Sister Kenny

I wasn't expecting much from a biography of Sister Kenny, an Australian nurse who developed a method of treatment for children stricken with poliomyelitis. I could see it all. One child after breathing his last, "God bless Sister Kenny," while she sobbed at his bedside and held his hand while he slipped away. At the end, after her apotheosis, during a triumphant crescendo, a crippled boy throws away his crutches and cries, "I can WALK, mein Fuhrer!"

But no. Sister Kenny, knowing nothing about infantile paralysis, begins fiddling around with it in the Australian outback and develops a theory that is, in some senses, the exact opposite of the medical establishment's. That establishment is really "pig-headed", as she puts it. Well, they have to be, actually. The experts and their received wisdom can't be successfully challenged by a mere mortal. If they were, they wouldn't be "experts" anymore. She's successful, of course, or there would be no movie. All this takes place during the first half of the 20th century and has Sister Kenny traveling from Australia to Europe and to Minnesota. Old friends die. Children are apparently cured.

There are a couple of things that lift the film out of the ordinary biopic genre. One is Rosalind Russel's performance and the way her role is written by Dudley Nichols. She's impertinent and sarcastic. In fact she reminded me a lot of Margaret Mead, acerbic and distant, putting family life second to her career. Russel has never been better in what is a fairly demanding role.

Another point in its favor is that we are mercifully spared the sobbing and the dying and the children begging for help from a mothering figure. Russel is hardly maternal. Multiple opportunities for pointless and sentimental scenes were eschewed. Her humanity is on display in abundance but it's in code.

Nice job.

This film is about a real-life nurse named "Sister Kenny" who came from the Australian Outback and made a name for herself in the early days of Polio treatment. The only problem with the film is that they made it look like her way of treating patients through body massages and hands on treatment was super effective. While it WAS a significant improvement over the care received by doctors at the time, preventative vaccines and the elimination of the disease would not occur until later. However, what the film shows so well is the fight she experienced from conservative doctors unwilling to try new methods--especially ones espoused by a lowly nurse! The film also excels because it does not give in to sentimentality like so many schmaltzy biopics from the 30s and 40s. An excellent and easy to enjoy film.

In 1963 (when I was 17), my parents took me and my younger sister on a summer holiday to Whitby a coastal town in Yorkshire, UK.We stayed at a hotel there which showed this film as entertainment for the guests.I never forgot it nor the performance of Rosalind Russell which I regard as her best film and better than "His Girl Friday" with Cary Grant since it deals with a real person and real events, always more convincing in my book than mere fiction.She was well supported by actor Alexander Knox who played an orthopedic surgeon, friend and colleague and known to me as the surgeon "Mr Joyce" in the 1956 film "Reach for the Sky", who operates on the broken legs of Douglas Bader.I would have liked 20th Century Fox to have employed more Australian character actors but as there were few in Hollywood in 1946 and as Americans seem to have a hard time doing the Australian accent and as many were being demobbed in 1946, this is understandable.Other reviewers have described the screenplay and basic biography of Elizabeth Kenny satisfactorily, so I won't reiterate it.I awarded this film 8/10 and am grateful to Youtube for uploading it.

In early 20th century, Sister Elizabeth Kenny (Rosalind Russell) decides to be a bush nurse in the Australian outback far from the closest hospital. She treats a child with a case of Infantile paralysis and develops a treatment but the medical establishment is resistant to her work due to her lack of formal medical education and its direct opposition to medical orthodoxy.

This is one of those biopics where the lead spends all her life struggling without realizing that she had been doing great work over a lifetime. These are uplifting sentimental fares and that's mostly what this movie is. Sister Kenny is a bit vinegary but not really. The biggest problem for me is the moniker Sister Kenny. I assumed that she was a nun. The movie should really explain that Australian terminology much earlier. I thought that I was missing something for most of the movie. Geez.

This fine movie has a very inspirational message and Rosalind Russell's strong performance delivers it. Based on a true story, Sister Kenny never wavers from her conviction about the amazing treatment she has discovered for helping polio sufferers. This film should be considered a classic and a must see for the encouragement of dedication towards a worthy cause, as this story delivers so strongly. Rosalind Russell was a perfect choice to play the strong-willed nurse with an important mission. Philip Merivale is equally good as the stubborn nemesis Dr.Brack, whom Sister Kenny must continually battle against his cynicism of her treatments. Presented well, this film does not mire down in sentimentality, but rather, proceeds at an entertaining pace, sufficiently delivering an uplifting story. I found this to be an enjoyable and worthwhile movie that has stood the test of time.