The postwar anxiety* of the American pin-up: William Wyler’s the best years of our lives (1946)

Abstract

William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)1 reveals the vulnerable and anxious side of the victorious American hero pin-up,2 who had adorned war propaganda and war movie posters throughout the war, by presenting the difficult readjustment following demobilization of three all-American servicemen: Homer Parrish (played by Harold Russell), sailor; Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), Air Force captain in the European theater; and Al Stephenson (Frederic March), Army sergeant in the Pacific theater. Homer, the middle-class former high school football hero, becomes aggressive and withdrawn, believing that society as a whole and his family in particular can only view his handless self as a pitiable creature who is "helpless as a baby." 3 Fred, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks whose success in the Air Force had made him trust in the rhetoric of America as a land of opportunity for those who work hard, becomes a bitter and resentful outcast when postwar America will not give him a chance. Al, the successful banker who has it all-a perfect family4 and the comfort of money-comes home not wanting to be "rehabilitated" 5 into his prewar role, since his war experience has made him reevaluate his right as a loan officer "to play God with other people’s lives." 6 These readjustment stories intersect at Butch’s Place, a bar owned by Homer’s uncle (Hoagy Carmichael), where the three veterans go to escape the tension that their "anger, bitterness, violence, and alcoholism" 7 bring to their respective domestic spheres, as well as in the relationship of Al’s daughter, Peggy (Theresa Wright), with the already married Fred.