Night Nurse (1931)

Simply A Masterpiece

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Blistering performances.

The aspiring nurse Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) seeks a job as a trainee nurse in a hospital, but the Supervisor of the Nurses Miss Dillon (Vera Lewis) rejects her application. However she stumbles upon Dr. Arthur Bell (Charles Winninget) in the door and he accepts her application. She befriends her roommate Maloney (Joan Blondell) and they work together in the night shift in the emergency room. When the bootlegger Mortie (Ben Lyon) comes to the hospital with a gunshot in the shoulder, Lora treats him and Mortie convinces her to not report to the police. After the graduation, Lora is hired by Dr. Milton Ranger (Ralf Harolde) to work for the alcoholic millionaire Mrs. Ritchey (Charlotte Merriam) nursing her two daughters that are sick. But soon Lora finds that they are starved to death. Further, the brutal chauffeur Nick (Clark Gable) is plotting to kill the girls that have a trust fund from their father so that Mrs. Ritchey will inherit it and then he marries her. What will Lora do?"Night Nurse" is a Pre-Code drama directed by William A. Wellman. The storyline is a combination of genres, such as comedy of dark humour, drama, crime and romance. The storyline begins like a comedy but after the graduation of Lora and Maloney, there is a twist and becomes darker and darker. Where would have the cinema industry gone if the Pre-Code Hollywood have not been enforced? My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Triunfos de Mulher" ("Triumphs of Woman")

" . . . can keep her mouth shut," we learn in NIGHT NURSE. Discretion is nine-tenths of the law, according to the Florence Nightengale Code recited in unison by a class of graduating nurses early in this movie. Barbara Stanwyck's "Nurse Lora" character is the fly in the ointment here, unwilling to play ball according to the Rules of Big Medicine. She cannot seem to remember that everyone has to die sometime, and that the Medical Profession needs to turn a handsome profit, just like any other. America's serial killers often gravitate to Her nursing homes, veteran's hospitals, and extended care facilities. It's an unwritten rule that nobody should get their noses out of joint UNTIL the miscreant has offed 35 to 40 patients OR a former U.S. President--whichever comes first. Doctors' country club fees don't grow on trees, so the NIGHT NURSE's boss physician naturally is upset when she resists his careful planning in starving two thrown away toddlers to control their trust fund. Hasn't Lora ever heard the expression, "Doctor knows best"?

A good but not great entry into the Stanwyck canon. In this one she becomes a nurse and gets into some predictable and some unpredictable situations - odd how customs of an earlier generation can seem quaint and out-of-date to succeeding ones. Often its seems they had short-cuts to solutions of dilemmas - medical and legal, for instance - that take us a great deal of time nowadays. Suffice it to say that she is the main reason to see this peculiar '30's artifact, and she delivers another startlingly plucky performance - as always,she is not as fragile as she seems.Check out Clark Gable in a one-dimensional performance as a brutal chauffeur, before he hit stardom. Ben Lyon does a very agreeable turn as her bootlegger boyfriend. And, not to mention the dependable Joan Blondell as her best pal.Don't get me wrong, it's interesting enough. It's just that the subject matter is way off the beaten track. Makes you wonder,did this type of situation ever arise in the '30's, or any other decade?

**SPOILERS** Shocking film involving the brutal and Neanderthal Nick, Clark Gable, the family chauffeur and his partner in crime the unscrupulous Dr. Milton Ranger, Ralf Harolde, planing to do the unthinkable; Starving two little girls Densey & Nanny, Betty Jane Graham & Marcia Mea Jones, to death in order to get their greedy hands on the girls trust fund money!Getting the two girl's widowed mom Mrs. Ritchey, Charlotte Merriam, good and drunk Nick and Dr. Ranger also known as "Twitchy" cut down the food intake for Desney & Nanny slowly having them die from malnutrition. That's until the in house night nurse Lora Hart, Barbara Stanwyck, shows up on the scene. Trying to get the two girls help, and away from Dr. Ranger, Lora is threatened with bodily harm or worse from the brutish Nick who's, from judging his gangster-like manner, killed before and, with little provocation, will kill again!**SPOILER ALERT** Lora herself ends up on the receiving end of a straight right, that almost knocked her bottom teeth out, courtesy of Nick when she dared to try to call the police to get them to rescue little Desney & Nanny. Despertely Lora finally gives in and gets her bootlegger boyfriend Mortie, Ben Lyon, to do the job that nobody seems to want to do! Put and end to Nick's reign of terror, on the Richey household, by finally putting him out of operation and in his place: The City Morgue!Electrifying performance by a very young, just out of her teens, Barbara Stanwyck as the heroic as well as abused, by her boss Dr. Ranger, nurse Lora Hart. Risking both her job as well as her health, in volunteering for a massive blood transfusion, Lora went out of her way to save the little girls who had only days if not hours left to live. It was when Lora's good friend, who got her the job as a nurse in the first place, the kindly but looking the other way, in what Dr. Ranger was doing, Dr. Arthur Bell, Charles Winninger, finally grew a pair of you know what and not only came to Desney and Nanny's rescue, in defiance of the evil Dr. Ranger, that this horror or horrors the wanton starving of the little girls finally came to and end! Together with that motley crew of murderous sickos weirdos and drunks like Mrs. Ritchey and her always boozed up boyfriend Mack, Walter McGrail!