat to work on the screenplay.  He took his typewriter and a case of bourbon.  He emerged some months later with empty bottles and 'Glory for Me', written in the form of a narrative poem..."

The result was 434 pages of blank verse.  Goldwyn was disappointed; he wanted a screenplay.  He hired Robert Sherwood to reshape the narrative poem for the screen.  "The Best Years of Our Lives", referring to the fact that wartime in many ways was easier than peacetime for these veterans, was the result.  The movie starred Frederic March as an alcoholic army sergeant, Harold Russell as a sailor and Dana Andres as a bombardier.  All three veterans were "thrust into domestic tragedies and uncertainties" once they returned to their hometown, which resembled Cincinnati, Ohio.  

"The Best Years of Our Lives" won seven Oscars, including Best Picture of 1946.  The film grossed over 23 1/2 million dollars at the box office.  The theme obviously struck a chord with the American public.

On the set of "The Best Years of Our Lives" courtesy http://hugofriedhofer.runmovies.eu/?p=461.