Yellow Jack

Yellow Jack is a film that should be seen more often, if for no other reason than that people should know and appreciate who Walter Reed was and why the United States Army named its medical facility after him.

Sidney Howard had written a play about Reed and his efforts to find a cure for yellow fever, popularly called yellow jack. The original play brought in the British army efforts to do the same thing as well. All that was eliminated and we concentrate on Reed here. Just as well that movie audiences were not diverted from what was going on in Cuba.

Walter Reed was a member of the army medical corps who headed a team of doctors sent specifically to find a cure for yellow fever. Previous reviewers have noted what a scourge it was in the western hemisphere. During a hot summer, the mosquitoes who were the carriers, went as far north as our mid-Atlantic states.

Reed met a lot of resistance, but he was fortunate to have as the Governor General of Cuba after the Spanish American War, Leonard Wood. You see, Wood was a doctor and had joined the army medical corps himself. Wood is played in the film by Jonathan Hale.

Yellow Jack ran for 79 performances during 1934 and the part of the Irish sergeant was played by James Stewart on Broadway. In fact Stewart's performance was noticed by MGM which signed him and brought him to Hollywood. Why they didn't use him in the film, God only knows.

In his entire career in the cinema, I don't think Jimmy Stewart ever attempted any kind of accent, even when he was playing an ethnic or regional type. I'm sure he knew his limitations there.

Now I have heard far worse attempts at a brogue than Robert Montgomery's effort. It's passable enough and Montgomery is a skilled enough player to smooth over the rest. Montgomery is a sergeant in the medical corps and four of his men and he volunteer to be exposed to the Yellow Fever to prove a theory that certain mosquitoes spread the disease. The rest of the volunteers are Sam Levene, Alan Curtis, William Henry, and Buddy Ebsen. Sam Levene was the only member of the original Broadway cast to repeat his role on screen.

Lewis Stone, best known to movie audiences as Judge Hardy, is a stern and dedicated Walter Reed. Like so many scientists Reed met with a lot of ridicule from the medical profession. There always is ridicule until the experts are proved wrong.

If there is a flaw in the film it's Virginia Bruce. Her romance with Montgomery doesn't really advance the plot and she looks out of place, fresh as a daisy for someone working in the tropics.

I'd have liked to have seen more of Charles Coburn as the doctor who Reed based his ideas on and less of Ms. Bruce.

Still and all Yellow Jack is an entertaining and informative film about some very courageous people.

This film begins in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American War with the victorious American army now facing an even more deadly foe-yellow fever. And the concern is even more heightened due to the fact that nobody knows what causes it or how it is spread. So fearful that the returning soldiers may bring this deadly disease back to the United States the army sends a team of highly respected doctors led by a man named "Major Walter Reed" (Lewis Stone) to look for answers. Unfortunately, after a full year in Cuba he is forced to admit to the commander of the area that he is no closer to finding the cause or the cure than he was the day he arrived. Then one day he is apprised of some research conducted by a local doctor named "Carlos Finlay" (Charles Coburn) who had proposed a cause for the disease almost 19 years previously but was derided for it. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a decent drama which contained elements of suspense and romance within the plot as well. And even though it was clearly dated, I still found it to be somewhat enjoyable and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

It is circa 1900 in Cuba, and after quickly winning the Spanish American war, the American military is finding more casualties and danger in the mysterious "Yellow Jack" or Yellow Fever than it ever found in the easily dispatched Spanish troops. There are multiple theories as to what causes the disease, and Walter Reed (Lewis Stone), a group of physicians, and a group of ordinary soldiers are set to the task of determining the actual cause.

The dialogue that is written for the ordinary enlisted men which is supposed to demonstrate camaraderie, personal dreams, personal fears - the kind of scenes that John Ford excelled at directing - is just awful. It drifts between boring and silly, especially the lines Buddy Ebsen is stuck with. Among the soldiers is Irish American John O'Hara (Robert Montgomery), in probably one of the worst roles MGM ever gave him.I wonder who exactly thought that Robert Montgomery playing this role with an Irish Brogue was a good idea?

For some reason absolutely beyond me, O'Hara is just mad about nurse Frances Blake (Virginia Bruce). Granted, O'Hara's approach is not at all smooth nor conscientious, but nurse Blake is just plain awful to the guy. When she's not being condescending to John O'Hara, she's trying to use her feminine wiles to get him to volunteer for what could possibly be a deadly experiment in such an obvious way that even the rather thick O'Hara gets that she did not decide to meet him in the moonlight because she suddenly found him irresistible.

When O'Hara does volunteer for Reed's experiment on the cause of Yellow Jack, Nurse Blake probably makes him wish he would die of the disease just so he wouldn't have to listen to her droning speeches and pontificating that are supposed to be encouragement and flattery?? He probably liked her better when she didn't like him, because she talked less! So what's good about this movie? Lewis Stone as Walter Reed, and believe it or not, I really liked Virginia Bruce here. MGM often cast her as demure likable girls, and she really has me disliking her here, so her performance was good and showed she had range as an actress, it was just a bad role. Also, although everyone has probably heard about Walter Reed, this film tells you his role in eliminating a common killer that was a problem not just in Cuba, but in the U.S. southern states until the cause was found.

Probably worth it just for the historical angle.

"Yellow Jack" from 1938 is based on a play by Sidney Howard. It stars Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Andy Devine, Henry Hull, Buddy Ebsen, and Charles Coburn.

In 1898, hundreds of soldiers are dying from "Yellow Fever," known as "yellow jack." Major Walter Reed (Stone), who is a physician for the Army, is trying to find what causes the infection. He draws upon the work of a Dr. Finlay (Coburn), who has been laughed out of conferences for his views.

It has to do with mosquitoes, but there is only one way to find out -- do comparative studies with soldiers, some bitten, some not, some living where people died, others not. But no one will volunteer.

These scientific discovery stories were all the rage in the '30s - Madame Curie, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, The Story of Louis Pasteur, etc. Unfortunately "Yellow Jack" is the weakest.

Because it's based on a play, it's talky. I don't mind talky if the dialogue is scintillating. This wasn't. Also, some of the acting is so far over the top it never landed on earth. Robert Montgomery's brogue was AWFUL, way overdone. Buddy Ebsen's okefenokee swamp accent was worse. Painful. Andy Devine was also out there.

Consequently, I wasn't drawn in by what should have been a compelling story. Lewis Stone was a sincere Reed, and Coburn as Finlay was good as well. Virginia Bruce gives a lovely performance. But it was hard to feel anything for that bunch of buffoons - that's how they came off.

YELLOW JACK is not the enthralling film it should have been about a subject like finding the cure for YELLOW JACK (or malaria), and too much of the early set-up for the story is so talky that right away you can almost see the wheels turning slowly in Sidney Howard's stage play.

But once it gets down to the experimenting, it becomes more interesting to watch. Then again, there are plenty of flaws in the material. One is the insistence on using ANDY DEVINE as comic relief throughout. He makes such a buffoon of the squeaky-voiced dimwit, that his character becomes nothing more than a cartoon. Adding to the unreality, is the appearance of cool blonde VIRGINIA BRUCE as a hard-working nurse in Cuba, looking as fresh as a cucumber no matter how unbearable the heat or how trying the situations are. She looks perfectly groomed in every loving close-up and her acting is, as usual, bland.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY's brogue seems to have annoyed many viewers here, but he does an okay job with the accent. Only question is, why did he have to be portrayed as an Irishman in the first place? And furthermore, why given the name of John O'Hara, when we already had a famous writer by the same name known to the public? Montgomery sounds much like the character he played in NIGHT MUST FALL, but at least his performance here is far better and more convincing than Miss Bruce's work.

Other cast members are competent enough, but little screen time is given to CHARLES COBURN in a minor role as a cynical doctor. Those that make the biggest impression are ALAN CURTIS (handsome man was leading man material and deserved better than this kind of supporting role), SAM LEVENE, HENRY HULL (although a bit overwrought), and in a very brief role as one of the first victims, PHILIP TERRY.

Interesting mainly for the cast and the unusual aspects of the story, but definitely a film that needed to be made more cinematic rather than stagebound with too much talk during the first half-hour.