"their overall assessment of Maria: "Maria""s not an asset to the Abbey."The Reverend Mother (Peggy Wood) wonders about how o cure the deficiencies of the troublesome, flighty, outspoken, and unpredictable trainee:How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?.To underline the assaultive nature of the film""s content, much of its camera workis deliberately in-out, with few pans or much lateral/horizontal movement.""Shaw shocks his parents when he tells them that he isn""t accompanying them home on their campaign plane, but will instead be going to New York to work for respected and decent liberal publisher Holborn Gaines (Lloyd Corrigan) as his confidential assistant - Gaines is denounced by his arrogant mother as "a Communist!" In he expressions of her face, she exhibits brash forcefulness, vehement insistence, and subdued violence.He playfully reminds his ""forgetful,"" long-suffering and tormented wife that he is merely disciplining her thoughtlessness.Then, o further embarrass a bewildered Peggy, who has never been in a Broadway production before, she is sent to another door across the hall - this time to the dressing-room of cherubic Billy Lawler (Dick Powell in his fourth film), the show""s leading man.