Only Yesterday is a 1933 American pre-Code melodrama film,[1] directed by John M. Stahl, about a young woman who becomes pregnant by her boyfriend before he rushes off to fight in World War I.

According to the on-screen credit, the film's story line was "suggested" by the 1931 nonfiction bestseller Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen,[2] who had sold Universal the rights to his book.

The plot of the film appears to be based closely on Letter from an Unknown Woman (Briefe einer Unbekannten) by Stefan Zweig,[4] published first in 1922 and in English translation a decade later.

[5] According to the New York Times, some moviegoers contacted Zweig's publisher, Viking Press, noting similarities between the film and his book.

Reverting to flashback, Mary has a proper introduction to James at a formal party in the last year of World War I, as he is an officer stationed near her.

A decade later, Mary has now become a successful shop owner in the manner of her aunt, and Jimmy is now 10 years old and enrolled in military school.

The adults go out to a club for the New Year's Eve ball drop, but Mary promises to call her son after midnight to tell him if Dave has proposed and if she has accepted.

His wife confronts him about abandoning the party, and he tells her that he had been at the brink but has found something to live for, and acknowledges they have been out of love with each other a long time, giving her his blessing to go with the man she has been seeing on the side.

When he senses the child is in the right emotional moment, he reveals he is his father; a direct change from the original Zweig story.