Last Week Tonight Last Night
On last night's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the main story was on medical devices, and it was wonderful -- pointed, in-depth and yet very funny.
One point of interest -- I think. Somewhat early in the piece they show a clip from a very old informational Public Service film by the FDA explaining that not all medical devices should be considered safe and why one should be careful. While it helps make the point Oliver and his team were driving at, I'm sure it got lots of chuckles for its stylistic presentation of the age -- except that if my observation is correct, it's much more interesting than that because I'm pretty-near certain that the spokesperson was none other than Raymond Massey, one of the most acclaimed actors of his era.
I suspect that most readers of these pages know Raymond Massey, though plenty don't. He was most-famous for his stage role in the play Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert Sherwood, a performance he recreated for the movies and for which he got an Oscar nomination. He also played the comic role originated on stage by Boris Karloff in the classic comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. And starred as James Dean's self-righteous, religious father in the film East of Eden. What I also suspect is that they didn't identify him because -- just a guess -- they didn't know it was Raymond Massey...)
But back to John Oliver and his look at medical devices --
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