I am surprised this film has not gotten more play over the years. The acting of Clark Gable, Lana Turner, and Anne Baxter here is great. John Hodiak as Dr. Sunday is very good. Ray Collins (Lt. Tragg on Perry Mason) is Lt. Col. Avery Silver and he is so good in his support role that the movie has to recover a bit when he is killed.Strange, Paul Osborn (East Of Eden), the writer here gets more credit for other films but his writing of Sidney Kingsley's (East of Eden's) story is just fine. Being an MGM film, there is a huge studio cast that is un-credited including Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan's Island) and Arthur O'Connell who would go on into many bigger roles than this film. The story is a bit more strict than the actual reality of war. I mean Baxter is super human as the wife waiting at home sacrificing every thing waiting for her man to return. Meanwhile, Turner and Gable develop an amazing chemistry here. They seem to keep avoiding the inevitable until quite late in the film.Even later is the ending which really does some moralizing, but yet is so appropriate. The film starts in the present, then flashes back to before the war, then takes us through 3 1/2 years of war and then comes back to the present, only to flash back again for 1 month after the war. The script is strong enough to support the talented cast.The most memorable idea is "Will they be able to adjust to us when we come home?" While the ending does address the problem of someone returning from the war well, it is a notch below the message in an earlier more powerful film - "The Best Years of Our Lives". Still, this film does deliver that message and several others quite successfully.

This was a wonderful 1948 film. In it, a self-absorbed doctor joins the army at the outbreak of World War 11. An excellent surgeon, he couldn't care less about his patients or their environment.Anne Baxter co-stars as his society wife. Also, self-absorbed, she comes to realize that she is losing him by his letters that he sends her overseas. There, his nurse is Lana Turner, devoted to her duties and patriotic to the core.John Hodiak, who was married to Baxter in real-life, co-stars as a dedicated physician who argues with Gable of his callous attitude.As his mother-in-law, the always wonderful Gladys Cooper is given so little to do here, other than welcoming back Gable when he returns.Turner has the emotion and facial expressions for the part, but her speech is like a young Sunday school girl. It is only in her dying scene, that she comes across the way she stood.This all said, the film is a wonderful one because it shows us the importance of human relations over material well-being in society.

As a rule I'm not much into romantic films, but there are exceptions and Homecoming is one of them. Clark Gable and Lana Turner did four films together and this is the third one. It's Turner's show here. It's a great tribute to her charisma and star quality that she looks incredibly sexy in those army fatigues she has to wear as per the plot. Lana Turner in heryounger days had a quality of winsomeness that was never showcased than when she plays Jane "Snapshot" McCall, idealistic army nurse.In this cynical age we would look with incredulity that a widow with a young son would follow her late husband off to war because his ideals became her ideals. Yet Turner makes you believe that in this film.The plot is simply Clark Gable, very successful doctor in a small mid-west city, goes to World War II basically because its expected of him. He's a self centered guy, nice home, loving wife played very well by Anne Baxter, all the material things you could want and not a clue about why we are in World War II. He has a fellow physician friend, John Hodiak who does a lot of pro bono public service work who tries to act as a conscience, but fails. I guess Turner had something to offer Hodiak didn't. At first Dr. Ulysses Johnson (Gable) and Nurse McCall don't hit it off after she's assigned to him as a nurse. But her beauty and idealism get to him he falls for her big time. Because its 1948 Hollywood and Anne Baxter is by no means a bad person there was no way Turner was going to wind up with Gable in the end. She has to die, but Turner is given a death scene that is one of the most moving in the history of film. You have to be made of stone not to be touched by her and Gable at her bedside.John Hodiak, a very talented and almost forgotten figure today is also terrific as Gable's friend Dr. Robert Sunday. Gable will be working with Hodiak at the clinic Hodiak has in a poor neighborhood and he will be doing it because of the social conscience Turner has instilled in him. There are no bad people in this film except the Nazis shooting at Gable Turner and the rest of Eisenhower's army.I believe this is Lana Turner's best film and fans of her's should not miss this one.

Playing against type, Lana Turner forsakes the glamour and produces a sensitive, altogether winning performance. Baggy pants, boots, man's shirt, fatigue cap: a highly efficient, hardworking army nurse, quick to speak her mind, less than tolerant of those who don't share her attitudes. Of course she is softer on the inside, and vulnerable to male sensitivity. Lana makes this challenging role work for her. Gable's character is not helped by fuzzy scripting in regard to his priorities, oversights and degree of self-centerdness, yet this somewhat out-of-focus role is handled adequately. The film itself moves along fairly slowly, downshifting to a crawl during the final twenty minutes as characters deliver a succession of monologues seemingly intended to remind the audience of the picture's intended themes.