Green Fingers

This film is just a copy of "The Citadel" Robert Beatty is no Robert Donat. And Osteopaths are not the miracle workers depicted here. This formula has been used quite a few times and can be quite entertaining.

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.

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!)

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.

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.