The Human Comedy (1943)

Synopsis: Mickey Rooney delivers a powerful performance in this moving coming-of-age tale set during WWII, based on the best-selling novel by William Saroyan. In an effort to support his family while his older brother, Marcus (Van Johnson), is... Mickey Rooney delivers a powerful performance in this moving coming-of-age tale set during WWII, based on the best-selling novel by William Saroyan. In an effort to support his family while his older brother, Marcus (Van Johnson), is away at war, Homer (Rooney) gets a job delivering telegrams for the local telegraph office. His sensitive manager, Tom Spangler (James Craig), and an elderly and wise drunken telegrapher, Willie Grogan (Frank Morgan), help Homer face the painful messages that are often tapped across the telegraph wire as he learns to accept the harsh realities of war. With the help of his faithful widowed mother (Fay Bainter), Homer navigates his new job while enduring the joys and defeats of high school in his small and charming hometown of Ithaca, California. This poignant vision of life in 1940s America, poignantly directed by Clarence Brown, follows the miniadventures of Homer's family, including a late-night rendevous between his blushing older sister Bess (Donna Reed) and a lonely soldier (Robert Mitchum). As Homer wavers on the brink of adulthood, his younger brother Ulysses (Jack Jenkin) is free to roam the streets of their idyllic small town without a care in the world in a sweetly sentimental reminder of childhood freedom and exuberance. THE HUMAN COMEDY is a simultaneously charming and heartbreaking classic that serves as a patriotic and inspiring glimpse of life for those left at home during WWII. [More]

Starring: Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan, Fay Bainter, James Craig

Starring: Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan, Fay Bainter, James Craig, Robert Mitchum, Donna Reed, Marsha Hunt, Jackie Jenkins, Ray Collins, Van Johnson

Director: Clarence Brown

Director: Clarence Brown
Screenwriter: Howard Estabrook
Story: William Saroyan
Producer: Clarence Brown
Composer: Herbert Stothart

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