Trivia / The Best Years of Our Lives

• Actor-Shared Background: Fredric March was a banker before he became an actor, just like his character Al.
• Billing Displacement: Myrna Loy gets top billing, as she was the biggest star in the cast. However, Milly is entirely a supporting (though still important) character.
• The Cast Showoff: Homer's uncle Butch is played by musician and songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, who gets several opportunities to display his piano-playing chops. There's even a bit where Butch is asked to play "Lazy River"... a song which was composed by Carmichael.
• Creator Backlash: Although Hugo Friedhofer's score won an Oscar, William Wyler never cared for it.
• Dawson Casting: Dana Andrews was 36 when he made this film, clearly playing someone in his mid-twenties.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Harold Russell, a drill sergeant during the war, lost his hands in a training accident involving a defective bomb. He did such a good job in the role of Homer Parrish he won an Oscar (plus a second honorary Oscar), despite never having acted before.
• Method Acting: The actors were encouraged to buy their own clothes to better connect with everyday life, and produce an authentic feeling.
• One-Hit Wonder: Harold Russell's film debut. It netted him two Oscars, the only time two Oscars have ever been awarded for the same performance.^note The Academy's Board of Governors wanted to recognize Russell's performance in the film, but thought that as a non-professional in his first role he would never win a competitive award. So they gave him an honorary Oscar for "bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans." Then he won Best Supporting Actor. It would be 34 years before he had another film credit; his two remaining credits were very minor roles in since-forgotten movies.
• Real-Life Relative: William Wyler's daughters played customers in scenes at the drug store.
• Reality Subtext:
  • The man Fred punches out at the drugstore is based on a man William Wyler had an argument with when he came home from the war.
  • Most of the crew were war veterans, and this was intentional to give the film a documentary style realism.
• Referenced by...:
  • Language Arts, Charles watches The Best Years of Our Lives with Emmy as part of a Teresa Wright film festival.
  • Conway's Game of Life has a methuselah named "Homer", in reference to a previously-discovered methuselah named "Wilma".
• Throw It In!: Harold Russell, a real life veteran who never acted before, flubbed his lines during his character's wedding scene. William Wyler left it in, considering it natural.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Leo Francis Penn (father of Sean Penn) plays the scheduling clerk at the transport office during the first scene, but is uncredited.
  • Blake Edwards had a small role as a Corporal that goes undcredited.
  • Future TV star Tennessee Ernie Ford also goes uncredited for a small part as a hillbilly singer.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Homer's disability was originally written as post-traumatic stress disorder, with frequent panic attacks, before William Wyler decided to cast Harold Russell, a real-life veteran who lost both his hands in the war, and the part was rewritten accordingly.
  • Fred MacMurray and Olivia de Havilland turned down the roles of Al and Milly Stephenson because they felt that the parts weren't important enough.
  • Rob Stephenson was supposed to appear in more scenes, and conspicuously vanishes from the film halfway through. This is because Michael Hall's contract ran out during filming, and Samuel Goldwyn didn't want to pay more money to rehire him.

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