Wilder wrote producer Sol Lesser that "Emily should live. To the surprise of some, the playwright agreed. But the film's creators, finding that ending too downbeat for movie audiences of the day, asked Thornton Wilder to allow Emily to survive her ordeal on film. In the play, Emily dies in childbirth and is allowed to spend one "typical" day back on Earth. There's a significant difference, however, in how the story plays out in the stage version and on film - and those who do not wish to know the movie's outcome should stop reading here.
It culminates, as did the play, in a memorable graveyard scene. As the couple grows older, marry and face a potentially fatal childbirth, the film paints a delicate portrait of family life in a more innocent age. Our Town won Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Actress (Martha Scott), Black-and-White Art Direction, Original Score and Sound Recording.įrank Craven, repeating his stage role as the story's narrator, chronicles the lives of a handful of the town's citizens, centering on sweethearts Emily Webb (Scott, also repeating her Broadway success) and George Gibbs (William Holden).
Over the decades, the movie has won much praise for its outstanding production design by William Cameron Menzies, its memorable score by Aaron Copland and an unusually rich cast of supporting actors that includes Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell and Guy Kibbee.
Share Our Town (1940) was director Sam Wood's sensitive film treatment of one of the theater's best-loved examples of Americana, Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about life in the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners in the years 1900 through 1913. Trying to recall her life, Emily remembers the day of her sixteenth birthday, but the memories of past happiness prove too painful for her and she returns to the living to give birth to her baby. Emily, expecting her second child, is very ill, and as she drifts into death, she sees her mother-in-law and all the others that have passed on. Nine years pass, and Julie now rests in the town cemetery. On the morning of the wedding, a nervous George pays a visit to his prospective father-in-law for advice, and later, as they march down the aisle, the participants are visited by second thoughts as they all begin new phases in their lives. Two years later, at the town soda fountain, George begins his courtship of Emily, and in one year, after high school commencement, the couple's wedding day arrives. Webb about the trip she dreams of taking with her husband, George confides in Emily about his dream of becoming a farmer and Emily worries about attracting a man. Doc Gibbs, his wife Julie, son George and daughter Rebecca live next door to Charlie Webb, his wife and daughter Emily and son Wally. Around the turn of the century in the small town of Grovers Corners, folks were never afraid to leave their doors unlocked.
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