A Lifestyle of the Past

Rating: 10/10 (23 November 2008)

I also watch this movie every time it comes on TV. It has a wonderful story that seems true to life and the characters give such insight into what many Americans must have gone through when the war ended and they had to pick up their "normal" life. I read that the dress Virginia Mayo wore to the night club was actually bought off the rack, rather than being made by the studio, just to give the authentic flavor needed.
I love this movie for another reason, how well it shows what everyday life was like in the middle 1940s. Being a child of the 50s myself, I recognized the small kitchen style of the Upper class apartment from my grandmother's house. I saw the middle class neighborhood homes reflected in the house I grew up in, and recognized the lower class home Dana Andrew's character lived in from the homes of some of my own friends who grew up in lower class homes.
To me, this movie is a national treasure. Not only because it reminds us, as so many have said, of what our military heroes give up to serve this country during any war, but of the day to day depiction of how life was in the past for white Americans.