AND THE SPLENDID BOHO GOES TO! - HAROLD RUSSELL FOR "THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES"- (1946) - THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT A NEW SERIES WHERE THEY HONOR A NOTED CHARACTER ACTOR WHOSE CONTRIBUTION TO A FILM ENHANCED IT'S GREATNESS!

William Wyler’s intimate epic, from 1946—about three soldiers returning from the Second World War to their families in a small Midwestern city—profoundly and sensitively balances the private demons of scarred veterans and the press of public policies that leave their mark on daily life. Al Stevenson (Fredric March), a prosperous banker and paterfamilias, resumes his warm domestic life with a jaundiced view of country-club presumptions and a hint of a drinking problem. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a high-ranking bombardier with recurring nightmares, returns to straitened circumstances and a troubled marriage—and falls in love with Al’s grown daughter, Peggy (Teresa Wright). The third veteran, Homer Parrish, is played by a non-actor, Harold Russell, who, like the character, lost his hands in military service. Though adept with his prostheses, Homer, feeling diminished and dependent, breaks his engagement to the girl next door (Cathy O’Donnell). From lending practices to postwar Red-baiting, liberalized education to the fear of nuclear war, Wyler, working with a script by Robert E. Sherwood, captures the sense of history being written on the fly, of momentous shifts in mind-sets and expectations. In the movie’s nearly three-hour span, the chrysalis of an old world seems to crack open and a fragile new one begins to emerge; a deep and tender romanticism arises from the exposed vulnerabilities.- Richard  Brody