communist. Nonetheless, the Hays office just had to have their  finger in the pie and would not allow the protagonists to kill off  Harold Goff, as they had in every performance of the original story,  Irwin Shaws play "The Gentle People," and  John Garfield (I) (qv)s character had to die accidentally, giving  the ending an interesting twist, which, as some critics noted, made  the story even better.