The Best Years of Our Lives (also known as Glory for Me and Home Again) is a 1946 American drama film directed by William Wyler and starring Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo and Harold Russell.

The film is about three United States servicemen re-adjusting to societal changes and civilian life after coming home from World War II.

[6][7] Three returning World War II veterans meet on a flight to their midwestern hometown of Boone City: USAAF bombardier captain Fred Derry, U.S. Navy petty officer Homer Parrish, and U.S. Army sergeant Al Stephenson.

Marie has since been working in a nightclub to fill her time (and her nightlife) in spite of Fred's generous combat pay as an Air Force officer.

Al Stephenson was an executive at a bank and lived in a luxury apartment with his wife, Milly, and their teenage children, Peggy and Rob.

Concerned that Wilma does not fully understand the difficulties of being married to him with his disabilities, Homer demonstrates to her how she will need to assist him at bedtime when he removes his harness with his prosthetic hands, leaving him helpless.

Widely respected by the bank's senior management for his past business acumen, Al is criticized after approving an unsecured loan to a farmer and fellow veteran who wants to buy forty acres, but has no collateral.

With inhibitions lowered by excessive drinking, Al gives a speech at a work banquet that satirizes requiring a veteran to provide collateral before risking his life to take a hill in battle.

He is roused out of his stressful memories by a work crew foreman, who tells him the planes are being demolished for use in the growing prefab housing industry.

Sean Penn's father, Leo, played the uncredited part of the soldier working as a scheduling clerk in the Air Transport Command Office at the beginning of the film.

[8] Samuel Goldwyn was inspired to produce a film about veterans after reading an August 7, 1944, article in Time about the difficulties experienced by men returning to civilian life.

Wyler changed the original casting, which had featured a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and sought out Harold Russell, a non-actor, to take on the exacting role of Homer Parrish.

[13] For The Best Years of Our Lives, he asked the principal actors to purchase their own clothes, in order to connect with daily life and produce an authentic feeling.

[13] Recounting the interrelated story of three veterans right after the end of World War II, The Best Years of Our Lives began filming just over seven months after the war's end, starting on April 15, 1946, at a variety of locations, including the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, Ontario International Airport in Ontario, California, Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, and the Samuel Goldwyn/Warner Hollywood Studios.

He wrote, It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment, but as food for quiet and humanizing thought...

[17]French film critic André Bazin used examples of Toland's and Wyler's deep-focus visual style to illuminate his theory of realism in film—going into detail about the scene in which Fred uses the phone booth in the far background while Homer and Butch play piano in the foreground.

Bazin explains how deep focus functions in this scene: The action in the foreground is secondary, although interesting and peculiar enough to require our keen attention since it occupies a privileged place and surface on the screen.

Paradoxically, the true action, the one that constitutes at this precise moment a turning point in the story, develops almost clandestinely in a tiny rectangle at the back of the room—in the left corner of the screen....

[19] Several decades later, film critic David Thomson offered tempered praise: "I would concede that Best Years is decent and humane... acutely observed, despite being so meticulous a package.

It opened at the Woods Theatre in Chicago on December 18 before a roadshow theatrical release in Boston and Los Angeles, starting on the evening of Christmas Day.

Among films released before 1950, only Gone With the Wind, The Bells of St. Mary's, The Big Parade and four Disney titles have done more total business, in part due to later re-releases.