MACKINLAY KANTOR
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville
GLORY FOR ME
A Novel in Verse
By MacKinlay Kantor
BASIS FOR THE MOVIE
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
It is seldom in time of war that an author, no matter how emotionally aware of what it all means, can write a book which expresses the feeling that motivates fighting men. Why did it happen this way, why is it ending this way— what are we now that it is done with, now that we are home? Indeed, are we home, or are we in a boarding-house of confusion and wretchedly defeated purposes and understandings?
MacKinlay Kantor is one of America's best-known novelists. It might be said that if any author could write that book Kantor would be the one for the job, but it takes more than mere professional writing skill to achieve such a major accomplishment. It takes awareness born of action and danger and keenly felt knowledge. Such knowledge MacKinlay Kantor has found, and in his novel of war and its men, Glory for Me, he has wholly expressed it.
Well above the draft age, and physically unacceptable to the armed forces, Kantor intensely felt the need to join his younger fellows in some way; in some way he had to be a part of the danger, the horror, the glory of this war. He found his opportunity as a war correspondent. As such, based in England, he flew in combat with the U. S. Air Forces and the R.A.F. over enemy territory into flak and fire. As such he learned to know the fighting men whose constant companion, friend and fellow-in-war he was for many months. For the equivalent of a leave Kantor came back to the United States, and what filled his mind and his heart and his thoughts had to find expression in a book, which is Glory for Me.
Glory for Me is a simple novel—about three service men, honorably discharged for medical causes, who return home to the same town where in peacetime they had not known one another. Now they know one another, and through them we know them and their town and our country and war and peace and man.
Glory for Me is a national epic, told in language of the common man, in language of the poet: told as only an American could tell it.
“When all my labors and trials are o’er
And I am safe on that beautiful shore...
O that will be
Glory for me!” CHARLES H. GABRIEL
i
FRED DERRY, twenty-one, and killer of a hundred men,
Walked on the width of Welburn Field. The cargo ship
Had set him down in noontime haze of early spring.
He smelled the onion farms:
He heard the trucks in Highway 52,
He saw the signboards, and the ugliness
That was a beauty he had dreamed.
Fred Derry, green of eye, with lids pale-washed in pink
(The way the eyes of bombardiers and gunners grow)—
Fred Derry, middling slim and round of shoulder,
But alert ... possessed by jaunty weariness
That could be taut when life demanded it—
He stopped beneath a 26’s wing,
Took off his coveralls, and with a handkerchief
He wiped the one small smear of grease
That marred the bottom of his pinks.
He brushed himself; fastened a pocket flap,
Saw that his wings and ribbons looked all right.
And he was toughly proud of all that color on his chest:
The D.F.C., its oak-leaf cluster... other bronze
On other ribbons.
Purple Heart.
He shrugged. It was an easy Purple Heart—
A blighty Purple Heart, the Raf would call it.
A 20-millimeter shell had stove the nose,
And pulverized some chunks of Plexiglas
And put a piece of copper in Fred’s arm.
Strong arm.... They sewed it up again.
He wore a crimson bathrobe only sixteen days,
For he was young and hard and mean
And glad to wear the Purple Heart,
And holy glad that he was lucky when he got it.
His fingers drew his cap bill down—
The sloppy Air Force cap with grommet taken out
And crow rubbed to a yellow polish.
Then, with his zipper bag in hand
And coveralls across his arm,
And chute and harness in the other hand,
He went to Operations.
The counter where the crews dispatched
Was crowded front and back.
The people waiting for a hitch stood silent,
As if hoping in their silence to attract benevolence
From bustling stay-at-homes who held
The power of their transportation—
Who brought the waffles closer by three days,
And you in bed with Evelyn on Tuesday night
Instead of three nights later. They waited, and the sergeant’s voice went up:
“Who hasn’t got his name down? ... read the list again.”
He read the eastbound list ... the people going south,
And names were added.
West ... he read the names:
One spoke for Tulsa, three for Albu-q,
And more for the Pacific Coast.
Fred Derry took his turn, he gave his name,
Wrote: “Derry, 1st Lieutenant F.”
He put his bomb group down, the 3-0-5th,
And said that Mitchel Field was home.
He lied. The sergeant knew he lied,
And almost everyone was lying....
Civilians, now; they hadn’t any home
In Army, Navy or Marines.
They hadn’t any place in life this moment,
And they knew it well.
The sergeant’s voice was grim again
Above the twitter and the talk,
The chatter of the telephones
And instruments connecting with the planes aloft,
The mumble that two Wacs were making
As they talked about their dates on Saturday.
The sergeant spoke: “Now, listen here.
I haven’t asked to see your passes,
Haven’t asked for AGO cards—
I ain’t no MP,
I’m not a provost. But remember this:
You want your rides, you take your turn.
I’ll call the names just once
When space is ready, and you got to be here!
I just ask, please: stay away from this here counter.
We got a lounge next door; there’s lots of room outside;
We’ll call you on the amplifier.
Please don’t gang up inside the door!”
Fred Derry hadn’t specified.
He just said West;
And West might mean a lot of things.
K.C. was good; St. Louis was a little better;
He could get a bus;
He might make home before the morning if he got a bus.
He went outside and smoked a cigarette.
He looked back in, and he was hungry.
“Where’s the PX?” he asked of other men.
They told him where to find it,
But he didn’t like to go:
He might miss out. He waited.
Once he had hitch-hiked up from Drew—oh, long before.
He wished that this were Drew;
Down on the line, they had free coffee,
And some orange juice, and stuff like that.
He went inside and hung around the door of Weather,
Pretending he was looking for a guy he knew.
The sergeant saw him sharply,
But then looked away ... for new men came
To hope, to want their rapid ride
(The chocolate cake, the beer at Billy’s Bar,
And sex with Emily, and kisses from some babies
They had never seen.
They wanted Home, as quick as they could get there).
... Sergeant’s voice again:
“No chute? I’m sorry: we can’t help you here.
We can’t give chutes. Right up there it says so:
That directive:
‘No more chutes to be signed out at Welburn Field.’
You better try to get aboard a train;
The main gate has a bus in twenty minutes....
Sorry, sir. You got to have a chute.”
An hour passed for Derry; then he thought,
“The hell with it.”
One Lib went out for Dallas,
And that was too far south.
A cargo ship was headed east;
Those two ships took a lot of guys away....
Crowd was much thinner now, and hungrier.
Fred went to the PX. A couple other fellows went along—
One was from Mediums, the other in the Navy.
They ordered malted milks and sandwiches.
The sandwiches were pretty good, especially the pork.
Fred Derry bought another: pork on white bread.
It was swell.
He went around the counter,
And he took the ketchup that he saw,
And spread his sandwich red and thick.
He walked back to the Line alone,
The other guys gone on before.
He saw a dandelion, butter-bright,
One tiny piece of sun
Upon this thin wet grass no other sun could find.
He thought of dandelion greens.
(His grandma sent him with a silver knife
Across the neighbors’ lawns ten years before....
They had to be the smallest and the earliest:
The fragile, baby dragon-tails.)
He thought of greens, fresh-cooked, the kitchen steaming,
And once again he smelled the steak.
They had it only Saturdays because the price was high ...
And grandma dead—how long before?—
When he was flying PT 6’s,
Weeks before he washed out as a pilot.
Oh, long... how long? His grandma dead—
How long? ...
The plaintive mass and little funeral flowers....
How long since? The house was changed....
And how long since he met Marie?
He went forever, and he left
The flower metal-yellow on the grass.
Release Date: November 21, 1946
Release Time: 172 minutes
Release Time: 172 minutes
Director: William Wyler
Cast:
Myrna Loy as Milly Stephenson
Fredric March as Sergeant 1st Class Al Stephenson
Dana Andrews as Captain Fred Derry
Teresa Wright as Peggy Stephenson
Virginia Mayo as Marie Derry
Cathy O'Donnell as Wilma Cameron
Hoagy Carmichael as Uncle Butch Engle
Harold Russell as Petty Officer 2nd Class Homer Parrish
Gladys George as Hortense Derry
Roman Bohnen as Pat Derry
Ray Collins as Mr. Milton
Minna Gombell as Mrs. Parrish
Walter Baldwin as Mr. Parrish
Steve Cochran as Cliff
Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Cameron
Don Beddoe as Mr. Cameron
Marlene Aames as Luella Parrish
Charles Halton as Prew
Ray Teal as Mr. Mollett
Howland Chamberlain as Thorpe
Dean White as Novak
Erskine Sanford as Bullard
Michael Hall as Rob Stephenson
Victor Cutler as Woody Merrill
Robert Karnes as Technical Sergeant
Awards:
19th Academy Awards - March 13, 1947
Best Motion Picture - Samuel Goldwyn Productions (Samuel Goldwyn, Producer) - Won
Best Director - William Wyler - Won
Best Actor - Fredric March - Won
Best Writing (Screenplay) - Robert E. Sherwood - Won
Best Supporting Actor - Harold Russell - Won
Best Film Editing - Daniel Mandell - Won
Best Music (Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) - Hugo Friedhofer - Won
Best Sound Recording - Gordon E. Sawyer - Nominated
Honorary Award - To Harold Russell - Won
Memorial Award - Samuel Goldwyn - Won
4th Golden Globe Awards - February 26, 1947
Best Dramatic Motion Picture - Won
Special Award for Best Non-Professional Acting - Harold Russell - Won
1st BAFTA Awards - May 29, 1949
Best Film from any Source - Won
AFI 100 Years . . .
1998 - 100 Movies - #37
2006 - 100 Cheers - #11
MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor was born in Webster City, Iowa, in 1904. He began to write seriously at sixteen, became a newspaper reporter at seventeen, and published his first book at twenty-three. Over the next half-century, he went on to produce more than forty works including novels, short story collections, novels in verse, novellas, histories and children's books. His best-selling historical novel, Andersonville, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. MacKinlay Kantor's other accomplishments included Hollywood screenwriting, patrolling the streets with the N.Y.P.D., and combat correspondence (RAF and USAF) in two wars, for which he was awarded the Medal of Freedom.
Cast:
Myrna Loy as Milly Stephenson
Fredric March as Sergeant 1st Class Al Stephenson
Dana Andrews as Captain Fred Derry
Teresa Wright as Peggy Stephenson
Virginia Mayo as Marie Derry
Cathy O'Donnell as Wilma Cameron
Hoagy Carmichael as Uncle Butch Engle
Harold Russell as Petty Officer 2nd Class Homer Parrish
Gladys George as Hortense Derry
Roman Bohnen as Pat Derry
Ray Collins as Mr. Milton
Minna Gombell as Mrs. Parrish
Walter Baldwin as Mr. Parrish
Steve Cochran as Cliff
Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Cameron
Don Beddoe as Mr. Cameron
Marlene Aames as Luella Parrish
Charles Halton as Prew
Ray Teal as Mr. Mollett
Howland Chamberlain as Thorpe
Dean White as Novak
Erskine Sanford as Bullard
Michael Hall as Rob Stephenson
Victor Cutler as Woody Merrill
Robert Karnes as Technical Sergeant
Awards:
19th Academy Awards - March 13, 1947
Best Motion Picture - Samuel Goldwyn Productions (Samuel Goldwyn, Producer) - Won
Best Director - William Wyler - Won
Best Actor - Fredric March - Won
Best Writing (Screenplay) - Robert E. Sherwood - Won
Best Supporting Actor - Harold Russell - Won
Best Film Editing - Daniel Mandell - Won
Best Music (Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) - Hugo Friedhofer - Won
Best Sound Recording - Gordon E. Sawyer - Nominated
Honorary Award - To Harold Russell - Won
Memorial Award - Samuel Goldwyn - Won
4th Golden Globe Awards - February 26, 1947
Best Dramatic Motion Picture - Won
Special Award for Best Non-Professional Acting - Harold Russell - Won
1st BAFTA Awards - May 29, 1949
Best Film from any Source - Won
AFI 100 Years . . .
1998 - 100 Movies - #37
2006 - 100 Cheers - #11
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MacKinlay Kantor was born in Webster City, Iowa, in 1904. He began to write seriously at sixteen, became a newspaper reporter at seventeen, and published his first book at twenty-three. Over the next half-century, he went on to produce more than forty works including novels, short story collections, novels in verse, novellas, histories and children's books. His best-selling historical novel, Andersonville, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. MacKinlay Kantor's other accomplishments included Hollywood screenwriting, patrolling the streets with the N.Y.P.D., and combat correspondence (RAF and USAF) in two wars, for which he was awarded the Medal of Freedom.
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