Abnegação

Sylvia Benton (Bebe Daniels) is married to drunken Jim Benton. He crashes his car resulting in brain damage. She goes back to nursing and gains admiration for her work over the years. Surgeons Dr. Hedwig (John Halliday) and Dr. Connolly (Lyle Talbot) both fall for her. When Jim escapes the asylum, he stumbles into Sylvia's hospital.

The premise is different. It's a pre-Code film but the romance has limited heat. It's an old overwrought romance with little buy-in. The hospital dramas are mostly overwrought melodrama with limited excitement. It's equivalent to a weak medical TV show. There isn't much drama until the last act. In fact, it's a rather slow grind before that part. The last part does something dark and intriguing but it's too late to regain the dramatic drive.

Quite enjoyable until the contrivances add up to an annoying level. OK acting, but nothing but stereotypes inhabit this General Hospital melodrama. Bebe Daniels is indistinguishable from Kay Francis and other beautiful, benevolent and noble female leads of the 30s. Some good one-liners, but not meat on the bones. "Men in White", another hospital drama from the same period, holds up much better.

Registered Nurse (1934)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining Pre-Code from Warner about various wild characters inside a hospital. The film centers around a nurse (Bebe Daniels) who is wanted by two different doctors (Lyle Talbot, John Halliday) but she is hiding a secret about a mysterious husband that no one knows about. These personal dramas have to be dealt with as well as countless patients. With some saucy dialogue and some mild sexual innuendo, fans of the Pre-Code era might want to check this one out but I'd say most will come away disappointed because the film has so many elements in place but in the end they really don't come together to make a complete winner. The biggest problem is the screenplay that really doesn't know if it wants to be a sassy comedy or a dark drama. We get light moments followed by dark moments and none of them ever mix and I'd also add that the entire love triangle comes off rather fake and forced. I think Daniels turns in a fine performance as she really digs into her role and manages to make a character we can feel for. Talbot and Halliday are both good as well and we also get to see Humphrey Bogart's infamous wife Mayo Methot. Sidney Toler gets the most outrageous moments in the film as a wrestling promoter who ends up with a broken leg after he beats up his wife. The entire beating of the wife sequence is played for laughs so that should tell you something.

Bebe Daniels was a very interesting Hollywood star. In her early days, during the 1910s and into the 1920s, she was frequently employed in comedy shorts...most often with Harold Lloyd and Snub Pollard. These were light but enjoyable films. However, in the later 20s and into the sound era, suddenly she reinvented herself and became a starring lady in a variety of dramas, such as "Registered Nurse".

When the story begins, Sylvia and her husband are having an argument. Unexpectedly, he then deliberately drives their car into a tree...nearly killing her.

The film then jumps ahead and Sylvia is going back to work as a nurse at a hospital. Of all the nurses, she is the best...nearly perfect and beloved by the patients and staff. In fact, a couple doctors are very interested in her and eventually she has to tell them the truth...that she's still married and her husband is in an asylum for the mentally ill! However, late in the story, it looks like one of her admirers might be able to operate on the husband and make him normal once again....and then the unexpected happens.

The film came out just a few months before the new Production Code came into effect. Because of this, much of the plot simply would not have been allowed in a film released after July, 1934. For example, the film has a character named 'Sonnevich' (yes, it sounds almost exactly like you think), the film seems to advocate suicide and there are a lot of VERY colorful moments that simply never would have been in a post-Code movie.

So is it any good? Yes. And, it offers a most unusual combination of comedy AND drama! While the movie isn't perfect and is a tad predictable, it is exciting and Sidney Toler's part in the film is simply unbelievable! See it...and see what I mean.

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.