--- title: "The Human Comedy" year: 1943 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-human-comedy" fi1m_score: 66 critics_reviews: 2 published: "2026-09-20T01:01:33.032863+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T01:01:33.355739+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Human Comedy (1943) Directed by Clarence Brown · 1h 58m · MPA NR · Drama, Family **Fi1m score: 66** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Mickey Rooney cycles round town delivering the war’s bad news while MGM lights every porch like a hymn > Clarence Brown’s wartime picture is decent, warm and far too sure of it. When it simply watches Mickey Rooney carry a telegram to a door it is quietly devastating; the rest of the time it is telling us what to think. ## Synopsis Ithaca, California, in the middle of the Second World War. Homer Macauley (Mickey Rooney) is a high school boy whose father (Ray Collins) has died and whose older brother Marcus (Van Johnson) has gone into the army, leaving him the eldest man in a house that holds his mother (Fay Bainter), his sister Bess (Donna Reed) and his small brother Ulysses (Jackie ‘Butch’ Jenkins), who waves at passing trains. Homer takes a night job as messenger at the town telegraph office, where the manager Tom Spangler (James Craig) and the elderly operator Willie Grogan (Frank Morgan) teach him the trade. His first hard delivery is a War Department telegram to Mrs. Sandoval (Ann Ayars). At camp, Marcus talks of home to his friend Tobey George (John Craven), an orphan. ## Review Clarence Brown’s film, from a William Saroyan story with a screenplay by Howard Estabrook, sets out to put a whole American town on screen in the middle of the war and to say what the war is for. The answer, given often and at length, is decency: mothers, hymns, libraries, small boys, a telegraph office that stays open all night. Sincerity gets it a long way. But it does not trust its own pictures, so it explains them, and the explaining is what stops it being the small classic it could have been. Mickey Rooney is the reason to watch. Homer Macauley has to grow up in a hurry, and Rooney, who could mug for a living, mostly declines to. He rides his bicycle through Ithaca at night, learns the office from the ground up, and delivers the wires from the War Department. He plays those deliveries with his face closed and his hands busy, and it is the best work of his we have seen. Frank Morgan’s Willie Grogan, the old operator who drinks at the key and needs coffee poured into him before he can take a message, is a stock figure played with small, exact choices, and he lands. Harry Stradling photographs the town as if the sun had been asked to be kind. Streets at dusk, porches with the light behind them, the office lit by one desk lamp with the dark pressing on the window. It is lovely and it is soft, and after an hour the softness begins to feel like policy. Herbert Stothart’s score reaches for hymn tunes and choir at every turn and does not know how to be quiet. The trouble is the talking. Ray Collins plays Homer’s dead father and narrates from somewhere above the town, and once a film has let the dead speak it tends to let everyone else make speeches too. A teacher lectures a classroom about equality. The librarian lectures two small boys about books. Herman J. Mankiewicz also has a writing credit, and we could not tell you which of these were his, but somebody should have taken half of them out. Conrad A. Nervig is asked to cut a dozen loosely joined episodes into a story, and there is no spine to cut them onto; the film simply stops when the war reaches the family. James Craig’s Tom Spangler, the manager, is a decent man given a courtship with Marsha Hunt’s Diana Steed that adds nothing but running time. Van Johnson’s Marcus and John Craven’s Tobey George have an army-camp scene about home that is written as a hymn to Ithaca and played as one. Donna Reed’s Bess and Dorothy Morris’s Mary walk to the cinema and are wholesome. Jackie ‘Butch’ Jenkins, as small Ulysses, is the exception: freckled and puzzled, waving at a passing train, and Brown lets him be a child rather than a symbol for whole minutes at a time. Here is what got us. Homer’s first death telegram goes to Mrs. Sandoval, played by Ann Ayars, who does not understand what the boy has brought and offers him a sweet because he looks tired. He eats it. She reads the wire. We had a lump in the throat we did not expect from a studio picture of this vintage, and it came from what the scene leaves out: Ayars keeps her voice ordinary, and Rooney cannot find a way to get back out through the door. It is over in three minutes and it is the best thing in the film. Then the score arrives to tell us how to feel about it, and we felt it a little less. Brown would go on to *National Velvet* (1944) and *The Yearling* (1946), where the same warmth suits the material, because a horse and a fawn can bear that much light. A town waiting for casualty lists cannot, quite. *The Best Years of Our Lives* (1946) let the war be hard on people and trusted the audience to love them anyway; this film softens each blow before it lands. It runs 118 minutes and a fair third of them are sermons. Watch it for Rooney, for Morgan and for that doorway, and watch it at home, where you can sit through the speeches with a cup of tea and the film’s kindness looks less like a sales pitch. *Fi1m score 66, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (2) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): The film is a brilliant sketch of the fundamentals of the American way of life, transferred to the screen with exceptional fidelity by Clarence Brown. Rooney delivers the strongest performance of his career as the lead. [Read](https://variety.com/1942/film/reviews/the-human-comedy-1200413997/) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (50/100, inferred): The rambling story of simple people in a small California town during wartime attracts attention through its build-up and offers heart-warming sequences and strong performances, especially from Mickey Rooney. It ultimately comes across as sentimental showmanship with pretentious elements. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1943/03/03/archives/the-screen-william-saroyans-first-picture-the-human-comedy-with.html) ## Details - **Director:** Clarence Brown - **Director:** Clarence Brown - **Screenplay:** Howard Estabrook - **Writer:** Herman J. Mankiewicz - **Story:** William Saroyan - **Cinematography:** Harry Stradling - **Editor:** Conrad A. Nervig - **Music:** Herbert Stothart - **Producer:** Clarence Brown - **Cast:** Mickey Rooney as Homer Macauley; Frank Morgan as Willie Grogan; James Craig as Tom Spangler; Marsha Hunt as Diana Steed; Fay Bainter as Mrs. Macauley; Ray Collins as Mr. Macauley; Van Johnson as Marcus Macauley; Donna Reed as Bess Macauley - **Runtime:** 1h 58m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 2 March 1943 - **Genres:** Drama, Family - **Budget:** $1 million - **Box office:** $4 million ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, sd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AU, CA, RO, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1944: Best Actor (nominated); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Story (won) ## If you liked this - *The Best Years of Our Lives* (1946), Fi1m 90: The war comes home and Wyler lets it hurt without a single sermon. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-best-years-of-our-lives.md) - *Hope and Glory* (1987), Fi1m 82: Boorman’s Blitz through a boy’s eyes; funnier, rougher and just as fond of its street. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/hope-and-glory.md) - *Our Town* (1940), Fi1m 72: Another small American town narrated from beyond, with a good deal more restraint. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/our-town.md) - *Forbidden Games* (1952): Two children build a cemetery in occupied France; the war seen from knee height. - *Tokyo Story* (1953), Fi1m 92: Ozu on parents, grown children and telegrams that arrive too late, without raising his voice. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/tokyo-story.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-human-comedy