Sunday, January 1 - Private Information

Private Information (1952)

Jill Esmond is a parson's widow. Her daughter, Carol Marsh, is an aspiring writer with a fine collection of rejection slips. Her son, Jack Watling, works for the surveyor's office. He has just prepared a report on the (housing) project they live in, saying the construction is bad and the pipes are worse. He asks her to put it away while he goes to London to take a test. Instead, she reads it.

Then she goes to a town council meeting, where she complains about the rattling, jerry-built houses and suggests that someone's bank account is fat because of it. Under threat of eviction, the loss of her son's job, and lawsuit for slander, she agrees to publicly retract the statement.... until ex-doctor and current local newspaper publisher Gerard Heinz talks to her. She tears up the statement publicly, and the council decides they must sue.

Then typhoid hits the council houses...