Directed by Cyril Frankel from Anne Burnaby's screenplay, with an all-star cast of fine British players, several from the great English classic era, this is a good, and good-looking children's "hospital procedural". There are some extremely touching moments, some bordering on the sentimental, but in the best sense of that word have several hankies ready. Basically plot less, the film's episodic story-telling follows the career of young novice nurse, Margaret, well played by the beautiful Sylvia Syms, as she tries to navigate the many trials and tribulations of her chosen, noble profession, in a somewhat idealized hospital setting (all in color!), with its staff of doctors, surgeons, "sisters" (nurses), and last but not least, the children. A romantic, but somewhat questionable, out-of-place plot element has young, inexperienced Syms unsuccessfully trying to snare handsome but confirmed bachelor doc, George Baker. The romance doesn't last long and is happily replaced by all the standard hospital dramas: children being brought in suffering from various traumas, battling various illnesses, desperate, anguished parents, very dedicated, sympathetic hospital staff.
The notable cast includes Anna Neagle, at 53, somewhat beyond her prime as perhaps England's most popular actress of the '30s into the '40s, but still beautiful, and wonderful as hospital matron, in one of the film's most moving scenes, as she rescues two children from an abusive mother. Flora Robson, as Sister Birch, delivers the films finest moment as she firmly, yet gently admonishes young Syms who is falling apart at the near death of one of her charges. Robson gets our vote as one of Britain's ten greatest actresses. The always fine Anthony Quayle, who is the kind and gentle hospital head doctor, was teamed with Syms in a very different film of the same year, the superb, mature and intelligent, "Woman in a Dressing Gown". Michael Hordern portrays the curmudgeonly-but-kindhearted head surgeon, and a young Joan Hickson, who plays the fussy, brooking-no-nonsense yet, humorous Sister Duckworth is remembered as TV's Miss Marple.
