Four Girls in White

For the most part, it's an episode of General Hospital….The quadrangle of nurses (Thus the title Four Girls in White) is played by Florence Rice, Anne Rutherford, Una Merkel, and Mary Howard. The doctors and nurses walk around, mostly blandly reciting their lines. The one bright spark here is Jessie Ralph, who was the nagging foil to W.C. Fields in some of his movies. (If you can catch her in Walking on Air, or They met in Bombay, she is just GREAT in those… one of my favorite actresses!) There's a tremendous emergency scene near the end, and the special effects aren't bad for an MGM shortie from 1939. Someone who was in hot water earlier on, may get the chance at redemption during the crisis. In one scene, the director Sylvan Simon allows the action to happen without talking, which added to the suspense; talk there would have taken away from the scene. Also keep an eye out for a 30-ish year old Buddy Ebsen in one of his earlier roles… it must be Buddy Ebsen day, since Turner Classic channel also just showed "Yellow Jack" earlier today. Not a bad film, but needed a better script or something.

This is a typical medical melodrama -- minus Dr. Kildaire. But Simon does an unusually good job keeping it moving. And the cast is superb. (It even includes Tom Neal -- as a doctor, no less.) Florence Rice is the star. She's made up more glamorously than usual. She was an excellent actress who never really made it. Here she's very good as a girl who becomes a nurse in order to marry rich. She betrays a few people along the way, inadvertently, but redeems herself.

Also good is Ann Rutherford as her sister. She's in the same nursing class. Mary Howard is touching as another of their classmates.

The men take the back seat. Alan Marshall is good as the heartthrob on the staff. So is Kent Taylor as a playboy patient Rice sets her sights on.

For a period, it becomes a disaster movie. As such, it's very effective -- though it's best in its romantic parts.

The title to this film is a misnomer. While it's called "Four Girls in White", the film really focuses mostly on one of them, Norma Page (Florence Rice). It shows her entrance into a nursing training program as well as their progress...as well as the high attrition rate. However, partway through the film Page Page gets herself into trouble and her completion of the program seems in doubt. Can she possibly show everyone that she's a selfless team player or is she destined to be a washout?

This is a very nice film starring many of MGM's lesser-known actors and actresses. However, it looks nicer than the typical B and is entertaining. What also is a surprise is the big climax scene--the dam break scene is incredibly well done and looks far nicer than a B should look. Worth seeing.

It's amazing that even when MGM made programmers they never spared the Metro gloss for photography, sets, etc., even when there were no stars on the bill but up and coming young players. For this one, it looks as though MGM used their Blair Hospital sets from Dr. Kildare.

ANN RUTHERFORD and top-billed FLORENCE RICE are sisters who go through an extensive nursing program where the staff includes smartly dressed male interns like PHILIP TERRY and TOM NEAL with ALAN MARSHALL as a surgeon. And for comic relief there's BUDDY EBSEN, JESSIE RALPH and UNA MERKEL.

The story charts an amusing course for four girls in white as they become nurses after some rigorous training. Sparks between Rice and Marshall are evident from their first meeting and we know a romance is in the works. Rice is spunkier than usual for someone usually cast in demure roles and Marshall makes an attractive leading man--you have to wonder why MGM never groomed him for big time stardom. As for Rice, she looks like a young Madeleine Carroll in her close-ups.

It's a lighter look at nurses on and off duty with occasional romantic interludes. Rice's romance with spoiled rich man KENT TAYLOR takes place aboard his fancy yacht. The plot at this point turns to romantic rivalry between sisters over a man and continues to accent trivial fluff despite a dramatic incident at the hospital involving a violent patient.

You can almost predict a happy ending in sight, but not before a very dramatic train wreck amid a bridge collapse complete with floods that engulf the interior of a train. For this sequence alone, with Rice redeeming herself in Marshall's eyes after a stormy argument, the film emerges as a better than average programmer after a heavy dose of syrupy material.

Summing up: Trivial B-film fluff given the glossy treatment by MGM. All the pretty nurses look as though they just came from the MGM beauty parlor but the final emergency call involving the bridge collapse is handled with gripping realism.

In that golden year of 1939, the same year that she played Careen, Scarlett O'Hara's youngest sister in GWTW Ann Rutherford also appeared in this earnest programmer. She's one of the title girls although not the most heavily featured, that would be the forgotten Florence Rice, but she's pert and strictly secondary which would explain how she could appear in EIGHT! films that year.

As for the rest of the film it's second feature, bottom of the bill stuff all the way. The lives and challenges of young nurses has been examined many times and nothing new is added here. Everyone performs professionally but without distinction, the unique Una Merkel livens things up whenever she pops in but she is also mostly on the sidelines. Everybody gets to prove their mettle by the end no matter how far they've strayed during the overheated melodramatics.