Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: NURSE! Edition, Part 6 of 7

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

NURSE! Edition

Part 6 of 7

Today, we have the sixth of a seven-part series of posts having all to do with films featuring nurses.

Nurses, those vital, in the trenches Florence Nightingales of the silver screen. Where would we be without them? Our bed pans full? Our elderly in need of a turn? Our temperatures taken and, at times, risen? Our Jello delivered?

Be they sexy, or conniving, whimsical or earnest, humanitarian or pure evil, candy striper or stripper... these nurses are there, in or out of uniform servicing their clientele with the best or worst of intentions. 

So, let's sit back and take a look at these visions in white, these caregivers and occasional life takers as enshrined for all eternity Hollywood-style.

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Good Night Nurse

(1918)

(When an alcoholic hubby arrives home, bringing two gypsies and their monkey, his wife and butler insist it's time for him to clean up his act. They immediately whisk him off to No Hope Clinic, where, once he gets a look at their various unorthodox procedures, he wants out. He finds a like-minded woman who believes she's a mermaid and the two plot their escape. In due course,  he pretends to drown, dresses as a woman, and inadvertently joins the town's annual fat man foot race; running for his life and from the men in white coats!)

(This two-reel silent comedy was written, and directed by, and stars Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. It also prominently features Buster Keaton.)

(This is one of the few films in which  Buster Keaton actually smiles on-camera.)

(The film was subject to cuts by city and state film censorship boards In Chicago they edited out  Arbuckle kicking woman, Arbuckle putting foot on woman's posterior, and Arbuckle pulling dress off woman and exposing her figure. That said, they had no problem with him running around in women's clothing.)

Fatty Arbuckle and Alice Lake

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Good Night Nurse

(1929)

(A man with a case of the willies seeks the help of a nerve specialist who sends him to a private hospital he oversees. Turns out? The cure is worse than the illness!)

(This comedy short was directed by Lupino Lane and stars the director, his brother Wallace Lupino, Fay Holderness, Muriel Evans and Eleanor Fredricks.)

Lupino Lane

(Lupino Lane was an English actor and theatre manager, and a member of the famous Lupino family, which eventually included his cousin, screenwriter/director/actress Ida Lupino. Lane started out as a child performer, known as 'Little Nipper', and went on to appear in a wide range of theatrical, music hall and film performances. As an adult he became celebrated for his innovative silent comedy short subjects.)

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The Nurse's Secret

(1941)

(A nurse moves into an eerie mansion  to care for the family's aged mother after one of the family members dies, presumably at their own hands. Things are tense from the very first moment, for the entire clan - mother, butler, girlfriend and doctor - behaves in a mysterious manner.  And once the deceased's insurance policy is found, the plot thickens as the nurse begins to question the sanity and motives of all involved.)

(This murder mystery was directed by Noel M. Smith and stars Lee Patrick, Regis Toomey and Julie Bishop.)

(The film showcases Patrick, primarily a supporting player, in a rare lead role. Patrick played Sam Spade's secretary, opposite Humphrey Bogart, in The Maltese Falcon the same year.)

(This is a remake of 1932's Miss Pinkerton which starred Joan Blondell. Both films are  based on Mary Roberts Rinehart's 1932 novel of the same name. Rinehart went on to write a series of popular novels featuring the nurse character played by Blondell and Patrick.)

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The Student Nurses

(1970)

(Four sexy young women studying to become nurses all live together in California. While on duty at a local hospital, one falls for a poet with a terminal illness, one takes acid and gets knocked up, one joins forces with Hispanic revolutionaries, while one has an affair with a gynecologist.)

(This popular drive-in exploitation flick was directed by Stephanie Rothman for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. It was the second film in the popular 'nurses' series and has become a cult film and stars Elaine Giftos, Karen Carlson, Brioni Farrell and Barbara Leigh.)

(Actress Barbara Leigh revealed that during her audition, director Stephanie Rothman asked her to expose her breasts "to see if they were worth photographing" because the role involved a nude scene on the beach. Leigh had never done that before and was very embarrassed, but since it was a woman asking, she did it. Leigh said her most memorable scene was when her character was nude on the beach, taking orange juice laced with acid from her lover, played by Richard Rust. When the scene was shot, Rust gave her orange juice laced with real acid. "I was very stoned on camera.")

( Rothman said that she basically had free reign to address the political and social issues that she felt were ignored by the major studios. The only conditions were that the movie had to be about female nurses, who were thought to be a popular male fantasy at the time because they were  because they were caring, and they were women who could legitimately touch men all over." She also had to meet the requirements for nudity and violence to draw the audience in. To her surprise, the movie was indeed a success with men, mainly because of the nurse fantasy. It established New World Pictures as a serious production company, and led to a slew of sequels and similarly-themed exploitation movies about young women in everyday jobs.)

(According to Rothman: "The sub-distributors had recently had success with a R-rated film about a babysitter, which had more nudity than audiences could see in films made by major studios. So they requested a film be made about very pretty student nurses with as much nudity as an R-rated film could have." Rothman was determined to achieve a balance of the power between the sexes; this is why many scenes feature male as well as female nudity, a relative novelty at the time.)

 ("We made it while Roger was out of the country, directing a film of his own, so we were free to develop the story of the nurses as we wished, as long as there was enough nudity and violence distributed throughout it. Please notice, I did not say sex, I said nudity. This freedom, once I paid my debt to the requirements of the genre, allowed me to address what interested me: political and social conflicts and the changes they produce. It allowed me to have a dramatized discussion about issues that were then being ignored in big-budget major studio films: for example, a discussion about the economic problems of poor Mexican immigrants and their unhappy, restive children; and a discussion about a woman's right to have a safe and legal abortion when, at the time, abortion was still illegal in America. I have always wondered why the major studios were not making films about these topics. What kind of constraints were at work on them? My guess is that it was nothing but the over-privileged lives, limited curiosity and narrow minds of the men, and in those days they were always men, who decided which films would be made.") 

( "Since I didn't know how long I would be able to work making any kind of film, I decided to say what I wanted while I had the chance, instead of playing it safe. The women in my films are independent in thought and action. I think this stands out because of the limited, usually subordinate roles, that were written for them in that era. It was indeed my intention to change that in my films. I wanted to create – as in the real world I wanted to see – a more equal and just balance of power between the sexes. That is why in some scenes the men are nude as well as the women, which definitely was not the convention then. But I wanted the women's independence to extend far beyond that issue to a life filled with meaning and purpose beyond marriage. Some women lived such lives in the Seventies, but it was a more novel idea in life and films than it is today.")

(The film proved to be an enormous box office success. Corman wanted Rothman to make a sequel but she declined.)

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Nurses For Sale

(1976)

(A ship's captain is hired to transport a shipment of vaccines into South Africa. To avoid detection, they're smuggled in a crates of liquor. When corrupt officials attempt to seize the cargo and sell it on the black market, the captain orders his crew to destroy the booze, landing captain and crew in jail. Meanwhile, in a jungle, four of the nurses waiting for the vaccines, along with their male companions, have been kidnapped by a group of brigands who are looking for a big pay out in order to release them. When the ransom doesn't come through, they decide to sell the women as sex slaves.)

(This hodgepodge, taped-together action thriller was directed by Rolf Olsen and first released as Captain Roughneck From St. Pauli in 1971. Then, in 1976, additional footage was added by Al Adamson. It stars Curd Jürgens, Johanna von Koczian, Angelica Ott, and Christine Schuberth.)

(Producer Sam Sherman and director Al Adamson were notorious for their tinkering, seemingly unable to release any film Sherman acquired in its original form. Sherman bought the rights to Olsen's Captain Roughneck From St. Pauli, but felt it needed more... nudity - and that's where Adamson and the additional storyline about the kidnapped nurses comes in - leaving viewers with 67 minutes of an unwatchable film which make no sense.)

(On a positive note, the producer kept a scene from the original film where the captain and his crew dress in drag in order to escape detection!)

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel!

The Student Nurses - 1970

Movie Trailer