Not as a Stranger

I've just been treated to this wonderful film, courtesy of the wonderful TCM, and while it is not the best film ever made, and is indeed flawed, I can't believe this has been SO overlooked as it has!! This takes place in then-modern day 1955, which, if you think about it, is just after the Korean war. I'm a BIG fan of the TV series "M*A*S*H," so a film mostly concerning surgeons in the mid-'50s has GOT to interest me. But the real surprise here is that, as popular as giant stars like Robert Mitchum, Olivia de Havilland, Frank Sinatra, and Broderick Crawford were at the time of this film's release, more hasn't been said about it since then. In other words, I should've heard of it long before now.

Mitchum and Sinatra are chums at a medical school, and their prime professor is Crawford. Mitchum is the student EXTREMELY determined to become a doctor, as opposed to Sinatra and other friends, who are pretty half-assed in their desires. Then, Mitchum finds he's having troubles coming up with enough money to finance the tuition for his next year of education. Suddenly, he meets and falls in love with a Swedish nurse, who has plenty of money to help him through the hard times. So Mitchum then marries the lady. Mitchum's friend Sinatra thinks this is a bad thing to do, and tells him so, but life goes on. Like I said, this is not a movie without flaws, but it's so full of rich performances and a cast of unbelievable stars of past and present (hey, when was the last time you saw the Little Rascals' Alfalfa and the Beverly Hillbillies' Miss Jane in the same movie?). This is so totally worth seeing. As a fan of old movies, and having a total appreciation for Mitchum, Sinatra, Ms. de Havilland and Crawford, this was an unexpected joy to behold. ***, out of ****

Nicely cast melodrama from the 1950s with the notable exception of Robert Mitchum in the lead. Despite the miscasting, Mitchum does deliver a strong performance, but I think Kirk Douglas would have done far more with the role of Lucas Marsh.

Olivia DeHavilland has a very convincing Swedish accent in her role as the 30s something nurse who marries Mitchum for love when he's courting her for her money so he can finish medical school. And that's really where the story begins. Mitchum's Lucas Marsh wants that medical career so bad, he'll do anything for it. He's arrogant, self-centered, and when he falls away from the ideal that he sees himself as, it's a come down. Whether having to apologize to Whit Bissell when he challenges him in class, or giving way to passion when he's unfaithful to DeHavilland with Gloria Grahame, he destroys himself bit by bit. When Mitchum makes a mistake in an operation that costs the life of his benefactor Charles Bickford, he's close to suicidal. In the end we're really not sure he's going to live with himself.

The rest of the cast is outstanding. Frank Sinatra in a role similar to Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity functions well as Mitchum's conscience. I also have to single out Lon Chaney, Jr. who in his one scene in the movie as Mitchum's father, delivers one of his best performances.

In the recent biography of Robert Mitchum, Baby I Don't Care, the author says that Stanley Kramer unknowingly assembled one of the biggest group of booze hounds in Hollywood. Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Broderick Crawford, Myron McCormick, and Lon Chaney, Jr. were all legendary in the drinking profession. But God Bless Stanley Kramer who managed to get them all working on a good piece of film making.

***SPOILERS**** Very effective, if a bit over dramatic at times, medical drama having to do with a man who's so obsessed in becoming a doctor that he loses touch with the feelings of those around and close to him. Despertly wanting to continue his education in medical school Lucas Marsh, Robert Mitchum, goes so far as making a play for nurse Kristina Hedvigson, Olivia De Haviland, who he needs to pay for his tuition. Kristina a very sweet and caring young woman who's anything but the hot number that Lucas would normally go for is flattered by the attention that Lucus is giving her and in no time at all accepts his proposal for marriage. Kristine also without as much as saying a word pays for Lucas tuition which turns out to be a very good investment with him graduating at the top of his class.

Al Broome, Frank Sinatra, a fellow med student and Lucas' best friend sees through his fake romancing of Kristine which has him almost knocked cold by an enraged Lucas. Throughout the movie Al is the one person who tries to keep the two from splitting up when Kristina finally senses that she's being taken for a ride by her new husband.

It's when he's still in medical school that Lucas' arrogant and rebellious attitude toward his fellow doctors comes to the surface with him challenging Dr. Detrick, Whit Bissell, a teacher at the school about a medical procurer he's teaching the students which almost has him kicked out of the class and school. It takes a very painful apology by Lucas to keep him from having his medical career from ending before it ever began.

Now a full-fledged doctor Lucas and Kristine moves into the sleepy little town of Greenville to start his practice. It's also at Greenville where he starts to have an affair with local débutante Harriet Lange, Gloria Grahame, that leads to Kristina, who was pregnant at the time, walking out on him.

Much more complicated then you would expect it to be the film "Not as a Stranger" shows human relations at their rawest and most painful. There's in the film Lucas' father Job, Lon Chaney Jr, drinking away his sons tuition money that his wife left him. We later have a very explosive confrontation between father and son where Job is left crawling into his bottle of booze and ending up later in the movie, to Lucas' shock and horror, under the wheels of a city bus crushed to death. There's also Lucus' friendship with the wise-cracking and comical yet at the same time caring and understanding Al Broome. Lucus' hurts Al by bringing out, right in front of his fellow doctors and nurses, the fact that he operated on his patient not only without his permission but without checking that if she was suffering from melanoma which could have caused the cancer cells to spread all through her blood-stream. Lucas threatens to have him not only fired from his job as a doctor at the hospital but have his medical licenses revoked. It tuned out that the tumor that Al removed was benign.

Lucas' God-like belief in his ability as a man of medicine makes it almost impossible for anyone to work with him by demanding total perfection of the medical personal in Greenville Hospital, like his does of himself. Where at the same time he's anything but the perfect husband to his wife the mentally and emotionally abused Kristina. It's when Al checked out Kristina and finds that she's pregnant and very upset about it that he realizes that his friend Lucas is slowly causing her to have a breakdown. When he sense that instead of being overjoyed with the thought of starting a family with her husband she's going into a state of deep depression instead!

Juggling his duties as a doctor with his affair with Harrit Lucas' world comes to a crashing end. It's when he's suddenly called into the hospital operating room to operate on his friend and fellow doctor Dave Ruckelman, Charles Brickford, who just had a massive heart-attack and is not expected to pull through. Lucas who preformed miracles on the operating table in the past couldn't save his friend this time around. Just when it seemed that he got Daves heart back to normal it suddenly flat-lined, causing Dave to pass away.leaving Lucus shocked and destroyed in him feeling for the very first time that he isn't as infallible as he always thought that he was.

Coming back home, from where he was earlier kicked out, to Kristina a broken and helpless man Lucas finally saw what he was so blinded to. Lucas now realizes just how much he needed Kristina and how without her he never would have made it out of medical school and in the world of preventive medicine. Kristina, to her credit, took Lucas back knowing that his arrogance and ego-maniacal sense of self-importance died on the operating table together with his and her good friend and associate Dr.Dave Ruckleman.

Very good black and white Doctor Film. Robert Mitchim does a fine job playing a dedicated doctor. He proves that he can play a sensitive character as well as a cowboy or detective. Broderick Crawford was well cast as a teaching Pathologist. Mr. Crawfords ability to play an overbearing and intense individual suits his character quite well. Operating room and Hospital Ward scenes were well done as this is now a 55 year old Movie. It remarkable how much the medical profession as advanced in innovations and equipment in a little more than half a century. Worth watching especially if you are a Mitchim fan. It is one of the better films of the fifties where they don't over due lighting up and smoking one Cigarete after another. Harry

There has been a lot of criticism of Robert Mitchum in this film. I thought he was perfectly cast. I haven't seen this movie since I was a teen, in the 1960s. However, there were three scenes in the movie that moved me so strongly I can see them in my mind's eye all these years later. The first is the emotional scene when Olivia de Havilland can take no more of Mitchum's treatment and tells him to get out. She was so powerful and poignant. The second was when Mitchum was trying to revive Bickford and couldn't. Finally, the scene where he went back home, and de Havilland opened the door and Mitchum just stood there looking at her so pathetically. I just finished watching The Snake Pit and I'm going to go rent Not as a Stranger. She is such an amazing actress!