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Hi I'm Ben Mankiewicz.
We're looking at how Hollywood portrays people living with a disability,
a theme we're focusing on every Tuesday this month.
Joining me once again is my guest, Lawrence Carter-Long.
He's a film consultant for the organization Inclusion In The Arts.
He's also the man who programmed our line-up of films,
Lawrence thanks for being here.
Lawrence Carter-Long > Certainly, my pleasure.
Ben > Our next film from 1946 is THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
and this is really the definition of a film about men returning from war.
I don't think... We certainly hadn't done it as well
before and I don't think we've done it as well in the sixty-six years since.
Lawrence > Yeah, Best Years of Our Lives is seminal in so many ways.
It shows the effect of war, returning home from war on families,
on the veterans themselves...
whether one might have a psychological adjustment,
I think this whole film is about readjustment, right?
How do you adjust to not being a soldier?
How do you adjust to having your returned soldier home
for the family members?
How do you adjust to not having your hands?
All of those questions are central to the film
and they get played out in the course of the story that we're being told.
Ben > It's the story of three soldiers coming home,
Fredric March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell.
Ah, we'll work backwards a little bit...
Harold Russell, the most intriguing bit of casting because he wasn't an actor.
Lawrence > He wasn't an actor.
He was found, discovered,
almost like Lana Turner at the soda fountain there
at a Rehab Hospital in a training film
for rehabilitation, vocational rehabilitation for returning soldiers.
Wyler saw him and said "Let's make some changes"
to what they had planned to do with the script
to incorporate his character
and the specific physicality that he had.
Ben > Yeah, William Wyler the director.
He saw that training film that Harold Russell was in.
He'd lost both his hands in an explosion.
He was training paratroopers in the States
and he thought the was compelling in that film and cast him in this.
Russell then delivered a remarkable performance.
Wyler took him out of acting classes because that's exactly the thing
he didn't want...
His performances were authentic
and he didn't want him to seem like a trained actor.
Lawrence > That's right. There was a naturalism
that he brought to the role and, I think, an unassuming quality ...
because of the prosthetics that he had.
You didn't want it to be too polished.
You didn't want it to be very put on.
It needed to be unassuming and I think that suited the character and the role.
Ben > Dana Andrews problems are more psychological
and the film really investigates that in a way that I found, in hindsight,
quite surprising for a movie in 1946.
Lawrence > What we used to call "shell shock" right?
Now we might call it PTSD.
Something common for every soldier
returning from every different type of war.
We see that readjustment,
I think, particularly painful for him, particularly difficult for him.
Where does he turn, you know?
I think that was an era when men did not go to see psychiatrists,
they didn't see psychologists,
they didn't really open up in the way that we are encouraged to today.
Ben > Forget opening up to a psychologist or psychiatrist,
they didn't really talk to anybody. Lawrence > Right.
And so, if they talked to anybody they might have talked with another veteran.
Another soldier might've understood what they were going through,
but there really wasn't the space to talk with your family or your friends
about it who hadn't been there.
Ben > We also see in Fredric March...
He, I guess, is the 'best' adjusted of the three,
but it is still incredibly difficult reconecting
with his family and with a grown daughter.
Lawrence > You see starting to drink.
You see him starting to be angry.
Umm, he sort of makes a decision, "Wait a minute, I can't do this.
Let's go out on the town.
Let's celebrate that we're here."
You see sort of a shift in him occur that takes him
in a different direction throughout the film
but you still see the struggle --
particularly when it comes to employment.
Ben > All right... Thanks very much, Lawrence.
Let's take a look at the film,
it's the winner of seven Academy awards.
Also won a special honorary Oscar for Harold Russell.
From 1946, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.
Ben > Hey, everybody I'm back with the man
who chose this film as part of our series THE PROJECTED IMAGE:
A HISTORY OF DISABILITY IN FILM, Lawrence Carter-Long.
He's the film consultant for the organization Inclusion
in the Arts and the Public Affairs Specialist
for the National Council on Disability.
Lawrence, welcome back. Lawrence > A pleasure.
Ben > Still a very powerful film even here in 2012, isn't it?
Lawrence > Oh, it still resonates today.
I think the themes and the situations that soldiers encounter are the same,
very much today.
You know, the injuries might change
but I think the impact, the readjustment,
is something that we cycle through time and time again.
Ben > A few of the movies that we're showing this month
about people with disabilities have had very clichéd,
uplifting endings
where you can sort of overcome your disability with a good theme song!
Lawrence > Yes, a good theme song, a magic wand
and possibly some magic shoes...
but always the 'right' attitude.
Ben> Right! Here we see an ending that is very satisfying,
but that feels grounded and authentic.
Lawrence > Well, it feels that they are on their way to readjustment.
That Homer Parish has discovered that he can have love
and that he can move on.
Everybody else seems to have found a way to find a way to find work and and
to reintegrate back into the workforce where they left.
So we see, I think, a brightness on the horizon.
Certainly hope on the horizon but not in an unrealistic way.
Ben > Right. And it's not completely spelled out for us.
You said it better than I did.
Naturally you sense that there's a path to happiness here that's gonna
have some sadness along the way as...
Lawrence > As all lives do.
But it factors in the reality and the lives that they were living.
Ben > This movie, Sam Goldwyn was worried about the length of this movie,
you know when they tested it for audiences they were anticipating
having to cut maybe an hour out of it and audiences were just...
they couldn't take their eyes off the screen,
so essentially with very few cuts the movie stayed as it was
but yet we saw...
how Dana Andrews goes back
to work despite the psychological trauma that he's endured.
Fredric March sort of goes back to work at the beginning
but even though Wyler had seen Russell in a training film, doing work,
we don't actually see Russell return to the workplace.
We don't see Homer return.
Lawrence > That's one of the ironies, I think, of this film.
He was in a training film for returning veterans.
He was saying...
the idea was that you were supposed to go back to work.
That is expected of you.
That could've easily been incorporated into this film and into the character
but for some reason
I guess people felt that it was enough to have to deal with the love interest.
And that going back to work would've been too much.
Ben > And maybe because of the length and it is sort of inferred,
I don't get ... we certainly don't get the impression he's doing nothing,
but it is interesting that we don't actually see him...
Lawrence > But he's in the garage,
he's shooting the gun, who knows how he's spending his time
when he's not with his fiance.
Umm, and that's something that's ... again,
though society had gotten there.
It was a training film that he was in where he was actually
discovered the plot hadn't gotten there,
this movie hadn't gotten to the point
where it could think about him having a job yet.
Ben > Was THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES ahead of its time?
Lawrence > I think it was of its time.
I think it was made at a point in time where these questions were being asked.
Umm, where people were readjusting,
and it was reflective of the times that people were living.
I think by putting a real, live disabled person there
on screen as an actor it was ahead of its time.
It understood that you couldn't do that with special effects.
It wanted that authenticity that only Russell
could bring to the role and that made all the difference.
Ben > Lawrence, thanks very much.
When we return Lawrence and I will bring you another film
about soldiers coming home from war living with a disability.