I'll Be Seeing You (1944)

Mary Marshall: [coming out of a theater showing a war movie] Is the war really like that?
Zachary Morgan: I guess so.
Mary Marshall: That's funny.
Zachary Morgan: Why?
Mary Marshall: I mean that you should only guess so.
Zachary Morgan: Well, they have experts making those pictures. I guess that's the way they see the war. A beach a mile long, and thousands of soldiers, and tanks, and machine guns and everything. I guess that's the way it is.
Mary Marshall: But it wasn't that way for you, huh?
Zachary Morgan: It's just a difference in size. To a guy that's in it, the war's about ten feet wide, and kind of empty. It's you and a couple of fellows in your company, maybe, and maybe a couple of Japs. It's all kind of mixed up. Sometimes it's all full of noise, and sometimes it's quiet. It all depends on what you're thinking about, I guess. It depends on how scared you are, how cold you are, and how wet you are. I guess if you asked a hundred guys what the war's like, they'd all give you a different answer. Mary. You know what?
Mary Marshall: What?
Zachary Morgan: I mean, usually you don't like to talk about it. I never said anything about it before, not to anybody.
Mary Marshall: I'm sorry, I ...
Zachary Morgan: No. No, I feel kind of good.

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Mrs. Marshall: You must have been looking forward to it, Mary.
Mary Marshall: I was looking forward to seeing you, Aunt Sarah.
Mrs. Marshall: Oh, that's sweet of you, dear.
Mary Marshall: As a matter of fact, selfish. I've been doing a lot of thinking in the past three years, Aunt Sarah, and...
Mrs. Marshall: What sort of things were you thinking, Mary?
Mary Marshall: Coming out into the world and... Even coming here, I had a feeling that ...
Mrs. Marshall: Honey, you've got to stop being afraid. You've got to stop feeling that you're branded like people were in the old days. You've done something. You're paying your debt to society. Most people are willing to let it go at that.
Mary Marshall: I know, Aunt Sarah, but coming out into the world and seeing everybody in uniform, everybody doing something... I just don't belong. I don't fit in. And dreams that I've had for the future are just impossible.
Mrs. Marshall: Well, most dreams are, Mary. It's just the dreaming that counts. Nobody gets exactly what he wants out of life. One of the first things you learn is to make compromises with your dreams.
Mary Marshall: But I'm not talking about palaces and rainbows, Aunt Sarah. I'm talking about a home. A home like this with a kitchen and a stove and an icebox, and a husband, and a child.
Mrs. Marshall: Yes, I have all that. Yet I used to dream about palaces and rainbows.
Mary Marshall: But you're happy.
Mrs. Marshall: Of course. Because I didn't hold out for too much. I accepted what I thought was second best and made that do. Oh, it's something that everybody learns sooner or later. You have to get used to accepting what you think is second best, and then you find out it's first best after all.

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Zachary Morgan: [Mrs. Marshall comes in with a flaming plum pudding] I never could figure out why the pudding never gets burned.
Mary Marshall: I've never been able to figure that out either. Must be the alcohol in the brandy.
Zachary Morgan: I think.
Mr. Marshall: Personally, I think it's a shame to burn good brandy. That quart I brought home last week was imported cognac.
Mrs. Marshall: Oh, don't worry, Henry, I didn't burn up the whole quart.
Barbara Marshall: Oh, I wouldn't trust Mom with it, Dad.
Mr. Marshall: Maybe you're right. Remember last year, how Mom got going on just a glass of sherry?
Mrs. Marshall: Now I'm not going to listen to that again!
Barbara Marshall: You may not believe this about your dear Aunt Sarah, but last year she got high as a kite.
Zachary Morgan: If they're trying to drag out a family skeleton, Mrs. Marshall, I won't listen to them.
Mrs. Marshall: Oh, it's just one of those little things that happen, people start exaggerating.
Mr. Marshall: Exaggerate, my eye! It's as true as I sit here. Last year, Mother and I had a glass of sherry to bring in the new year. And then we went to a little gathering, all the way across town, it was. Mother had her skirt on backwards!
Mrs. Marshall: See here, Henry, if you're in such good voice, how about a Christmas carol?

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Director George Cukor was replaced by William Dieterle.
Joan Fontaine, who was to play the female lead, was forced to withdraw due to previous commitments.
The quote from Lincoln under his photograph in the YMCA room is from his Cooper Union Address: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it" (February 27, 1860).
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