CBC Digital Archives

Fighting Words: Whither Montreal intellectuals?

The long-running Fighting Words ranked among the most intelligent, provocative and popular shows of its day. It was a panel show with a simple premise: viewers send in controversial quotations and the panellists discuss them. From 1953 to 1962, host Nathan Cohen presided over verbal bombshells and spirited arguments of prominent thinkers, artists and controversialists, including Pierre Trudeau, Irving Layton, Robertson Davies, Norman Mailer, Peter Ustinov and many more. Watch the fireworks as the CBC Digital Archives features 20 of the most lively, fascinating and provocative panels in CBC history.

There's surprisingly little smoking in this 1956 panel discussion, but with Morley Callaghan and Irving Layton together, you're guaranteed some verbal fire. Playwright and commentator Ted Allan and University of Toronto Quarterly editor Douglas Grant join the argument as practiced controversialist Callaghan supplies the contentious argument: "The opinion that Montreal has a dazzling intellectual life is a myth."
• Irving Layton, born Israel Pincu Lazarovitch, was nominated for the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, but Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez eventually took the prize. No Canadian has ever won the Nobel for literature.
Medium: Television
Program: Fighting Words
Broadcast Date: Dec. 9, 1956
Guest(s): Ted Allan, Morley Callaghan, Douglas Grant, Irving Layton
Host: Nathan Cohen
Duration: 12:21

Last updated: March 20, 2012

Page consulted on December 17, 2012

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