ABSTRACT
The Best Years of Our Lives turned out to be one of the greatest films ever made in Hollywood. The influence of Hollywood in the world was never greater than in 1946. Fears in Hollywood that peace would be a disaster were not fulfilled and 1946 turned out to be, in box office terms at least, the most successful year in the history of the film industry. Buttressed by a strong feeling that the wartime hunger for movies was insatiable, Hollywood steeled itself to investigate some of the problems of contemporary American society, none of which was more important than the plight of the returning serviceman. The world that Hollywood depicted had vanished with the Second World War and its traditional audiences having been subject to a wide range of real emotions were no longer prepared to put up with the fake heroics and easy sentimentality they had previously devoured.
