Word: priestley
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While Climax was showing how much funnier Mark Twain is between the covers of a book than on a TV screen, CBS's U.S. Steel Hour (Wed. 10 p.m., E.D.T.) was showing how much wittier Playwright J. B. Priestley is on the stage. The TV adaptation of Laburnum Grove, under the title Counterfeit, came around slowly to Priestley's engaging idea. A kindly English mediocrity (Boris Karloff) wants nothing more in the world than to live a quiet life in a London suburb, devoting his spare time to raising tomatoes. But since he is incapable of earning...
...Priestley has the audacity to attack Billy Graham, America, and his own British public [May 9]. Never have I seen such an illogical and prejudiced article ... It seems that Mr. Priestley puts himself up as the master psychologist when he says so bluntly, "The reason for Billy's success is not Britons' hunger for religion, but their hunger for a show." I would like to ask Mr. Priestley if he took the time or effort to interview those who attended the campaigns, and especially those who made decisions ... I happen to be one of those who made...
Beirut, Lebanon Sir: I am still chuckling at Priestley's comments . . . John Boynton Priestley and I went to different schools in Bradford, Yorkshire ; you know, where the pudding comes from. His evaluation of all that religious conversion is as correct as it is shrewd and witty. I, too, know the "hunger for a show" of the British people-and why confine it to the British anyway? As for that Irish newspaper which said that Billy had taken Ireland by storm even in absentia: phooey! MAUD CHEGWIDDEN San Francisco Sir: If Graham goes for orange juice, the unpriestly Priestley...
What, asks Priestley, is the reason for Billy's success? It is not Britons' hunger for religion, but their hunger for a show. "There is a vacuum that must be filled. Politics, to exist for them at all, must be a show. Patriotism is a show with an expensive regal cast . . . And now, with the arrival of the streamlined Billy Graham organization . . . religion is a show...
...Said Priestley: "Whatever our contemporary age has, America has the most of. It is the jackpot country. If we are safely bound for an earthly paradise, the Americans will be there first. If we are all going to Hell, they will also be there first . . . Now, out of America, looking like a typical clean young American who drinks his orange juice and coffee, eats his cereal and waffles . . . is the bearer of the Word. Salvation has come, as it should, from America . . . Heaven is being promised again by a figure who might easily have a five-year contract with...