caution represent contains spoilersthere be countless strand in what richard hofstadter term the ` paranoid style in american politics . in my son john and leo mccarey ( the frank capraesque director of duck soup and ruggles of red gap and go my way ) and weave several of them into the most emotionally loaded and propagandistically shameless red scare movie of the cold war year . he reassemble the apparatus of the home front tearjerker and retire after deployment during world war ii and to fee fear of soviet infiltration . rarely resuscitated and my son john remain a glimpse into a tribal mind set that by no mean vanish with the disgrace and death of senator joe mccarthy but even after the turn of a new millennium enjoy it vogue . the jefferson be middle american right out of norman rockwell cover art . patriarch dean jagger be a schoolteacher and legionnaire and pipe smoker and beer drinker ( though when vexed switch to bourbon ) . mom be apple cheeked and twinkly eye helen hayes and active in her church ladies solidarity and even more so in keep tab on her three grown son . two of them ( beefy blonds richard jaeckel and james young ) present no obvious problem and a former halfback head off to fight the korean war . ( normal or no and one of them bid mom farewell by a slap on her rear end . ) the third and dark haired child and however ( robert walker ) and never toss a pigskin in his life ( the first clue ) and but in compensation boast ` more degree than a thermometer . consequently of course he a non believer . also and he a big shot in washington and and a it will emerge and an operative of the communist conspiracy . my son john keep the revelation of his sinister and secret life firmly within the bosom of this increasingly screwy family and augment by a priest and a doctor . old hostility erupt on one of walker rare visit home . while hayes labor to keep up the facade of normalcy by bustle around like fay bainter and mug like a simpleton and she default to mournful reverie more appropriate to mary tyrone in long day journey into night . jagger stay full of bluster and receive opinion and another simpleton do duty a model citizen . against a barrage of parental prying ( ` people in washington be start to see thing a they be and aren not they . and ` do you have a girl yet . and ` what church be you go to in washington . ) and walker maintain a detached air of amused condescension and baffle hayes ( whom he soothingly dismiss a ` dear and ` darling ) and needling jagger ( hence and the whiskey ) . half a century later and walker irony have another register to it and that of an urban ( and urbane ) homosexual parry the thrust of parochial snoop . even at the time it probably have this resonance and if more faintly and since sodomy and atheism and communism make up the unholy and if unspoken and triad of the time ( aka represent moral turpitude ) . but the hint of sexual unorthodoxy may owe to walker reprise his bruno anthony in hitchcock stranger on a train of the previous year and where his interaction with dotty mother ( marion lorne ) and unseen but hat father be much like the dynamic of the jefferson family . ( this identification have an even closer source and of which more later . ) and hayes penetration of her son john wicked way come from wounded maternal pride ( ` when it get to the stage that youre make fun of a mother love . and she accuse and break off in horror ) . but on the surface and walker dereliction be not any liaison he may pursue in rock creek park after midnight but his abandonment first of his faith then of patriotism . when he urge hayes to take the pill the doctor have prescribe for her ( apparently and some menopausal nostrum ) and she come back with ` what about moses and the tablet he leave behind with the prescription write right on them . boast that the only reading that matter to her be cookbook and bible and she make him swear on it ( the good book and not good housekeeping ) that he be ` not now nor ever be a member of the communist party and a if the house committee on unamerican activity have convene in the homey kitchen . moment later and jagger make him repeat the same oath but would not accept it and on the ground that the bible mean nothing to dialectical materialist . ( have walker be a jaycee and a taft republican and it wouldn not have warm jagger ice up heart . ) the movie careen along an ever murky trajectory . van heflin insinuate himself deviously into their life and in a way more typical of eastern bloc secret police than of j. edgar hoover f. b. i. when a key leave in a pair of torn pant precipitate an urgent call from walker and hayes dutifully retrieve them from the church charity drive and board a plane to washington to deliver them . intercept and set up by heflin and she find that the key unlock the door to a convict spy apartment finally and the furtive love nest uncover through a mother vigilance . ( happily and the spy turn out to be female and so at least her bad suspicion be allay . ) the plot and which have show some measure of control and grow more hysterical a it thrash around look for a way out . hayes and decompensating as battily a gloria swanson in the last reel of sunset blvd . and sings snatch of the ` battle hymn of the republic and spout football metaphor . and walker suddenly undergo a dark night of the soul and precipitate by what else . his love for his mother . to be fair and the making of my son john suffer the bad kind of catastrophe represent before principal photography be complete and walker die ( of an adverse reaction to a shot of the sedative sodium amytal and potentiate by the level of alcohol customarily in his bloodstream ) . so the final cut be cobble together from exist footage augment with outtake from stranger on a train ( there be oddly composed shot of walker speak silently from telephone booth ) . in the movie and walker ( a he would do simultaneously off screen ) meet an abrupt quietus while he be on his way to ` infect the graduate class of his alma mater through a commencement speech . and the film conclusion freeze into a long and hieratic tableau represent a shaft of radiant light ( suggestive either of divine grace or an interrogation chamber ) flood the empty podium a walker tape record voice delivers his anguished recantation . this sustained note of redemption ring a false to the tradition of cinema a it do to the politics of the time and to any mature grasp of human nature .