Tonight's Movie: The Human Comedy (1943) - A Warner Archive Blu-ray Review

THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943), one of MGM's most beautiful pieces of '40s Americana, was recently released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection.William Saroyan won the Best Original Story Oscar for this "slice of life" tale about a small California town. The movie was nominated for four other Academy Awards, including Best Picture and a well-deserved Best Oscar nomination for Mickey Rooney.Howard Estabrook and the uncredited Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay based on Saroyan's story; Saroyan fleshed out the story into a novel which was published around the same time the movie came out.The book was part of my 9th grade curriculum here in California, and I was sorry when schools later dropped the optimistic tale in favor of a number of darker books. Although it wasn't part of the homeschooling curriculum I used with my own children, I omitted one of the books they were scheduled to read and gave them THE HUMAN COMEDY to read instead. The copy on our bookshelf looks like this…