Movie Monday: The Homecoming

Movie Monday: The Homecoming

In the years immediately after WWII, Hollywood continued to produce movies about the war, but more than a few were about returning GIs, and The Homecoming is one of those films. Based on a short story titled “The Homecoming of Ulysses,” the movie stars Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Anne Baxter, and her real-life husband John Hodiak. Similar to So Proudly We Hail covered in a recent post, The Homecoming is told in a series of flashbacks.

While sitting on the transport ship, Ulysses Johnson (Gable’s character) is asked by a reporter about his experiences during the war. Gable’s performance is so gripping throughout the film one wonders if he is reliving his own experiences. Johnson tells his story beginning in 1941 when he is a hospital chief surgeon, a man without emotional attachments to his patients. He joins the army, and before leaving holds a party during which a colleague (played by Hodiak) accuses him of being “unsentimental, a hypocrite, and joining the army out of purely selfish motives.” Things get heated, then the scene shifts to Johnson’s last night with his wife, Penny (Anne Baxter).

On the ship overseas, Johnson meets Lt. Jane “Snapshot” McCall (Lana Turner). The typical enemies

to love plot comes into play, and the two don’t get along, until they do. The pair discovers they have a lot in common and become friends. There are stressful moments, and the friendship is tested. Ultimately, they fall in love. Meanwhile, Johnson talks about McCall in his many letters home, and Penny begins to wonder if she has to worry about losing her husband.

War intervenes, and McCall is reassigned to a different unit. They reunited in Paris, but war again intervenes, and they must leave to rescue a division wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. Fast forward to the present, and we see Johnson’s/Gable’s war-weary self, “a ghost of his former self.” When he gets home, he admits to having fallen in love with McCall, but indicates she died as a result of shrapnel wounds. Before fading to black, the film leaves viewers assuming the husband and wife get past the events and get a second chance at a happily ever after.

Directed by Mervyn Leroy, The Homecoming is the third movie Gable made after the death of Carole Lombard, and his second “soldier in transition” film. (The first being The Hucksters with Deborah Kerr). Well worth a viewing.

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War’s Unexpected Gift

Love and war don’t mix. Or do they?

Eager to do even more for the war effort, nurse Gwen Milford puts in for a transfer from a convalescent hospital outside of London to an evac hospital headed across Europe. Leap-frogging from one location to the next, nothing goes as expected from stolen supplies to overwhelming numbers of casualties. Then, there’s the handsome doctor who seems to be assigned to her every shift. As another Christmas approaches without the war’s end, can she find room in her heart for love?

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