Mary Benson (campaigner) Mary Benson (campaigner) Mary Benson (8 December 1919 – 19 June 2000) was a South African civil rights campaigner and author. Born in 1919 in Pretoria, Benson served in the South African Women's Army during World War II. After the war, she was secretary to film director David Lean. Benson became acquainted with the author Alan Paton, and read his novel "Cry, the beloved country" (1948), whose main theme was racial discrimination in South Africa. This affected her greatly, and she became a campaigner for the rights of black people there. She worked with Michael Scott (who, in 1946, was
Cry, the Beloved Country (1995 film) become so invested in the unleashing of violent emotion and the escalation of hostility, that expressions of restraint, reconciliation and forgiveness can easily be read as corny cop-outs. "Cry, the Beloved Country" is not corny, and it doesn't cop out." Conversely, Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" had a less positive view of the film, giving it only two and half out of four stars, and commenting, "The film has genuine qualities. Its photography and tone evoke a South Africa that is indeed beloved by its inhabitants ('If the climate and the landscape were not so beautiful, we would have