His family loved him dearly but knew there was something wrong with John (played by Robert Walker). Perhaps it was because he had ‘more degrees than a thermometer’, and had grown apart intellectually from his simple, well-meaning parents. Maybe it was because he spent too long away from their small home town, in Washington, DC, where he was mysteriously working for the government.

Dan and Lucille Jefferson (Dean Jagger and Helen Hayes) had recently grown to tolerate their son's effete and snobbish manner. But his failure to return home in time to see his clean-cut younger brothers depart for combat in Korea was unforgivable. For John then to ridicule his father's patriotism and mock his mother's devotion to Christianity was the last straw. Little wonder Mr Jefferson, a member of the American Legion, tries to knock some sense into his snide son by belting him with a Bible.