Word: finches
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...original, Hero Hugh Conway (Peter Finch) is a sort of nonpartisan lobbyist for peace who is persuaded to abandon his political pursuits in the outside world and become the Grand Kleagle of Shangri-La. There he will receive the victims of international holocaust with warmth and tolerance. That the world will be consumed by greed and violence seems an odd notion for such a soggy fantasy to be advancing; that the solution to the problem is, forget it, fix it later, is not. What does it matter if the world blows up, after all, if we have the happy valley...
...quickly picked up by Robert Finch, who was heading Nixon's California campaign. Gray became what Finch calls "my right arm," demonstrating "an inordinate capacity for work and an incredible sense of loyalty, both to me and to Nixon." Gray and Finch helped Nixon narrowly carry California, but when the national election was lost, Gray moved to New London, Conn., where he had been stationed at the submarine base. He joined the law firm of Sui-man, Shapiro, Wool & Brennan. Gray specialized in trusts, estates and taxes; he also spent many hours without charge to close the estates of sailors...
After Nixon won, Gray was not selected for any Washington appointment until, a bit desperately, he filled out a routine application. It was forwarded to Finch, then the HEW Secretary. He hired Gray as his executive assistant, and Gray proved to be just the kind of administrator that the less organized Finch needed. Gray generally worked standing up at a high draftsman's type of table rather than a desk. He ate lunch in the office, jogged...
When Gray left HEW in January 1970, the paperwork at HEW bogged down, and Finch developed a reputation as an inept administrator. Gray became an Assistant Attorney General, mainly at the urging of Mardian, a right-wing ideologue who had also worked with him at HEW. Gray impressed his superiors, Mitchell and Kleindienst, while heading the Justice Department's Civil Division. When Mitchell moved over to Nixon's re-election committee and Kleindienst became Attorney General, Gray was designated Deputy Attorney General...
...Finch is suitably staunch as William, and Chamberlain contributes an amusingly eccentric interpretation of Byron as a pretty narcissist who arranges his curls carefully before entering a ballroom. Margaret Leighton, full of delicate malice, is superb as William's mother. "Your wife is a mass of nothing, Willie," she announces to her son, as if she had just concluded an elementary scientific investigation with a magnifying glass and a tweezer. Not a completely unfair appraisal of the movie, either...