Word: morale
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Sons (Universal-International), as a Broadway play, last year won Playwright Arthur Miller the Critics' Circle prize. It was an unusual play because it wrestled seriously with a moral problem. Its moral indignation makes it an even more unusual movie; but it is an only moderately good...
...chief moral problem: an industrialist (Edward G. Robinson) faces ruin if he is scrupulous enough to reject some defective war material. Moved by greed and devotion to his family, he passes the defective material along. He also tricks his partner (Frank Conroy) into taking the rap. Thousands of miles away, young men in U.S. uniforms die because of his crookedness. His younger son-rather uncon-incingly-commits suicide in protest; his elder son (Burt Lancaster) returns home to ferret out his secret. The father becomes at last fully aware of the dimensions of his crime and of the shallowness...
...disturbing, or satisfying. Like most contemporary efforts of the right-minded, it is tainted with self-righteousness. It is not really either very bold or very original to observe that bad business ethics are reprehensible-and common. Despite its worthy intentions, All My Sons is not so much a moral exploration as a conducted tour...
...tapering [off into] diminutive hands and feet," he was a cartoonist's joy. But to his adoring Beatrice, "the Other One" was her lord & master, her "little boy," and "man of destiny" rolled into one. Sidney was never ill, never daydreamed, never had a nightmare, never suffered from moral qualms or neurotic doubts. He could read and write sociological statistics day in & day out, and still have strength to work on numerous committees, coolly and tirelessly conducting "endless intrigues to persuade those in authority...
Warns Beard: "If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of American foreign affairs, the Constitution may be nullified by the President, officials, and officers who have taken the oath, and are under moral obligation to uphold it. For limited government under supreme law they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which, it has been alleged, World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government...