Night Nurse

One of Barbara Stanwyck's best early starring films is Night Nurse which essentially is two separate stories.

The first is young Barbara in training to be a nurse and teaming up with Joan Blondell, another would be nurse, in a typical Joan Blondell role. Stanwyck is a bit more dedicated to the profession, but she learns from Blondell how to take a more realistic attitude.

The second part of the film concerns Stanwyck being assigned as a private night nurse to some kids who are being slowly starved to death. Something is really wrong when you see malnourished kids in a purportedly wealthy home. Stanwyck suspects something amiss and she's quite right. The doctor Ralf Harolde and the chauffeur Clark Gable are in cahoots in a murderous scheme.

Stanwyck puts her own career on the line to bring some justice and compassion to her charges. In doing so she has to step on some medical toes and question the ethics of who she's working for.

Clark Gable was loaned out from MGM to play the murderous chauffeur and if he hadn't been discovered as a new kind of tough leading man, he would have had a grand career as a character actor playing all kinds of thugs who slug. And slug Stanwyck he does, right on the kisser.

Stanwyck gets some help from breezy bootlegger Ben Lyon who would soon be leaving for the UK with his wife Bebe Daniels where he would have his best success. Earlier in the film Stanwyck kind of winks at the rules where Lyon is concerned and she makes a friend who comes in real handy when dealing with Gable and Harolde.

Lyon is fine, but this seemed to be a part James Cagney would have been perfect for. And Cagney going up against Gable would really have made this a classic.

A tawdry and downright disturbing pre-code film that stars Barbara Stanwyck giving one hell of a ferocious performance.

Stanwyck plays the titular night nurse, assigned to care for the two small children of a negligent and drunken floozy. The children's' father is dead; the family chauffeur, played by a hateful Clark Gable, is running things, and he wants the children to die so that he can collect the trust money that was intended for them. Therefore, the children are wasting away from starvation while a useless maid dithers around and Stanwyck tries to get the hospital to intervene.

The film would probably be instantly forgettable if not for the fierce performance of Stanwyck, who throws herself (quite literally) into the role of savior, taking punches, getting thrown into a wall, all while dishing out some punches of her own. This is film-making of the sensational Warners variety, featuring lots of suggestive dialogue, shots of Stanwyck and her nurse buddy, the saucy Joan Blondell, in their underwear, and a world in which things like murder are o.k. as long as they're done for the right reason. The movie is certainly no masterpiece, but it does have that energy and sizzle that characterized Warners films from this time period, and it is effective on its own modest terms.

Grade: B+

"Night Nurse" is representative of pre-code era films--only slightly risqué by today's standards. It is also representative of the times in the sense that Hollywood seemed to be enamored of the medical profession--both doctors and nurses--during the period, with many such scripts being produced. I think it is due to changing views about medical professionals, instigated by medicine being more science-centered. Audiences probably learned a lot about medical procedures and standards that were somewhat new. This makes such films interesting now from a historic standpoint; and they are interesting as comparisons to today's methods. What we most learn is that standards of care which are en vogue almost always look primitive (and ignorant) by standards only fifty years later.

Joan Blondell and Barbara Stanwyck star in this film about the education, training and practicing of nurses. Stanwyck's character trains in a hospital after no medical education. The girls knock heads with the nurse in charge of their training (and their morals). They deal with the orderlies and physicians who, being male, have a sense of entitlement. Eventually, they get jobs in private care, tending to two young girls who seem neglected.

Clark Gable portrays a belligerent chauffeur with suspect intentions, though his part is a minor one. He plays "sinister" very well, perhaps a clue to his later successes portraying men who are somewhat threatening (like John Garfield).

At one point--as Stanwyck tries to unravel the mystery of the young girls' declining health--the film slows. Otherwise, I found it interesting on many levels. It is fun to see Blondell and Stanwyck as such young women. Even then, Stanwyck commanded the screen with her intensity, when necessary.

... that being the central theme of a conspiracy to starve two wealthy children to death to get control of their trust fund.

More than half of the film, though, isn't about this at all, probably because the people involved are either so unlikeable or weak, exactly what are you going to do with the characters involved? It's not like you are going to want to endow them with any humanity, otherwise they wouldn't be able to do what they are doing. Thus about half of the film is about Lora Hart's (Barbara Stanwyck's) quest to become a nurse.

Her roommate during her training is Maloney (Joan Blondell). Lora's character is sincere where Maloney is like most of Blondell's precode roles - cynical and sassy. They can both dish out the precode one liners though. It's hard to think that just 90 years ago the equivalent of a RN could have just three years of high school and some on the job hospital training, but that is the case with Lora Hart.

Along the way during Lora's training, a bootlegger (Ben Lyon) wanders into the hospital with a bullet wound when she is unaccompanied and convinces her to treat him and not report it to the police, which is required by law. As a result this guy becomes her "pal" and that is useful when she needs some help in the second half when nobody will help her with the starving kids because of "professional ethics" that require that doctors and nurses not speak up about the situations that they see, when such ethics can never have meant to just let two kids starve to death.

Ben Lyon seems just a little too good natured to be a criminal who routinely orders people killed. It's also very odd seeing Clark Gable as the brutal chauffeur. Warner Brothers gave him a couple of parts in 1931 - in this one and in "The Finger Points". WB completely overlooked his talent and MGM reaped the rewards from that oversight.

Anyone who thought exploitation movies were invented in the 1960s will know better after having watched Night Nurse. It's a strange mix of comedy, drama and mild sleaze. The story is pretty weak but for fans of Barbara Stanwyck this is an absolute must see. Her performance is very energetic (aggressively shoving her face very close to that of other people, punching big guys, hurtling bottles of champagne around etc.) and she really comes through as a sensuous – albeit tough as nails - nurse. For some time she must wear a tiny band aid on her chin which makes her even more attractive. Joan Blondell is also great as her gum chewing friend, setting the standard for vulgarity. The movie basically deals with the ethics of the medical profession which is treated with amazing cynicism.

The highlight for me was the conversation between the excited Stanwyck character and an older Pappy-type doctor. The nurse suspects foul play in a particular medical case and Pappy tries to calm her down with sensible arguments. The nurse quickly loses her patience and her temper, shouting. „Aw, ethics, ethics, ethics! I'm through with ethics!" It's really a well played scene which brings the character and temperament of the nurse to the fore and reflects the atmosphere of the whole movie. I also liked the unethical doctor with his facial twist and snazzy uniform which must have influenced people who created the wardrobe for Starship Enterprise. His big office has very elegant Art Deco trappings and is in stark contrast to the rather cramped conditions in the ethically operated hospital shown in this movie.