061 - Not The Best Years Of Our Lives

The Oscars are tonight. Normally I’m interested and relatively enthusiastic about them as I’m a fan of quality motion pictures.

Though the current list of nominated films contains several great productions, none of them really pushed me over the edge as far as rooting for any of them to win. We’ll watch anyway.

I’m reminded of the movie that won best picture in 1948, The Best Years of Our Lives:

Though he’s not given any credit on virtually any of the publicity photos for that movie, Harold Russel, who went on to star in virtually nothing much afterwards, literally won TWO oscars for the same performance as Homer Parrish, disabled veteran - Best Supporting Actor and an “honorary” Oscar for bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans.

Harold Russel lost both of his hands in an explosives accident during WWII

In 1992 he had to sell his oscars to help pay for his wife’s medical bills.

Thinking of this movie as I wrote todays tune and how much different things are today than what I’d expected.