Tomorrow Is Forever

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".