The American Spectator

And Andrews? Well, everything bad turns good. He gets fired from the drugstore, which is the final straw for his wife who divorces him. On his way out of town Andrews comes across a graveyard of fighter planes and bombers. Sitting in the clear nose of one of the airplanes, Andrews lets his mind drift back to the war. He’s still lost in thought when a man comes yelling for him to get out. Turns out it’s a vet, and, lo!, he’s got a job for Andrews — turning the metal from old fighter planes into houses, the ultimate sign of rebuilding and redemption. He sticks around Boone City, and reunites with March’s daughter Peggy. Since she never made good on her threat to break up the marriage, their relationship remains somehow pure in the viewer’s eyes.

It’s true that the movie ends in typical Hollywood fashion, with everyone content in life and love, and no loose ends. We know now the country was on the brink of massive economic expansion, “All I want is a good job, my own future, and a little house for me and my wife, and I’ll be rehabilitated, all right,” Andrews tells March at the beginning of the film, and by the end you know he’s going to get it. If this is Warshow’s naive Americanism, sign me right up.

“That’s the problem today,” the fascist sympathizer shouts during his encounter with the two vets. “Every soda jerk in this country has got the idea that he’s somebody.”

As the Greatest Generation gets their due over the next few weeks, The Best Years of Our Lives helps remind us that the difficulties they faced did not end at the water’s edge. The story of how they put it behind them and moved on to even greater things is as much their legacy as the long, deadly charges across the frozen hills of Europe and the island-to-island fighting under the scorching South Pacific sun.