Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Admirable Crichton (Columbia) seemed a fine piece of social satire to an age that was concerned with keeping the servants in their place. Much of the humor is inevitably lost on a generation that can't get servants in the first place. But somehow, despite the ravages of time and more than 50 years of amateur performances, this British adaptation of Sir James Barrie's play is well worth watching as a pretty lesson in the minor art of monocle farce...
Having stated his social thesis, Playwright Barrie proceeds with his demonstration. He sets master and servant down on a desert island, and within two years a society without social distinctions has become one in which the class system is firmly established. But natural selection, not the accident of birth, has made the master the man, the man master. As Crichton wins his lord's daughter (Sally Ann Howes), it is plain, Playwright Barrie seems to be saying, that quality is the better part of equality...
...verbal fog banks. Readers who get as far as page 673 will sharply question Lerner's assertion that the U.S. is in a "moral interregnum," distrusting the old gods and uncertainly waiting for new ones, and that (page 947) America is on a descending arc of "inner social and moral vigor." But on the whole, Author Lerner strains so conscientiously to be judicious that he balances every neither with a nor. Sample: "American capitalism has been both overpraised and overindicted. . .it is neither the Plumed Knight nor the monstrous Robber Barony." Pursued relentlessly, this mode of thought leaves...
...outstanding interpreters of the U.S. scene achieved their insights by imposing a meaning-democratic, economic, social -on the rich diversity of America. Lerner argues merely that the diversity is the meaning, itself an insight but scarcely a major or original one. Trying valiantly to be Olympian, Lerner has suppressed his more obvious former prejudices-except perhaps the prejudice in favor of the strangely arid, yet emotionally pompous sociologist's view of man. The trouble is that little except diligence seems left of Pundit Lerner once the prejudice is gone. His middle-of-the-road stance leaves him not only...
August. In another copyrighted article, James Reston will announce that John F. Kennedy is a social climber. An enraged Joseph Kennedy, John's father, will begin financial manipulations to buy society, on a nation-wide level. In Boston itself, residents of the Beacon Hill area will refuse to support the City's ailing urban renewal program. A spokesman will say, "We don't even know those people." The Cambridge police will break into the Lampoon building after receiving a cryptic message about a hostage. They will discover someone called April Olrich. A Lampoon spokesman will say, "It's the funniest...