Word: keeler
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What sets McMullen's documentary apart, turns it into a cautionary tale the impact of which is close to tragic, is its central figure, William W. Keeler, 65, who retired earlier this year as Phillips' chairman and chief executive officer. Like every Phillips leader before him, he had devoted his entire life to the company and to the search for his room at the top, sacrificing most of the pleasures of family and leisure along the way. McMullen picks him up a few months before retirement, as he undertakes his last major task for Phillips: making smooth...
Tough, quiet-spoken and by no means an unattractive figure, Keeler nevertheless gives the impression of a spirit deliberately blunted, an intellect deliberately narrowed in order to achieve his goal. He makes it across the finish line-a retirement banquet at which he receives diamond-and-emerald cuff links patterned after the Phillips trademark-only to pay, at last, the price for his unquestioning belief that what was good for the corporation was good for him and, indeed, for everybody else. Keeler is now under investigation for authorizing an illegal corporate donation to the Committee for the Re-Election...
...corporation's official position is that Keeler authorized the donation "without the approval or knowledge of the board of directors." As McMullen says: "Yet to be explained is how one officer can dispatch $100,000 of corporate funds without the knowledge and acquiescence of other senior officers." McMullen's account of Keeler's triumph and downfall-both based on the fallacy of loyalty to an institutional structure rather than to himself and to generally accepted standards of moral accountability-adds up to one of television's fine hours...
...contrast to the sparse crowd that gathered to see Ruby Keeler last year, hundreds of determined fans came out Tuesday to get a look at Liza Minnelli when she received the Hasty Pudding Theatrical's Woman of the Year award...
...added that last year's recipient of the award, Ruby Keeler, did not attract very much attention until she announced her retirement at the press conference...