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***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

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.

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.

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.

Stanley Kramer made his directorial debut here, following the journey 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 is generally miscast--he doesn't strike me as the medic type--as is Frank Sinatra, cutting up à la Jack Lemmon (Sinatra nevertheless gives the film some bounce). Olivia de Havilland does her usual 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. One Oscar nomination: Best Sound. **1/2 from ****

Although a couple of the actors are too old for their parts or otherwise poorly cast, "Not as a Stranger" has some good performances and an engrossing story. Based on a popular novel by Morton Thompson, the film was producer Stanley Kramer's first directorial attempt. The plot follows a young medical student through his studies and internship and into the early years of his practice. If the nearly-40-year old Robert Mitchum can be accepted as a struggling student, then possibly Olivia de Havilland can play a young Swedish nurse. De Havilland should have sued the film's hair stylist for the phony blonde dye job and the stiff 1950's hair-do. Olivia's hair and wardrobe make the actress, who was actually a year younger than Mitchum, look more like a matronly aunt than a young intern's romantic interest. Unfortunately, her Swedish accent is about as convincing as her blonde roots.

The rest of the star-studded cast, which includes five Oscar winners, is more appropriate. Broderick Crawford portrays a humorless professor, Frank Sinatra is the rash student who pursues the money in medicine, and Charles Bickford plays a dedicated small-town doctor. Whenever slinky, sultry Gloria Grahame appears on screen, she always spells trouble for leading men, and here she is the dark-haired bad girl to de Havilland's blonde angel of mercy. Situations between the characters play out expectedly. Only Mitchum, whose character evidently learns from his mistakes, grows and matures over the years. Despite his miscasting, Mitchum's performance is effective, and, at any opportunity, he rewards his fans by doffing his shirt and displaying his admirable pecs. Obviously Mitchum was not cast just for his acting skills.

Kramer's heavy-handed direction avoids the social preaching that mar some of his other films, which is not to say that "Not as a Stranger" lacks a message; it would not be a Kramer film without one. With lines like "doctors wear rubber gloves so they don't leave fingerprints" and "only in medicine can you get away with manslaughter," Kramer's opinion of the medical profession is evident. The compromises forced on the initially idealistic Mitchum underline the corruption that Kramer evidently saw lurking under the white coats and stethoscopes.

Kramer is also obvious in his imagery. A suggestive scene between Grahame and Mitchum that takes place outside a stable with two horses has to be the most blatant sexual symbolism since the fireworks in "To Catch a Thief." Filmed in black and white by Franz Planer from a script by Edna and Edward Anhalt, "Not as a Stranger" offers a literate story and professional performances for passable, if dated, entertainment. However, viewers will have to overlook a few flaws and the controversial social message and focus on the star power and Mitchum's physical assets.

"Not as a Stranger" is an old fashioned medical melodrama. The basic plot involves a young man (Mitchum) who is obsessed with becoming a doctor. Unfortunately, his obsession causes pain and unhappiness for the people around him.

Naturally, much of the medical material is out of date. Some commonplace matters in 1955 now strike us as incredible: a medical class with no women in it; doctors and nurses casually smoking; doctors who ride on ambulances.

The "small town" to which Mitchum moves after graduating from medical school is portrayed as isolated and rural. What we see is clearly a small city--bad choice of location.

In the context of the film,we have to accept Olivia de Havilland as plain and unsophisticated. Quite a suspension of disbelief.

However, Mitchum is excellent as the young physician who expects perfection from himself and all those around him, and Frank Sinatra is a good choice as Mitchum's cynical--but caring--friend.

Broderick Crawford as the medical professor Dr. Aarons, and Charles Bickford as Dr. Dave Runkleman, Mitchum's senior partner, both turn in solid performances.

Gloria Grahame is perfect as the wealthy widow, Harriet Lang, who oozes sexuality out of every alcoholic pore.

Watch for the dramatic scene when Crawford throws Grey's Anatomy at Sinatra. (Although beware the message that great medicine is synonymous with great memory. Memory is where great medicine starts, not where it ends.)

Two scenes need special comment:

When Mitchum tells a patient with a facial mole, "This kind is best left alone," he is wrong, wrong, wrong.

When Mitchum takes over the care of a critically ill patient of another doctor, Mitchum is right, right, right.

This movie is dated, but it is still worth seeing. Rent it and find out!

Not as a Stranger (1955)

What a crazy great cast for newbie director Stanley Kramer (who also produced, which was how he got his start in Hollywood, independently producing a string of interesting films). So Robert Mitchum and Olivia deHavilland and Frank Sinatra lead. Then Gloria Grahame and Lon Chaney Jr. both have important parts. Throw in side roles for Lee Marvin and Matthew Broderick and a couple other known character actors, and you wonder how it will all work out. Pretty well. The story is a slight strain because the big cause of problems is simply that a med student (Mitchum) is running out of money. When he pretends to fall in love with a rich girl (deHavilland, with weak echos of "The Heiress," unfortunately), it gets more interesting. Sinatra plays Mitchum's conscience, in a way, and is a bit likable and bland at the same time. In fact, everyone is a bit less than they could be, including Mitchum, though deHavilland acts her heart out. It's known that this is not a well known film, and part of the reason is just that it feels restrained all along. No one is on fire, all this talent is just doing its job professionally well. That might sound like enough, but not really. Add the fact the story is a quiet one, and you have a very good and rather forgettable film. But very good, and worth a watch.

With a cast including Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Broderick Crawford, Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame, you'd expect hard-boiled crime drama. If so, you might want your money back after seeing NOT AS A STRANGER. One Hollywood wag remarked of the Mitchum-Sinatra-Crawford-Marvin lineup, "That's not a cast, that's a brewery!" and the actors lived up to their rowdy reputations, turning the shooting into "ten weeks of hell" for director Stanley Kramer. Mitchum described Crawford swallowing Sinatra's hairpiece with a vodka chaser (Of course, you never know when Mitchum is putting you on. But I like to believe he did call up Sinatra in Palm Springs to say, "Guess what? The Crawdad just drank your wig.") Sinatra took to calling Mitchum "mother" after he nursed Ol' Blue Eyes through a hangover. It's too bad Kramer didn't film these on-set antics; the footage would have been more entertaining than the plodding and earnest medical melodrama he did produce.

The casting is spectacularly misguided; for a start, everyone is almost twenty years too old. The film opens with the 40-ish Mitchum, Sinatra and Marvin as medical students observing a dissection, and right away credibility is strained. (If I walked into a doctor's office and saw Lee Marvin in a white coat, I would run.) And whose idea was it to cast the famously jaded, take-it-or-leave-it Mitchum as the rigid, idealistic, driven hero? Only top-billed Olivia de Havilland seems to belong in this type of movie, and she suffers from a platinum dye job and a mediocre Garbo accent. I waited more than an hour for Gloria Grahame to show up, and then she was wasted on a throwaway subplot that's over almost before it begins.

No cast could have made the movie much good. It's overlong, and the script is both obvious and underwritten; a few minutes into every scene I could predict what was going to happen by the end, and I foresaw the final plot twist about halfway through the film. The first half follows Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum) through medical school. For reasons never entirely clear he is obsessed with becoming a doctor, though his father (who drank up all the money his mother left to pay his tuition) tells him, "I don't think you'll make it. It's not enough to have a brain, you have to have a heart." Thus in the third scene we get the message of the movie, and have a pretty good idea of everything that will follow. Desperate for money to stay in school, Luke woos and marries Kristina (Olivia de Havilland), a frumpy Swedish nurse who—for reasons never entirely clear—is madly in love with him. (We know because she keeps telling him, "I love you SO MUCH!") It's made abundantly clear that Luke is brilliant and noble-minded—he despises the other students who just want to make a lot of money—but arrogant and intolerant of human frailty. In his first practice, assisting a kindly and intelligent small-town doctor (Charles Bickford) he does a wonderful job, but his marriage disintegrates as he falls for a seductive wealthy widow and his wife can't bring herself to tell him she's pregnant. You just know that sooner or later he's going to falter at the operating table and be shattered by the realization that He Too is Only Human.

To this oppressive script, add heavy-handed direction that hammers each point home with obvious symbolism and simplistic montages (and a few--but not enough--moments of unintentional hilarity like the whinnying stallion underscoring the first big Mitchum-Grahame clinch), and the most relentlessly overwrought music I've ever heard. No one except Sinatra, playing the only light-hearted role, manages to crawl out from under the lead blanket of this movie. My admiration for Robert Mitchum knows no bounds, and I wouldn't say he's bad here, but he's certainly been better. It's not that he's incapable of playing characters who care deeply or zealously pursue a goal (See HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON or NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.) The problem is that Lucas Marsh is humorless, uptight and self-righteous, devoid of that perceptive, ironic, compassionate distance that's essential to Mitchum. Marsh is hot tempered, intolerant of others and blind to his own flaws—in other words, it's a Kirk Douglas part. Kirk would have been perfect, but Mitchum never really connects with the character. Maybe it just didn't seem worthwhile: Mitchum never gave more to a movie than it deserved. He does have some nice moments: the encounter with his pathetic father gives some explanation for why he's so disgusted by weakness; he plays well with Sinatra, strikes some sparks with Gloria Grahame, and excellently delineates Luke's feelings for his wife, a mix of boredom, admiration and guilt. He's pretty convincing in the doctoring scenes (there are way too many of these, at least for someone like me who gets woozy at the sight of a hypodermic needle.) But he seems a little bored most of the time, not that I blame him. Maybe I should have taken my cue from the actors and had a few drinks on hand.

Not as a Stranger, best sleepers of all time. Not a rousing financial success by any stretch... but great performances by Olivia De Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra. And for a directoral debut, a great piece! From an honest portrayal of early 1950s medicine to it's often brutal emotional scenes between De Havilland and Mitchum, this one is my second favorite among both De Havilland and Mitchum (the first for her being The Snake Pit, and first for him being The Sundowners -- he was always so comfortable with Deborah Kerr). This one is a keeper. I'd like to see it on DVD.

Enjoyed this great story and all the actors who gave outstanding performances, especially Olivia De Havilland, (Kristina Hedvigson) who played the wife to Robert Mitchum,(Lucas Marsh). Kristina came from a wealthy family and fell in love with Lucas Marsh who was going to medical school and gave him financial support in his striving to become a successful surgeon. There are great scenes in the operating room and it was done so professionally that it kept you on pins and needles throughout the entire picture. Gloria Graham, (Harriet Lang) plays the role of a very sexy rich woman who teases and pleases Lucas Marsh and makes him feel very guilty for cheating on his wife. Frank Sinatra, (Alfred Boone) gives a great supporting role as a real close friend to Lucas and they both went through medical school together and each went their separate ways as doctors. There is plenty of drama and if you have not seen this Great Classic 1955 film, you will definitely want to view many great veteran actors at the top of their careers.

Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin are med students? I don't think so. First of all they're legendary no-nonsense fellas who are very unlikely looking med students. Plus, Mitchum and Sinatra are nearly 40 !! Did their undergrad degrees take 17 years of night school? We also have Olivia de Havilland and I'm thinking, interesting choice to put her in surgery garb that hides her hair but holy hell she's stunning even in extreme closeup. Well, then she has Mitchum and Sinatra over for dinner and now I get it. She's sporting a blonde version of Queen Elizabeth's clock-stopping hairdo and combined with an inch of pancake makeup she looks like she's 65. Ack!!!

Worse, de Havilland is actually 40, yet she's supposed to be playing a young nurse, daughter of 40-year-old Harry Morgan. And they all talk with a Lutefisk accent. Hers fades in and out over the course of this ponderous soap opera. She's lucky they hadn't invented the Raspberries yet. She was a shoe-in.

Inanimate Carbon Rod Mitchum as a romantic lead? I don't think so. Sinatra is as jittery as anything he played in Gene Kelly musicals, to the point I started to wonder whether he was the comic relief.

It's all so pedantic. So ponderous. And eminently forgettable.

Many have panned Robert Mitchum's performance in this film, but I think that his lack of expression and emotion, other than anger, suits the character very well.

Mitchum's Marsh is a completely self-absorbed individual. He's committed to medicine and can't understand human failings, especially his own. His character's cold demeanor perfectly reflects the fact that Marsh has no outer life. If he often appears robotic, it's largely because he's programmed himself to shut out everything human, ironically in service to humanity.

Of course he's a great doctor, but he's pure hell to work or live with. Bursting with pride, insensitive to the point of cruelty, Marsh is unreachable and, in more than one sense of the term, untouchable. Mitchum conveys all of this very naturally, perhaps because so much of his performance is rooted in the dark world of film noir, where the actor first made his mark. He's a physician from the neck up, but he has the heart of a contract killer. That he heals instead of kills is his patients' good fortune, though of little solace to his friends or his wife.

Although Mitchum's interpretation remains controversial, many of the other performances in `Not as a Stranger' are beyond criticism. Olivia deHavilland, as his suffering spouse, is superb as always. Charles Bickford, an actor who deserves a much greater reputation, is the epitome of a small town doctor. And surprisingly, Broderick Crawford is excellent as a gruff professor of pathology.

On the other hand, Frank Sinatra's pediatrician isn't as strong, though he has some good scenes when he tries to help Mitchum see the error of his ways. Gloria Grahame, unfortunately, is stuck with a seductress role that just as well could have been cut.

There are other weaknesses. George Antheil's score, by way of Wagner and Richard Strauss, is pretty hard to take. The script and direction are uneven. Many scenes are compelling, such as when Crawford literally throws the book at Sinatra or when deHavilland and Mitchum have one of their confrontations. Others fall flat and there is a tendency, typical in most of Stanley Kramer's work, to keep making points at the expense of the story. For example, the med school sequences with Whit Bissell's greedy and unethical Dr Dietrich (interesting choice of name there) cover a darker side of the profession very well. There's really no need for Jesse White, terribly miscast as a lawyer who cozies up to Grahame, to bring up ethical issues much later in the film.

Recommended as an above average melodrama and as an interesting time capsule of mid-50s medicine. (Though I found it hard to believe patients were allowed to smoke in the wards!)

OK, just said that to get your attention. Rarely have I seen a 50's movie with so many names. Probably the restrictive contracts actors had with the studios were responsible for that, plus the drive the actors had to be first billed.

But here we go...Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Gloria Grahame, Lon Chaney Jr., Harry Morgan, and Lee Marvin as well as many great character actors whose faces I know, but have names I don't recall. (except for Jerry Paris of Dick Van Dyke fame) Every one of the names above are of actors who were top billed in one movie or another, with the possible exception of Gloria who I remember most for Its A Wonderful Life. The interesting thing is that they are all mostly either at the end of their career or the beginning, with the exception of Mitchum.

Ones at the beginning are Frank Sinatra, Lee Marvin, and (questionably)Harry Morgan (M.A.S.H. came much later). The ones at the end are Charles Bickford, Lon Chaney Jr., and Broderick Crawford (at least as a leading man). Gloria kind of fizzled out at both ends of the scale.

Olivia won 2 Oscars and was nominated for 3 others prior to this movie. At the age of 39 she was pretty much done at this point for great roles, nevertheless she was as beautiful as ever (notwithstanding her odd hair color), and I think showed even better acting skills and diversity afterwards in movies such as Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.

Mitchum was probably at the top of his game at the time he did this movie, with great performances on both sides of this role. Some reviewers here did not like him in this movie, but personally I think he carried it.

Some fun things to watch for in this movies are signs of the time. For example, smoking cigarettes is predominant in every scene, even in the classrooms of medical school by both teachers and students. Also, Doctors making house calls with no thought of how it could be otherwise.

I can't say I liked this movie a lot, but there were things about it I did like. I liked the beginning, and I liked parts toward the end, but parts of it were too long (like my review is going to be). I especially did not like the abrupt ending nor the lack of resolution to problems that were so long in the making.

Of particular note is the odd accent that Olivia and Harry Morgan were forced to carry throughout the movie. Also, I suspect that up and comers like Sinatra, Lee Marvin, and Harry Morgan learned much from being paired with veterans like Mitchum, Crawford, and Bickford.

And yes I know, Sinatra already had an Academy Award in 1954 for Here to Eternity, but he was not yet known for acting like he would be later.

The movie could have used better editing, but the actors did their jobs. If nothing else, the movie has the earmarks of being the end of one era and the beginning of another, not only in the movie world, but also within society.

The previous comments have just about covered it: this is an unusual film, as Kramer's often were, but worth seeing once. Mitchum is good, as usual, and DeHavilland is up to her expected high standard, the best thing in the film. I found Sinatra's presence jarring - the personality's all wrong for a medical student - and yes, the boys do seem too old to be students. I wonder if they thought of casting, say, Montgomery Clift as a swingin' big band singer to ice the cake. But the corker is the unfathomable decision to make DeHavilland a blonde and Grahame a brunette. I didn't even recognize Grahame at first.

See it, decide for yourself, and enter the drawing for a free sample of hair dye and complimentary Swedish lessons.

Edward Anhalt, the writer of this movie was an experienced writer and he wrote more than 40 movies. Stanley kramer adapted the script to an interesting movie about the medical world; most details are right and Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum (dr. Lucas Marsh) deliver an outstanding performance. Dr. Marsh is Robert Mitchum and vice versa. A doctor like him is rare nowadays but they still exist. His passion for truth makes dr. Marsh vulnerable but at the same time it is also his strength.

Everyone, with the exception of Gloria Grahame was ten years too old to portray these characters with any believability. Beside poor casting, the story itself, was not the most entertaining to turn into a film. IMHO a huge goof. Surely, in 1955 there were many young actors who could have rendered these lines with more verve and conviction...and with actual blonde hair, even though there are many Swedish people with dark hair. A better cast might have included Lee Remick, Aldo Ray, Dean Stockwell, James Dean, Ann Bancroft, Russ Tamblyn, Bradford Dillman, Natalie Wood, and (or) Chris Robertson. Any combination of these performers might have given this film the fresh and contemporary feel it desperately needed.

I am sympathetic with the films of the director Stanley Kramer, and this is not an exception. Here he was able to show how the professionals, still when they are students, project themselves and are able to go beyond their possibilities hurting many people surrounding them. This is the case of the Physician, Dr. Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum), who even forgot the financial and professional help given by his wife, the nurse Kristina Hedvigson (Olivia De Havilland) when he was student. This film touches many different aspects of the society, which are still actual at present, i.e. the relationship between the wife and the husband, the jealousy of the professional to be always the best, no matter at what cost this can be reached, the relationships of the students, and others. It is a very interesting film with plenty of morale, worth to be seen more than once. In addition, Frank Sinatra and Broderick Crawford had excellent performances in this film.

Brusque, dour pathologist, Broderick Crawford unveils a corpse and proceeds with a dissection. A variety of reactions ensue from the assembled medical students: Uneasiness, queasiness and one fainting episode, whilst Robert Mitchum staunchly greets the stiff with a steely stare. One obstacle lies in the way of his grim, iron-willed ambition to become a doctor.....He's skint! Unless outstanding fees are quickly paid his operations will be limited to the elevator heading for the ground floor and the door marked EXIT. Unshaven, alcoholic father, Lon Chaney Jr, has boozed away all the money put aside to finance Mitchum's dream. (Fat lot of use he'd have been to Hawkeye in that state!)

Befriending nurse colleague Olivia de Havilland, who resides with her family and adopts a 'padlock on the dustbin' approach to frugality, he targets her savings as a passport to achieving his goal. They soon marry, the besotted de Havilland initially oblivious to his reprehensible motives. Over time, his harsh, unbending, opinionated demeanour causes marital strain. The devoted wife, catching the fiery end of his tongue, is prepared to shut herself in a room with the world's most hideous wallpaper in order to escape his overbearing behavior. After best buddy, Frank Sinatra, does something stupid, he too is not immune from the dogged doctor's wrath and his insistence on doing everything HIS way! As his career as a country doctor becomes established, he develops an over-familiarity with attractive, alluring widow, Gloria Grahame. Is there any way back for this wholly self-absorbed figure?

By turns, Not as a Stranger is both stirring and moving, but also stilted, overlong and at times unnecessarily overwrought. A strong supporting cast includes Lee Marvin, Charles Bickford and Nancy Kulp. Furthermore, Will Wright adds to his extensive repertoire of bit parts, as a cynical, cigar smoking colitis patient. Maybe it runs in his family! This early Stanley Kramer entry steers a course somewhere between heart-rending noir and afternoon soap. If you have 135 minutes to spare, it's worth investigating. Suture self.

This movie is proof that a good director and great actors can still make a dull movie. In "Not As A Stranger," Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum) is a university medical student who has plenty of talent and determination to be a doctor, but very little heart. After his drunken father (Lon Chaney) spends his tuition money, Marsh will do anything to stay in medical school. He marries Kristina Hedvigson (Olivia De Havilland), a Scandinavian nurse that he does not love, but who can support his tuition. Marsh becomes a doctor, then moves to a small town called Greenville to work in a local hospital.

Part of the problem with the movie is that Mitchum and his fellow medical students -- played by Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin -- are too old to be believable as medical students. These are men in their late thirties and early forties, who look as if they should already be in medical practice, if not *teaching* medical classes. I was amazed to see Sinatra in a supporting role, since by this time, he was one of the major leading stars of Hollywood.

Also, Olivia De Havilland is too old and too beautiful to be believable as an old maid nurse who has never married. (Her Swedish accent isn't very believable, either. Nor is it believable that Harry Morgan and Mae Clarke would be old enough to be her parents.) The operating room scenes, though dated, are the best scenes in the movie. The rest of the movie is a by-the-numbers soap opera that hits every last cliché right on the nose. It's like "General Hospital," but with more characters who are actually doctors and nurses and not just hunks, babes, or femme fatales.

There are some unintentionally-funny scenes, such as when Marsh has an affair with Harriet Lang (Gloria Grahame), a young heiress who trains horses. (You can see this affair coming even before Grahame's character appears, over an hour into the movie.) After lustily staring at Lang in a few previous scenes, Marsh encounters her outside a stable. In a nearby corral is a black mare; in the stable stall is a lust-crazed white stallion who is bucking, kicking, whinnying, desperate to join the mare in the corral. Marsh unleashes his passion for Harriet Lang by literally "letting loose the wild horse." The movie has one really well-directed sequence, the final sequence in which Marsh performs an emergency operation. Aside from that, the rest of the movie is a forgettable, by-the-numbers melodrama. Even the title doesn't make any sense. And why did it get an Oscar nomination for Best Sound, of all things?