Una rosa bianca per Giulia

In Mitchum's last RKO film, he plays a doctor who saves a young woman from a suicide attempt. The young woman, played by Faith Domergue, is very mysterious. She gives the hospital a fake name and address, then later sends Mitchum a telegram asking him to meet her. Mitchum does and he finds himself entranced by her beauty. Then, I'm guessing some time has passed, because all of a sudden he's meeting her at a club, greeting her with a romantic kiss. She asks him if he loves her, says she loves him. I'm thinking, "it's only been a couple days?" Regardless, like many old Hollywood films, they seem to fall in love rather quickly. Then Domergue drops a bombshell, she and her elderly father are leaving that night for the Bahamas. Then she bails.

Mitchum drowns his sorrow in half a dozen coconut cocktails and decides to go to Domergue's home to plead with her to stay. Because showing up at your girlfriend's home, drunk, expecting to meet her father, will go over well. Anyway, Mitchum shows up at the house, meets Domergue's father, Claude Rains. He quickly learns that all is not what it seems.

Claude Rains and Maureen O'Sullivan are third and fourth billed, respectively. Their combined screen time is maybe 10 minutes. I assume that O'Sullivan was there because her husband, John Farrow, was the director. This film didn't need someone of her caliber for the part of Julie the nurse. Any actress could have played that part. Like in many of these classic films featuring doctors and nurses, the nurse is in love with the doctor. It takes the doctor dating someone else for him to realize that he too, loves his nurse.

Mitchum was fantastic, per usual. Domergue was okay as the femme fatale. There wasn't really anything special about her performance. She definitely paled in comparison with Mitchum and Rains. I can't help but wonder what someone like Jean Simmons would have done in this role, but somehow I think that at this point in time, all casting decisions for actresses at RKO came down to Howard Hughes and who he wanted to date.