Word: priestley
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According to his friend J. B. Priestley, who has written a couple of plays for him (Cornelius, Johnson Over Jordan), Actor Richardson could have been equally as successful as a painter or a writer if he had put his far-better-than-average-actor's mind...
Most war-weary British veterans, dribbling back into civilian life that is still rigorously rationed and restricted, long for the cozily lighted window that means the unrestricted freedom and comfort of home. Through that lighted window John Boynton Priestley has tossed a well-aimed literary brick. Novelist Priestley (The Good Companions; Angel Pavement) is one of British Labor's most popular literary backers. In a brief (32-page), brusque, best-selling pamphlet entitled Letter to a Returning Serviceman, Priestley beseeches ex-Tommies to beware of their heart's desire-"the charmed cozy circle" of home life...
...Priestley (who has just returned from Moscow, where his new play, An Inspector Calls, is running in two theaters simultaneously) plainly tells whom he considers fools and rogues. They are "the tough fellows behind the huge . . . cartels," the "Lords Midas" of the press, "literary ladies and gents who adore peasants," "the aesthete with his private income . . . bloodless and shrinking." Veterans are also plainly told that in eschewing hominess they must stand four-square behind state-planned economy (". . . I do not believe in economic liberty. . . . Economic life is necessarily a communal life...
...singing phrase to describe the function of the writer-"the engineer of the human soul." During the Russian war this has certainly been true. Never before have Russian writers had such an audience. Never before have they had such immediate influence and such great responsibility. Perhaps J. B. Priestley exaggerated when he said that recent Russian writings had been "the conscience of the world," but they have unquestionably been the conscience of Russia...
...products dominated the convention talk. General Motors' Charles F. Kettering reported that his laboratories had developed a method for commercial production of a new gasoline, triptane, potentially four times as powerful as 100-octane. Estimated cost: $.50-$1 a gallon. The Society presented its highest award, the Priestley Medal, to Harvard's President James Bryant Conant for his work on synthetic rubber and as chairman of OSRD's National Defense Research Committee. Bernard Baruch declared that President Conant was chiefly responsible for breaking the technological deadlock in synthetic-rubber production. Other highlights...