The Best Years of Our Lives

The Best Years of Our Lives
Released Date: June 17, 1947
Director: William Wyler
Actors: Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Cathy O'Donnell, Hoagy Carmichael, and Harold Russell

     I don't usually cry during movies, but this one got me. It is so inspiring. The director wanted a real war hero in this movie and he got Harold Russell. Mr. Russell lost both hands during WWII. He was truly amazing. He won Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1947 and well deserved it. He also won a special award that same year for his bravery. It was called the Honorary Award, he won it for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives. This movie actually won 8 Oscars. Best Picture, Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Harold Russell), Best Director (William Wyler), and more. This movie is truly great. I would recommend it to anyone, and especially to Americans. This movie also holds great actors. Myrna Loy is one of my personal favorites. She was a great actress. And Teresa Wright, who is very underrated. But she was in some of the best movies I have ever seen. Such as; The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, The Pride of the Yankees, Shadow of a Doubt and this one. These were in her first six movies she ever made. What are the chances of being in five hits in your first six movies? She was also in a movie with Gary Cooper called Casanova Brown which was the movie she made before The Best Years of Our Lives. I hope everyone watches this, I highly recommend it.

     Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) are returning home after serving in WWII. Al is returning home to his wife, Milly (Myrna Loy) and two children, Peggy (Teresa Wright) and Rob (Michael Hall). Fred is returning to his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo). And Homer is returning to his girlfriend, Wilma Cameron (Cathy O'Donnell). The three men share a private plane ride home. And become great friends in that short period of time. Having the same town they lived in common. They even share a taxi home. Dropping off Homer first, who has a hard time hugging Wilma. Then Al, who gets a warm welcome from his wife and two children. And Fred, who goes home to his mother and father, who are happy to have him back but are scared to tell him about his wife who left the nest. The three men meet up later at a bar that Homer's uncle (Hoagy Carmichael) owns. Can Al return back to normal life? Can Fred rekindle his relationship with Marie? And will Homer marry his high school sweetheart? Find out by watching. You can catch it on TCM, or buy the DVD, which is well worth it in my opinion.

 

Hitler's Blacklist

Adolf Hitler had a blacklist during WWII of actors and actresses that made movies or statements against his power. Movies that I have seen that would make a Hitler Blacklist are:

"Once Upon A Honeymoon" with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers.

"The Mortal Storm" with James Stewart, Margaret Sullivan and Robert Young.

"The Best Years of Our Lives" with Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, and Teresa Wright.

"Lifeboat" with Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Hume Cronyn and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

These movies made Hitler mad and got a lot of these well loved actors on the Blacklist of the worlds most hated criminal. James Stewart was always a war hero, but to think of such a list and to think that he was on it, makes him so much more of a hero. Both on screen and off. <3

Casanova Brown

Casanova Brown 
Released Date: December 26, 1944
Director: Sam Wood
Actors: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Anita Louise, Edmund Breon, Patricia Collinge, Jill Esmond, and Mary Treen

     In Shadow Of A Doubt and also this movie, Casanova Brown, we see again, Teresa Wright and Patricia Collinge as mother and daughter. I have always felt that they played the parts perfectly. Patricia Collinge is a great actress, but you cannot hide true feelings, and she cared for Teresa Wright like a daughter. Wright said that she loved working with Patricia as well, and it was easy to act related. They also play relatives in The Little Foxes. However in that movie, they play niece and aunt. This movie is one of Teresa Wright's first movies, and like I have said in past blogs, she made many great movies for her firsts. This one is a great movie.

     We follow Casanova (Cass) Brown (Gary Cooper) as he is about to get re-married. But during the preparations of this next wedding, he discovers that his first wife, Isabel Drury (Teresa Wright) has just had their child. Cass worries that Isabel is going to put their baby up for adoption. So instead of allowing it to happen, or just forgetting his first wife, Cass kidnaps his baby to keep Isabel from putting their child up. Isabel's parents, Mr. Drury (Edmund Breon) and Mrs. Drury (Patricia Collinge) are in search for Cass and their grandchild. But they soon discover that even though Cass and Isabel are divorced, they are still madly in love. So why did they break up? You can't fight love, so why did they try? And do they end up back together, or does Cass re-marry? Find out by watching this movie, which if you have NetFlix, you can watch this instantly. 

The Pride Of The Yankees

The Pride Of The Yankees
Released Date: March 5, 1943
Director: Sam Wood
Actors: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea, Elsa Janssen, Ludwig Stossel, Virginia Gilmore, and Bill Dickey

     "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth!" Lou Gehrig said these words on Tuesday, July 4th, 1939 to millions of fans. It was to be his retirement speech, his farewell. He was loved by so many young boys across America. As a matter of fact, as seen in this film, a young boy at the beginning of Lou Gehrig's career was visited by this great athlete at the hospital. The boy had been severely injured and looked as if he may not walk again. The boy asked Lou Gehrig to hit three home runs in the game that night, Gehrig said he would try awful hard but that it was difficult, he could promise one, but three? He may have been able to hit a lot of home runs, and usually was able to hit at least one a game. Lou Gehrig asked the boy to do him a favor as well, to one day walk out of the hospital. Gehrig hit the three home runs, and boy did end up walking again. For the young boy was at the farewell speech that day and threw down his crutches to show Lou Gehrig that he was able to walk on his own two feet without any problems.

     Henry Louis 'Lou' Gehrig (Gary Cooper) was born a baseball player. Playing all through his childhood, his play buddies even called him "Iron Horse." This movie is based on the amazing Yankees baseball player. We see him begin his career, we watch his amazing mother as she supported his career choice. We watch as Lou Gehrig took a wife, Eleanor Twitchell Gehrig (Teresa Wright), and we watch as she struggles with knowing her husbands fate and trying to hide that fact. Babe Ruth, actually played Babe Ruth in this movie. Lou Gehrig was actually left handed and played that way, and Gary Cooper, who was not a fan of baseball, therefor did not really know how to play, was able to play left handed, even though he was right. This movie is very sweet. I cried while watching this movie, and felt that Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright and the rest of the cast and crew did an amazing job.

     Gary Cooper is actually in the baseball hall of fame along with Teresa Wright. The year Teresa Wright died (2005) she was honored at a baseball game when they showed all the players that died that year. She did a great performance.

Mrs. Miniver

Mrs. Miniver
Release Date: December 1, 1942
Director: William Wyler
Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers, Henry Wilcoxon, and Richard Ney

     Greer Garson, and her costar who played her son, Richard Ney, ended up getting married after the movie was made. They did not marry for long, but they fell in love while making this, even though Greer Garson was old enough to drink (even now) when he was born.

     This movie follows the Miniver family. They live in England during WWII. They go to church every sunday, try their best to survive against bombs and being caught under the light of search officers in the air. The eldest son of the family joins the Air Force, and also falls in love with a very rich woman's granddaughter. The rich woman is the winner every year for a rose competition. Mrs. Miniver has a rose that is named after her from a man that works at the train station. This movie is well loved by many and also had five huge nominations. 

Teresa Wright

Teresa Wright
Actress, Theater and Movie
Born: As Muriel Teresa Wright, October 27, 1918 in Manhattan, New York City, New York.
Died: March 6, 2005 in New Haven, Connecticut

     Known for such movies as The Little Foxes, her first movie, along side Bette Davis and Patricia Collinge. Mrs. Miniver, which was a huge success. The Pride of The Yankees, this film is about the legend Lou Gehrig. And then Shadow Of A Doubt. Her Alfred  Hitchcock movie which was another film she did with Patricia Collinge. She was also in The Best Years of Our Lives, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Murder, She Wrote, and her last film, The Rainmaker.

     Her Parents had divorced when she was very young. Teresa ended up moving from one family member to another between New York and New Jersey. She, at one point, lived with an uncle who was a stage actor. Teresa ended up doing theater in high school. After High School, Ms. Wright became an apprentice at Wharf Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers of 1937 and 1938. After that, Teresa moved to New York to start stage acting. That is when she then went on to the movies.

     Alfred Hitchcock had said he loved working with the young impressionable actress. She was very easy to work with and was always very happy on set. Teresa Wright loved working with Hitchcock as well, but at the time she was working with the director, she became a wife. She said that right before the camera would start rolling, she remembered he would make a side comment, usually in a whisper about married women and wise cracks about her husband. She would just smile and go on with the movie.

     The movie The Pride Of The Yankees gave her a huge applause, for when the Yankees called out all of the former Yankees that had passed, her name was called after she died in 2005.

     I decided to do a blog on Teresa Wright because she is one of my favorites from the golden years of the movies. It was said that she was very sweet, kind, funny and easy to work with. Her movies are touching and she is very real. She had made a huge list of things that she would not do when she began her movie career. She was very modest. She had a very pure beauty and made lots of fans and friends during her long career. I hope that you will look her up and rent some of her great movies. The first movies she made are her best, to me, and I love each one. 

Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt
Released Date: January 15, 1943
Directed by Alfred Hitchock
Actors include Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, and Hume Cronyn

Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock said, was his favorite movie that he made. I had always said that this was my favorite as well. The movie is not scary but more suspenseful and there is also a lot of humor in it too. This movie is not as popular as other movies Hitch has made, but it should definitely be. His daughter, Patricia Hitchcock said that the reason it was his favorite, was because it always excited him to bring menace into a small town.

Teresa Wright one time said that she went to go visit Hitchcock at his office in California because he wanted her in his new movie. So she went to visit him and he told her a story, this story. When the movie finally came out in theaters which was August 16, 1943, she said she had seen this movie before. Not just because she was in the movie but because Hitchcock was a great story teller and told her the entire movie from beginning to end in his office.

The movie is about a man who is running away from something wrong, and ends up in his sister's house, in a small town where everyone knows each other. This town is Santa Rosa, California. Everyone seems to have smile on their face, and they also seem to be living in a bubble. And have no idea that outside of the bubble is a crazy, insane world that is scary and lonely. Till he comes in and shows his sweet niece that the world is not what she thinks it is. It's, to him, a fowl sty. His name is Uncle Charlie, and the young girl, the niece, was named after him. Her name is Charlotte but everyone calls her Charlie too. She has an ordinary life, with ordinary, sweet filled dreams. And her uncle will bring her nightmares. After a whole list of crazy events, the uncle will soon realize that he can't hurt this family, although his, he can't change the fact that they are happy and will continue to be. He never meant to upset his sister, or even his niece, but the fact of the matter is, he did upset his niece.

One of my favorite lines from any movie is in this. There is a scene where the mother of the movie is on the phone, and the mother is also screaming at the top of her lungs because she obviously has no idea that even with a whisper you can be heard on the telephone. Well then Teresa Wright's little sister in the movie said this: "mama, you don't have to shout. Really papa, you'd think mama had never seen a phone. She makes no allowance for science. She thinks she has to cover the distance by sheer lung power." :)

 

Really Mama :)

Needless to say, it's a scary world. It has a lot of great actors in the movie. I don't want to ruin the end, so I won't. But the movie is funny and suspenseful, and everyone is a star in the movie. Even Alfred Hitchcock, which can be seen in the beginning of the movie playing cards on the train. :) He has the winning hand and looks "well you don't look good either" on his face because of it.

I hope you see this movie now, and enjoy it too.