Actor Ben Cross(on right) from Chariots of Fire, still a fine, charming, inspiring, little, nostalgic, Academy-Award winning film from the U.K.
Ian Charleson, the Christian runner 451, saluted here earlier passed earlier.
As did Ian Holm, Cross’s coach.
violence, and unnecessary war going on around us every day, it is important not to become inured or case-hardened by all of it. Sensitivity to these things and pity are basics and touchstones. Pity for the suffering of one’s fellow beings, be they human or animal. Pity keeps us connected, grounded, and more inclined to take action to help others and alleviate pain and suffering of others. Pity keeps us human, humane, decent, and caring.
of mine, Inside Stories III. An example of a personal response to Graham Greene’s “The Destructors”, based on a memory of a fall field trip to English Bay, north of Cold Lake in the fall of 1974 (not 1972, as written in haste at the time), actually my third year of teaching at Grand Centre High School.
I wrote for my Nelson Canadian Writer’s Handbook, still the top handbook for senior high English in Canada. An example of a story from a teen point point of view/as a teen might have written it. Probably written in less than an hour as a spot assignment.
Arthur Miller’s first hit play was All My Sons which is about divided loyalties after WW II in America. Joe Keller has made a successful business, but during the war, he okayed a shipment of cracked cylinder heads for fighter planes that led to the deaths of 21 men. Though tried in court, he was exonerated when he denied responsibility and let his partner take the fall.
Chris Keller, one of his two sons, is working for the business and stands to inherit the factory, but secrets eventually come out after he brings Ann Deever home (the daughter of the partner and fiance of his brother, a pilot who mysteriously died in the war).
Chris’s mother is in denial about her older son’s death until Ann tells her the truth, something she passes on to Chris, who, similarly enlightens the father, ultimately. Chris is an idealist who worships his father, but, after he visits the partner in jail, his loyalty to his brother and the men he fought with eventually decides the fate of his relationship with his father and Ann.
The casting in the movie is perfect with Edward G. Robinson as Joe in one of his most dramatic roles. A young Burt Lancaster fits well the idealistic Chris part. The mother and Ann are, likewise, well-acted by Mady Christians and Louisa Horton.
Producer Chester Erskine produced the play and did the script adaptation, using much of Miller’s original dialogue. He ‘opens up’ the play with outdoor, factory, house, and yard scenes, befitting a movie. One major change to the original involves Chris going to see the partner in jail for confirmation of his suspicions about his father’s guilt and a flashback to the actual crime.
There is so much moral conflict in the play which is accentuated by the father and mother’s lies, a drunk woman who breaks up the family dinner in a restaurant (another added scene), and the turning point of George’s, Ann’s brother’s, visit to the Kellers in the middle of the movie.
Miller’s play makes the point, oft-made, that those who stayed at home got rich on the war, often without any moral conscience. He shows, too, that the conflicts of wartime seriously affected family life during and after the war. Truth vs. illusion is a common Miller motif in his work and frequently, the results are hard-hitting and memorable like this play and movie. Miller wrote intense, intelligent plays and serious dramas like All My Sons for the rest of his career.
This movie version is a reasonable facsimile of the play and gets the average moviegoer to reflect about existential choices that affect/ed us all. An oldie but goldie, for sure.
especially medical technology is always welcome, as will be the forthcoming COVID vaccines.
At the same time, a new Alzheimer’s drug is going to be released which halts the development of the disease slowing down and even delaying all the usual attendant damages and issues.
As with all new or recent medical innovations, this one will come too late for the multitudes who have previously perished by this scourge that mentally takes out the aging and aged. But better late than never. Good timing for those alive today.
Now, if only, an all-purpose vaccine could developed for cancer or even the common cold. Perhaps, some day?
these famous people and prose authors. It was a pleasure to share the work of these folks with users of my textbooks.
Shirley Jackson, Woody Allen, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, Morley Callaghan, Emily Carr, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Chief Dan George, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Isaac Asimov, Ellen Goodman, Samuel Johnson, Albert Schweitzer, Margaret Laurence, David Suzuki, Wallace Stegner, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, William Saroyan, Gabrielle Roy, Roald Dahl, Alice Munro, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Saki, Doris Lessing, Sinclair Ross, Ernest Buckler, Timothy Findley, Carol Shields, Terry Fox, Helen Keller, Jane Goodall, W.O. Mitchell, Mother Teresa, Rick Hansen, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, Gwynne Dyer, Daphne du Maurier, James Thurber, W. Somerset Maugham, Wayson Choy, Albert Camus, Nadime Gordimer, Graham Greene, Anne Tyler, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Thomas King, Wendell Berry, Robertson Davies, Dave Barry, Nelson Mandela, Jane Rule, Gloria Steinem, Roberta Bondar, Christie Blatchford, Bertrand Russell, Vladimir Nabokov, Sinclair Ross, Rosa Parks, Tom Jackson, Jack London, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rod Serling, Roger Ebert, Stephen Spielberg, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Tomson Highway, Anton Chekhov, Tobias Wolff, Chris Hadfield, Rex Murphy, Alistair MacLeod, Drew Hayden Taylor, John Collier, Christopher Reeve, Jane Urquhart, Ann Beattie, Arthur C. Clarke.
Questions:
Which of these people are still alive?
Which of these people are still remembered and read?
How many of them would get taught in Canadian and Alberta high schools today?
Alternately, what are the names of those who are taught today?
