| Zusammenfassung: | People with visible physical disabilities must learn to manage a singular form of oppression-unwanted attention from strangers in the form, for example, of being stared at and being asked prying questions. While the management of oppressive attention has been extensively described and analyzed in recent ethnographical and biographical literature on disability, historians have taken little interest in the lived experience of people with disabilities. This essay analyzes the development of these management skills in the case of a disabled World War II veteran, Harold Russell, a bilateral hand amputee, and contrasts Russell's personal rehabilitation experience with that of the disabled character Russell played in the popular post-war feature film, "The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)". Russell's acquisition of these management skills took place in a cultural and political context that placed an emphasis on repression of bitterness and anger. The essay seeks to explain how the opportunity to play the fictional disabled character in the movie functioned for Russell as an outlet for emotions that disabled veterans were discouraged from displaying in public.
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