Word: priestleys
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English Lesson. When British Delegate J. B. Priestley joined the attack on the U.S., Delegate Free slapped down a copy of UNESCO's constitution, reminded him that one of its first points was a free press. Priestley, red-faced with Yorkshire wrath, roared: "I do not believe that a representative of the United Kingdom, in matters of freedom of expression, needs to receive lessons. ... I assure the delegate that I can read the English language as well...
...Inspector Calls (by J. B. Priestley; produced by Courtney Burr & Lessor H. Grosberg) and, finding the smug, well-to-do Birling family all at home, accuses one startled member after another of being partly to blame for a young working girl's suicide. Mr. Birling had once sacked the girl from his factory. On another occasion, Mr. Birling's daughter got her dismissed from a shop. The daughter's fiance had had an affair with the girl; so had Mr. Birling's son, who got her with child; Mrs. Birling had refused her charitable...
Having, in his tractarian zeal for driving home the idea of human responsibility, made the Birlings look like a pack of Victorian villains, Playwright Priestley suddenly begins to backtrack. Perhaps, he suggests, the young girl-whom each Birling had known by a different name-was really a great many different girls. Or perhaps the Birlings' visitor (Thomas Mitchell), who certainly didn't act like a police inspector, wasn't one. Perhaps there had never even been a suicide. Perhaps. . . . In his last 20 minutes, Playwright Priestley has a high old time perhapsing. Unfortunately, he has been prosing...
...Communists and crypto-Communists and fellow travelers in our island. Their interests and their instructions naturally lead them to say everything in their power to make division between us. You should completely ignore their taunts and jeers-for instance, I noticed in the newspaper bitter words from a Mr. Priestley, who gained some acceptance in the war from the fact that we used him for broadcasting purposes. He has no influence. No American should allow himself to be irritated or offended by such diatribe. They do not represent in the slightest degree the feelings of the British nation...
...hours after the beginning of "An Inspector Calls," just as two balconies, an orchestra, and several boxes full of tired and tortured audience are about to give up the ghost, Melville Cooper puts down the telephone and recites a quiet curtain line that makes this J. B. Priestley opus almost worth seeing. That one sentence also reveals spectacularly how good a play the production might have been with even adequate direction or acting...