The Best Years of Our Lives : I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

A sequel????????


I never thought about it until just recently, but something filmed in say 56 or 57

Did Fred do well in the scrap & construction business, What was his married likfe like

Did Homer adjust even better, how did he handle married life and kids

Did the Sarge become the president of the bank

I think that would have been an interesting add on to this great movie






You don't have to stand tall, but you do have to stand up!

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

I haven't visited this board recently (though it remains in my Favorites). Your suggestion is actually a *very* good one. I'd pay to be first in line if the film were made with absolute fidelity to the original.

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

I'd rather see a sequel set in the mid-1960s, in which Homer and Fred, having
saved the world for democracy once and for all, now have to deal with teenage sons
who face getting drafted and sent to Vietnam.

One of the most depressing (non-combat) WWII movies I can think of is Tender Comrade (1943). Not just because Ginger Rogers loses her husband at the end, but because I can't help thinking that her newborn son is likely to experience a similar fate in Vietnam when he grows up, and then she has to mourn
all over again.


I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!

Hewwo.

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

Kind of a late to do a sequel don't you think?

The only way that works is if they do a remake of this and then a sequel that you wished for.

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

It could have been done then, not now

ALL the main actors were alive in the 50s

it was well received throughout, won the academy award for best pic.


You don't have to stand tall, but you do have to stand up!

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

It might have been fun to see how these characters did, but there is a VERY good chance that the sequel wouldn't have been nearly as great as the original. Rarely are sequels as good as the original. A lot of folks whine about remakes. Frankly, I think that there are many decent remakes, but few good sequels.

~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen =

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

A prequel depicting their time during the war might've been interesting

Re: I don't usually go down this route, BUT——————

On this subject, in 1956 20th Century-Fox filmed The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which dealt with the life of a WWII veteran now part of the faceless corporate world, facing both his past actions during the war and his uncertain future. Years later, star Gregor Peck expressed disappointment with the way the film turned out, saying he had hoped it would be a sort of unofficial sequel to The Best Years of Our Lives -- different characters, of course, but exploring the lives of veterans a decade away from the war, how the hopes and expectations of 1946 had actually played out by 1956. While there are hints of this in the film it could have made much stronger links to the themes (if not the specifics) of Best Years than it did. The presence of Fredric March in both films is an interesting coincidence but no more. (The 1955 musical It's Always Fair Weather revolved around the theme of three war buddies who meet ten years to the day after they muster out and see how their expected lives failed to develop, but that was of course done more for comedic effect, though there was a melancholy underlying truth to the plot.)

It would have been nice if someone would have thought of making a sequel or follow-up to TBYOOL around 1956; most of the same cast could have been assembled (although some, like Fred's parents, Roman Bohnen and Gladys George, had passed away in the interim) and a storyline of the three vets been devised. I've often wondered what such a story might have shown. Fred a well-to-do builder but bedeviled when his ex-wife Marie drifts back into town, a broken floozie determined to make his life miserable? Al higher up in the bank but struggling with an increasingly complex and impersonal financial industry as he's alienated from his children and distant from Millie? Homer married but unable to support his wife and children as he'd like? Unfortunately any such sequel would probably have become more soap opera than an exploration of the shared experiences of millions of Americans. But it still might have been entertaining, although Sam Goldwyn was almost out of business by then and might not have been able to make it; another studio would have had to obtain the rights to the original novel.

Regarding all this, a line of Peck's in Gray Flannel Suit haunts me. When his wife tells him that ever since the war he seems to have lost his guts, he interrupts her angrily: "Will you stop harping about the war? It's been over for ten years. It's gone and forgotten." Never gone nor forgotten, but those ten years are now more than seventy, and most of the men who fought and won that war are gone, as are even many of their children. That alone is a sobering thought.
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