Not as a Stranger

Olivia deHavilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, and Charles Bickford star in "Not as a Stranger," the story of an arrogant young man (Mitchum) and his quest to become a great, godlike doctor. Along the way, he learns something about becoming a human being.

What a cast - Lon Chaney, Jr. even has a minor role as Mitchum's drunken father. Mae Clarke is a nurse. Harry Morgan plays a big eater, Virginia Christine his wife. If you look fast, you'll spot Lee Marvin and also Jerry Paris from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Mitchum and Sinatra are old to be medical students - Sinatra was 40 and Mitchum, 38. Mitchum is nevertheless very effective as an arrogant but poor man desperate to become a doctor - so desperate, in fact, that when he finds out that nurse deHavilland has $4,000 in the bank, he romances and marries her. Once out of medical school, he joins a country practice headed by Charles Bickford and meets sexy, lonely Gloria Grahame - and you nearly can see the sparks. Both actors had hot presences, both oozed sex appeal - I would have loved to have seen them in a star teaming instead of a subplot.

This is a very good film - perhaps overly long - but it still holds interest because of the performances and the characters they play. It's very much the story of Mitchum's character and evolution and his marriage to deHavilland. In these days of special effects, a character-driven story is refreshing.

All the performances are good, Sinatra supplying the wisecracks as a loyal friend of Mitchum's and the only one who understands him. There have been comments that he was miscast. There is such a thing as a society doctor, however, and the Sinatra character was on the track, so I didn't find his characterization that unrealistic.

The towering performance, of course, comes from Olivia deHavilland as Kris, a simple Swedish nurse who falls in love with Mitchum and marries him, only to find it isn't much of a relationship. I say "of course" because in my opinion, deHavilland was one of the great actresses of the classic era, capable of playing a wide variety of roles and in different genres. Sweet and gentle as Melanie, plain, in love, and bitter in "The Heiress," a petulant ingénue in "It's Love I'm After," a young beauty in "The Adventures of Robin Hood," elegant but tough in "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," she's letter-perfect as Kris. She is believable from the time she comes on camera with her unattractive blond hairdo, her accent, her plain ways, and her shyness. As Sinatra points out, she's not doctor's wife material - no parents who belong to a country club, no class - "She should marry a farmer," he says. 38 when the film was made, deHavilland is totally sympathetic as Mitchum criticizes her for not being smart and turns his back on her, not realizing her value as a wife and as a woman.

A very good movie. Recommended.

I'm a general practitioner and I can tell that this kind of doctoring regretfully does not exist anymore. I do not mean the business with the mole which, of course by what we know now, was wrong. I mean that these guys were really general practitioners who did almost everything, leaving almost nothing to specialists.

But that's not really why this movie is good. The character that Mitchum plays is a complicated one but still his motive is to be somebody that matters in this world, to be a genuinely worthy doctor. He doesn't lack heart but he lacks tolerance.

The reason I like this film is however that it describes people who truly care. Tolerance has a danger to slip into permissiveness, especially concerning power and that has happened too much today. With all it's shortcomings, and there are indeed some, the times that are displayed here still were a lot more decent than what we have today and what makes this film especially precious is that you can see the embryo of more evil times to follow if you are attentive enough.

A film to learn from in many ways.

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 ****

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!

Stanley Kramer made his directorial debut here, following story of a medical intern who marries for money, later becoming a country doctor with an unhappy love life. Surprisingly involving adaptation of Morton Thompson's novel is both cynical and humorous, and Kramer really excels in the scenes behind hospital doors, particularly in the patient montages. He takes a good while to warm up however, and the actors also struggle getting into character. Robert Mitchum doesn't strike me as the medic type, and neither does Frank Sinatra (cutting up à la Jack Lemmon, giving the film some bounce nevertheless), but Olivia de Havilland does good work in the romance department. Second-half of the picture is more assured, if more routine, but the film is quite entertaining on the whole. **1/2 from ****