Registered Nurse

In her next to last film before departing for the United Kingdom with her husband Ben Lyon, Bebe Daniels stars in a medical melodrama entitled Registered Nurse. I'm not sure this story would ever get on such medical television shows as Ben Casey or Marcus Welby.

Bebe's a girl with a past, she impresses everybody at the hospital she goes to work at from head nurse Beulah Bondi, to head doctor John Halliday, to surgeon Lyle Talbot. In fact the last two have more than medicine on their minds. But she's carrying a secret, she's got a husband, Gordon Westcott, who's locked up in the loony bin.

Today's audiences wouldn't understand it, but back then the divorce laws were truly draconian. In New York State you could not get divorced on any ground other than adultery. Poor Bebe just can't get free of Westcott, so she suffers as any soap opera heroine does.

There's another even more tragic plot line involving nurse Minna Gombell and policeman Ed Gargan. Humor is supplied by Sidney Toler who is a wrestling promoter with a broken leg and Irene Franklin who is a bordello madam. Franklin has a great old time comparing her girls to the nurses. And Toler has a couple of his athletes visit him in the hospital and they provide some hilarity.

Try as the cast does, Registered Nurse will not be ever listed among the great medical dramas. Now this thing had great potential as a radio soap opera.