“With the threat of impending war, the atmosphere was one of nervousness and insecurity—everyone was worrying about friends and relatives abroad and those at home who might have to go into service.” Discussing the climate of 1940s America, Copland captured the sense of uncertainty in people's minds. With the second Sino-Japanese war beginning in the Pacific in 1937 and Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, Americans were on edge, and hotly debated intervention versus isolation as they contemplated the United States’ future involvement in world affairs. The heightened tension and anxiety were heavy weights in the hearts of many American citizens and extended much further than political debates and newspaper articles. In fact, their effects quickly permeated the worlds of art and entertainment. As Copland explained, “composers as well as writers and artists were drawn to patriotic and nostalgic themes, and the American public, fearing the violence to come, was comforted by works like Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which looked back at an America of simple, homespun values that seem to have been lost.” Copland too was drawn to such themes, and he happily accepted producer Sol Lesser's offer to score the music for Hollywood's rendition of Our Town (1940).

Sam Wood's Our Town, based on Thornton Wilder's play of the same name, traces the lives of two neighboring families, the Gibbses and the Webbs, in the fictional small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, from 1901 and 1913. Following Wilder's play quite carefully, the film adheres to the original three-act structure. Distinctively, Our Town relies heavily upon a narrator, Mr. Morgan (Frank Craven), who frequently breaks the fourth wall by addressing the audience directly. He introduces us to the film's characters, situates them in time and place, and signals the transitions between acts. Both the play and the film are often regarded as quasi-documentaries; as Copland explained, the narrative is “essentially plotless in the usual sense of the term … innocent of romantic intrigue, and deals entirely with unassuming, everyday people in simple settings.”

Act 1, “Daily Life,” begins in 1901. As the film opens, Mr. Morgan speaks directly to the viewer, telling us about life in the small town of Grover's Corners.