The Best Years of Our Lives

From Hollywood, the NBC Theater presents... The Best Years of Our Lives, Director William Weiler, Star Dana Andrews. The Hollywood Screen Director is presented a dramatic document from a time so well-remembered. The Academy Award-winning motion picture story, The Best Years of Our Lives, starring Dana Andrews and introducing the director of the film, William Weiler.

The old adage that one picture is worth a thousand words comes readily to hand when speaking of tonight's guest screen director. For no description of his painstaking artistry can equal the simple statement that he is the director of such truly great motion pictures as dead end, Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Miniver, and the soon-to-be-release-parliament film, The Eris.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Academy Award-winning director of the best years of our lives, Mr. William Weiler. Thank you. I wanted very much to make the best years of our lives, because along with the fiction of the story, there is a deep truth.

Of homecoming servicemen whose most familiar memories had suddenly become strange. One of the reasons I liked the story was that I had lived that part of it myself, just as many of you have. And now perhaps we'll live it again.

Here is the best years of our lives starring Dana Andrews and his original role of Fred Derry, with Janet Waldo as Peggy Stevenson. Look at it this way. Your name is Fred Derry.

You were a bombardier for most of the war in Europe. But the war is over. You're still in your captain's uniform. But now you're going home. There are two other men up front with you in the old B-17.

Homer Parish, the Navy man got on with you in New York. The older man got on at right field. Hiya, captain. My name's Al Stevenson. Fred Derry. Hiya, Sarge. Well, this is Homer Parish, Navy.