The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of the United States 1932-1972

p. 595

On the 1950s: “Throughout the decade tastelessness and vulgarity shrieked out from billboards and TV screens—wherever the peddler opened his pack and hawked his wares. If there was one moment which summed up the rest, it came on CBS-TV at the climax of ‘Judgment at Nuremberg,’ a brilliant piece of theater produced by the network’s Playhouse 90. The theme was the injustice of justice in Nazi Germany. Claude Rains, the American judge, confronted Paul Lukas, a German jurist. ‘How in the name of God,’ Rains asked, ‘can you ask me to understand the extermination of men, women, and children in–?’ His lips moved soundlessly. The missing phrase was “gas ovens.” It had been cut at the insistence of Playhouse 90’s sponsor, the American Gas Association.”