Whereas mostsoldiers would find they "can't go home again," in 1944 Eddie Bracken's Woodrow Lafayette PershingTruesmith, the scion of a long line of Marine heroes, has a different problem: he can't leave, having beenhonorably discharged from the service due to chronic hay fever. In a town hungry for heroes, he becomesone anyway. "It's partly as an American artist that Sturges seems so special. Not only because he drew somuch of his inspiration from explicitly American sorts of character and subject, not to mention Americanmovies-but because he cut through the knot of smugnesses and self-deceptions and half-truths that theidyllic Americanists had made of the American subject matter-and because he deals so directly with ourlove affair with innocence...He used the fantasies of the common imagination (certainly his small townswere that) not just because they were tested and surefire but because they were interesting and true insome way. Or so he found them. And through them he finds a special and excruciatingly funny way to talkabout American life-a way to express its strange and often panicking energies, even its peculiar decencies,without ever telling us comforting lies about it. And in this respect at least, Hail the Conquering Hero isnearly the summit of his work. His last great comedy about community...is also about a hero, the oneWoodrow finally becomes-strange and transfigured and irresistable-who makes Americans see andunderstand (the truth) at both his expense and theirs. And in the comedy's final blissful irony...they votefor him anyway." (James Harvey, Romantic Comedy)