Green Fingers

As people who have a talent for gardening are said to gave a green thumb so Robert Beatty is said to have green fingers, a natural talent to heal. Beatty has helped friends and co-workers, but has a limp himself courtesy of a war wound.

He goes to study under Felix Aylmer, but does not complete the course. Ge cures landlord's daughter Carol Raye and they marry. She proves to be a most forgiving wife especially after a dalliance with haughty society girl Nova Pilbeam.

There are some fine performances in a film with a confusing story. Confusing to this day because we really don't know where osteopathy is in the rankings of the medical profession.

Still the quartet of players mentioned do well and this is a pretty good film.

After osteopath Felix Aylmer cures his injured foot, Robert Beatty decides that's what he wants to be. When his landlord's daughter, Carol Raye, is told by doctors that she will never walk again, Beatty cures her -- months before he has completed his training. He quarrels with Aylmer and sets up practice without completing his training, and gets involved with Nova Pilbeam -- although he has married Miss Raye. Melodrama ensues.

For its first half, this movie looks like a tract for osteopathy and the gifted amateur. Once the melodrama begins, though, it becomes a much more standard sort of movie. There are some interesting bits; Beatty's curing of Miss Raye harks back to THE MIRACLE MAN. The actors are very good in their pig-headed portrayals, particularly Beatty and Miss Pilbeam, near the end of her career. She would retire the following year, following her second marriage.

Despite the title (the original novel was called 'The Persistent Warrior') this is a fanciful romantic melodrama about an osteopath rather than a comedy about a gardener.

Rugged hero Robert Beatty is cast somewhat against type achieving a similarly unorthodox career arc to Tyrone Power in the same year's 'Nightmare Alley', his rise in society resulting in his path crossing that of shoulder-padded high maintenance minx Nova Pilbeam, who attempts to come between him and loyal wife Carol Raye.

(Seeing this film over seventy years later, with the benefit of hindsight it is bizarre to realise that Miss Raye is still with us at 97, while Brefni O'Rourke - who plays the coroner who regards osteopaths as little more than witch doctors - died before the film was even released!)

Tom Stone is a fisherman who suffers from a permanent damage from the war, which gives him a limp, and which is the reason why he loses his job as a fisherman. However, he meets with Felix Aylmer, an osteopath in London, who sets his foot right, whereupon he decides to become an osteopath himself, but the road to that profession is long and arduous and costs a lot of work and money. However, he relies on his natural gift for healing, especially after having cured the crippled daughter of his landlord (Carol Raye) and is successful, until he meets Nova Pilbeam who wants to set him off in society. We all know what that sort of thing usually leads to. There are a few terrible crises in Tom's life which makes him seriously doubt his ability and even makes him refuse to use his hands any more. Felix Aylmer comes to revitalize him together with his wife, and gradually they succeed, after another difficult crisis. The film is extremely interesting from the point of vew of personal responsibility in a delicate profession, in which it is inevitable to commit mistakes and suffer adversities and have all your existence put to the test of radical doubt, and the difficult issue is how to deal with such trials. One could say that the moral sense of this extremely vital story is that you must never be afraid of committing mistakes, you will never be able to avoid them all, something contrary to your intentions must occasionally happen, and you have to face it and go on and make the best of it, and, whatever you, do, never give up. A wonderful film with splendid actors and great music in a very unpretentious form but the more vital for its lesson.

An interesting title in that I have only heard the term Green Fingers applied to successful gardeners, rather than those with a natural inclination toward osteopathy such as Robert Beatty's Tom Stone. This is a story that grips from the start in an adroitly cast film, with Felix Aylmer authoritative as the osteopath who trains Stone, while Beatty was a natural as a man of integrity, no matter what temptations he encounters eventually. His affair with Nova Pilbeam's socialite is treated in an almost perfunctory manner in the print under review, thus with the possibility of missing footage. Carol Raye is sympathetic as the girl he cures who becomes his loving and supportive wife. She also featured in director John Harlow's next feature, While I Live, which, though a success, did not prevent his career from going into steep decline. There's an apposite score from Hans May in a film that is reliably concerned to present both sides of the merits of its subject.