Bright Day

Bright Day is a novel by J. B. Priestley, first published in 1946. One of his better-known works, it combines nostalgia for the northern England that existed before the First World War with an optimism inspired by the conclusion of the Second.

Plot introduction

In 1946, an English screenwriter, Gregory Dawson, goes to a seaside hotel in Cornwall to finish a screenplay. An accidental meeting with two people from his distant past prompts him to explore his memories of his youth in 'Bruddersford' (a fictional town conflating Bradford and Huddersfield) between October 1912 and June 1914.

Plot summary

Chapters 1–6

Gregory Dawson is an English screenwriter in his fifties, who fought in the First World War, and who has spent most of the Second World War in Britain after ten years in Hollywood. He has retreated in the spring of 1946 to the Cornish village of Tralorna to finish the screenplay for a film called The Lady Hits Back. An oldish couple staying at his hotel, the Royal Ocean, seem strangely familiar. They are identified to him as "Lord and Lady Harndean". In the hotel's restaurant Dawson is condescending to the musicians, who attempt to impress him by playing the slow movement of Schubert's B flat trio. The music triggers Dawson's memory, and he realises that the couple are Mr and Mrs Nixey, whom he has not seen since 1914. He approaches and introduces himself.

The Brighter Day

The Brighter Day is an American daytime soap opera which aired on CBS from January 4, 1954 to September 28, 1962. Originally created for NBC radio by Irna Phillips in 1948, the radio and television versions ran simultaneously from 1954–1956. Set in New Hope, Wisconsin, the series revolved around Reverend Richard Dennis and his four children, Althea, Patsy, Babby and Grayling.

The Brighter Day was the first soap opera to air on network television with an explicitly religious theme. Another soap opera created by Phillips, The Guiding Light, initially had a religious theme as a radio show but dropped it by the time the series moved to television.

History

The original radio version took place in the town of Three Rivers, but in late 1953 the Dennis family was forced to move to New Hope as a result of a flood washing out Three Rivers. Later in the run, the Dennis family moved to Columbus, established as a college town. There were five children in the radio version, but the oldest daughter, Liz (played from 1949–1954 by actress Margaret Draper), married and left the family as the show began on television. Also living with Reverend Dennis was his widowed sister, Emily Potter.

The Ministry of Silly Walks

"The Ministry of Silly Walks" is a sketch from the Monty Python comedy troupe's television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, season 2, episode 14, which is entitled "Face the Press". The episode first aired in 1970. A shortened version of the sketch was performed for Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. This sketch involves John Cleese as a bowler hatted civil servant in a fictitious British government ministry responsible for developing silly walks through grants. Cleese, throughout the sketch, walks in a variety of silly ways. It is these various silly walks, more than the dialogue, that has earned the sketch its popularity. Cleese has cited the physical comedy of Max Wall, probably in character as Professor Wallofski, as important to its conception.

Sketch

The sketch as originally depicted in the series begins with John Cleese playing a nameless civil servant who, after purchasing The Times from the general store/newsagent in the previous sketch, walks through the streets of London (at the crossing of Thorpebank Road and Dunraven Road) in a very peculiar manner. He eventually arrives at his place of business: The Ministry of Silly Walks (on the northern end of Whitehall). In the hallway, he passes other employees all exhibiting their own silly walks before arriving at his office (the Hollywood Bowl performance omits this preamble). Once there, he finds a man waiting for him—one Mr Putey (Michael Palin)—and apologizes for the delay, explaining that his walk has become particularly silly of late and it takes longer for him to reach his destination.