War Nurse
About War Nurse
At the start of the First World War, American women with little training go to France under the socialite Mrs. Townsend and turn an empty building into a hospital. Joy Meadows, not yet nineteen and used to an easy life, falls for the wounded New Yorker Robbie Neil. Head nurse Babs Whitney keeps fending off the pilot Wally O'Brien until a leave, a borrowed car, and a bombing raid push them together; he wants a night, not a marriage, and leaves on a mission over Germany. Joy learns Robbie is already married, is almost sent home for wild behavior in Paris, and stays on when Babs gives her unofficial work. The older nurse Kansas is killed by artillery on the road. Robbie dies in Joy's ward after saying he always loved her. Joy dies after giving birth during a bombardment. Babs keeps the baby. After the war Wally, freed from a German camp, finds her in Paris and asks that the three be a family.
Cast & crew
More about War Nurse
Edgar Selwyn directed. Becky Gardiner and Joseph Farnham wrote the script. Charles Rosher photographed. William LeVanway edited. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer opened it in New York on 23 October 1930 and released it generally on 22 November 1930. It is a pre-Code picture: an unmarried birth, a married lover, and a pilot who says he will not offer more than the moment.
Themes
Background
Released in the pre-Code window, it puts an illegitimate birth and a married patient's affair on screen without a compensating marriage for Joy.
Making
Selwyn shot it at MGM as a talkie about volunteer nurses rather than about the trenches. Rosher, who had photographed Sunrise, handled the camera. Farnham, head of MGM's title department in the silent years, shared the script with Gardiner.
Look
Charles Rosher photographed the MGM production, moving between the converted hospital, the road under fire, and the Paris scenes.
Preservation
A print survives and is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Robert Montgomery plays Wally O'Brien. Anita Page plays Joy. June Walker plays Babs. Robert Ames plays Robbie.
- ZaSu Pitts plays the nurse Cushie. Marie Prevost plays Rosalie Parker. Helen Jerome Eddy plays Kansas. Hedda Hopper plays Mrs. Townsend.
- Loretta Young appears uncredited as a nurse.
- The New York opening was 23 October 1930, a month before the general release.
- AFI lists the subjects as aviators, France, hospitals, illegitimacy, nurses, and the First World War.
Scenes
- Babs and Wally are caught in a bomber attack in a car he has borrowed, and she kisses him.
- Kansas is killed by artillery while the nurses move to a new post.
- Joy gives birth during a bombardment and dies; Babs takes the child.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (War Nurse.webm)
