Tomorrow Is Forever (1946)

I found the whole film too far fetched.Colbert and Welles are excellent but in reality people just don't behave the way Welles behaves.He loves his wife but their is no yearning to comfort her ,tell her what happened,just a refusal to admit that he is her husband, because he wants his wife to live in the present and not the past . Colbert is right in not wanting her son to go to war and after what happened to Welles you'd think he would support Colberts view .Instead he talks her into letting her son go - hard to believe a man who so horribly disfigured both mentally and physically (that he wanted to kill himself)would be so content with allowing his only son to war I get that people's lives change and Welles could not just sail back happily into Colberts but for Welles to close himself off from any chance of a happy reunion,especially after she tells him how much she loves him is taking his nobility too far. I'm not suggesting a " lived happy ever after"ending but Colbert finding her letters in his apartment would removed any doubts she had about who he was and his love for her.

My brother, Joe, joined the Marines right after Pearl Harbor, as an underage boy with false papers. So did his cousin. Now it's over seventy years later and for the first time I realize the anguish of my mother and all mothers when their sons went to war. Claudette Colbert stole my heart as she made me understand what my mother, and all mothers then and today, must have been going through when their sons (and now their daughters go to war). I was 3 1/2 years old in 1942, and so during the war, while he was in the South Pacific, I heard my mother's stories about 'Brother Joe,' that she told so that I would understand that I had a brother and he would eventually come home and live with us. Natalie Wood is a wonderful surprise as a tiny war orphan, perhaps eight years old; Orson Welles was at the top of his form, but Claudette Colbert was the brightest star of this film.This is not an anti-war film, it's much more a 'why we must go to war film.' There's a lot of philosophy buried in the script, but it never slows the film. Warning, bring at least two handkerchiefs to "Tomorrow is Forever".

Enjoyed this great classic film from 1946 starring Claudette Colbert as Elizabeth Hamilton who was a young woman very much in love with her husband, Orson Wells, (John MacDonald/Erik Kessler). John MacDonald decides to go into the Army and fight in World War II and is killed in action and his wife Elizabeth is completely heart broken. However, she finds a man, Lawrence Hamilton, (George Brent) who loves her very much because she works for his father's firm and he asks her to marry him after many years. Elizabeth has a son from her first husband and then a second from Lawrence. It just so happens that Elizabeth's first husband is not killed and has been severally wounded and finally returns to America with a little girl named Margaret Ludwig, (Natalie Wood). As you can see this story gets very complicated and there are many secrets that are finally revealed which turn this love story into a great masterpiece with all great actors. Enjoy.

This is an astoundingly good movie.I'm neither a big Claudette Colbert fan nor one of Orson Welles -- I find her usually too cloying and chick-flickish and him too morose and self-important -- but they are fabulous together in this wonderful film. The characters treat each other with great respect and dignity, the dialog is marvelous, sensitive subject matter like war is dealt with honestly and non-ideologically.The "triangle" of Welles, Colbert and Brent is very good. Added bonus: Jarrod Barkley from Big Valley in his first role (he looks exactly the same 20 years earlier).I don't know why TCM gave this only two stars. Perhaps it's not trashy enough for their devolving ethos...Ten Stars!