King Vidor's 1941 adaptation of J.P. Marquand's H.M. Pulham, Esq. carries the challenge of The Crowd one step further: to defend the value of an "average," passive life. The argument here is that the suburban routines and pious virtues, when chosen deliberately, are a form of freedom. Robert Young is the Bostonian WASP hero-or rather anti-hero, since he can look like a man without qualities. Set against him is Hedy Lamarr, an immigrant's daughter better adapted to the rat race of the Manhattan advertising world, and virtually unique among classic Hollywood women for consciously choosing a life of professional independence over romantic domesticity. It's a smooth film, made perhaps too much in its hero's bland image, but subtly unconventional too. Vidor's script, written in collaboration with his (third) wife, gives the institution of marriage a rough going over. "I think I got by with that because I was my own producer," Vidor commented. "I'm not sure if it is a happy ending or not." As an essay in troubled conformity, H.M. Pulham, Esq. marks a worthy midpoint between Babbitt (1922) and The Organization Man (1956), and, on film, a precursor to The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. Scott Simmon