Night Nurse

Lora joins a hospital as a trainee nurse. The rules are strict, the shifts long, and everything happens on the night watch. When her training ends she is sent to a wealthy house; there are two small girls there and both are growing thinner. The mother is drunk most of the time, and there is a doctor in the house and a chauffeur. Lora works out that the children are not ill, they are being starved. The reason is plain: the money left to them. She can tell nobody, because nobody listens to a nurse. The help she gets comes from a bootlegger she met at the hospital. William A. Wellman directs. Barbara Stanwyck plays Lora and Joan Blondell plays her friend. Clark Gable plays the chauffeur. It is an American production for Warner Bros. The film was made before the censorship rules were strictly enforced in Hollywood; the scenes are hard even now. Clark Gable was not yet a star and is here in a menacing supporting part. The matter it treats is whose word is believed; Lora knows the truth and is not listened to because of her position. The film does not glorify nursing and is critical of how the hospital is run. The narrative moves fast and the film runs under seventy minutes. Drink, violence and the neglect of children are shown directly. Stanwyck plays the character hard and is not waiting to be rescued. The ending does not leave justice to a court, and that sits uneasily today. Its limit is its morals; the narrative takes its solution outside the law and the quick ending is arguable. Who it is for: viewers who like pre censorship Hollywood and hard women characters. Who it is not for: it is dated, harsh in subject, and the ending debatable.