VARIETY
491
in the Sunday Magazine Section
of
PM.
It is signed "yours as al–
ways, BILL, William Jennings O'–
Brien". In the thing that got in the
July 2 issue, BILL is concerned
over a possible schism between sol–
diers and civilians after the war:
"Then, as always, it will be the
good guys vs. the bad guys. And al–
ready the bad guys are trying to
split the good guys apart." Toward
the end he gets nostalgic : "But
some day the last Kraut will yell
K
amerad
and the last Nip will
blow his poor miseducated brains
out and the war will be over. And
you will come home."
How long, do you think, before
BILL "will blow his poor mis–
educated brains out"?
A desperate friend of mine who
worked on
PM
for a short while
tells me this is the question stand–
ing first with
P
M-ers: "Is this guy
PM-minded?"-a question which
sums up all that they are or ever
will be.
The following editorial warning
was part of a prologue to 6 pages
of threatening Depression photos,
printed while
PM
was stumping
for the Kilgore Bill (August 9) :
"An unhappy America, econom–
ically awry and socially unstable,
will hardly be a Good Neighbor,
almost certainly will be tempted to
ease its internal tensions by imperi–
alist forays abroad." Not today,
you see--but tomorrow, maybe.
The
PM
mentality is not simply
philistine: ' it is eclectic, and will
utilize any kind of critical idea.
But always incorrectly-epigone–
fashion. They cut off ideas from
their moorings and exhibit them
like toy-balloons. They sell words,
make commodities out of ideas.
Nothing is dirtier.
DAVID
T.
BAZELON
Movie Notes
"Honesty is the best policy," is
a reliable thematic standby of Hol–
lywood that turns up again, feeble
but resolute, as the substance of
Mr. Preston Sturges'
Hail the
Conquering Hero,
a dishonest,
unfunny, a-human "comedy" that
works like a miner in a landslide
trying to look honest, to be funny
and to seem "human." The effort
is carried on
a la
Frank Capra,
whom Mr. Sturges increasingly re–
sembles; a little more of the sen–
timental in his next script and a
role for Walter Brennan in it and
the two men will be about as in–
distinguishable as Fox· Movietone
News and MGM's News of the
Day.
In farce, a character forced to
play a role that humiliates and
torments him is sure to arouse high
merriment; if his antagonists are
six heroic Marines (cheers) who
are animated by a desire to see him
restored to his mother, the finished
production is pratically in the
cans. To add to the fun, Mr.
Sturges has embellished his young
hero with a bad case of hay fever,
that hilarious ailment, and saves
his greatest flourish of energy for
a homecoming sequence that
features such novel laugh-getters
a5 two bands playing at once, end–
less cut-in shots of Franklin Pang–
born mopping his brow and look–
ing harried, and the greatest array
