Now this...This is a weird film. Preston Sturges, known very well and paid very well for his ability to write and direct comedies, takes on a biopic of Dr. W. T. Morton, the dentist who reportedly was the first to use ether as an anesthetic. Morton seems like a curious case study because of the rancor around whether he, Dr. Charles Jackson, or Dr. Horace Wells came up with it first combined with the fact that he didn't actually invent anything while also including all of the contradictory ideas about him protecting his practice banging up against his desire to be a humanitarian. It's a mix that could be a complex portrait of a man, the invention of a new application of an existing compound, and the historical period, but Sturges doesn't go for complex. He goes for hagiography, and it's just...weird.
The first thing that's off about this film is the structure. One common positive attribute of every film Sturges had made up to this point what his extreme command of structure. Three acts, each taking up almost exactly a third of the film, filled with character and action, feeding from one to the next towards a conclusion. The opening here, though, is a whiplash back and forth in time as the credits show Morton (Joel McCrea) at the height of his fame followed by scenes of Eben Frost (William Demarest) visiting the widowed Mrs. Morton (Betty Field) after Dr. Morton's death which leads to Mrs. Morton reminiscing about when she and Dr. Morton first met when he was a boarder at her mother's boarding house. It also jumps forward to after Morton's victory when he visits President Franklin Pierce Porter Hall) to ask him to sign a bill that would award him $100,000 for his contribution to medicine. It's honestly a weird way to start things, and it's so completely out of character for how Sturges wrote movies that I have to wonder what drove him to make it like this.
Anyway, the main thrust of the film is Dr. Morton dropping out of medical school because he doesn't have the funds and becoming a dentist. The historical side of things that I probably find most interesting (besides a dramatic appearance of President Pierce who...this has got to be pretty unique, huh?) is the view of dentists as almost the scum of the medical word in the early half of the 19th century. It doesn't get the most focus, but it's interesting nonetheless, just popping up from time to time as reason to dismiss Morton from more respected medical professionals.
That being said, Morton has the same problem as every other dentist: dental work is painful and there's no good way to prevent the pain. A fellow dental student, Dr. Wells (Louis Jean Heydt) tries to use nitrous oxide, much to the objection of Morton's old medical school teacher Dr. Jackson (Julius Tannen) because it will just suffocate the patient to knock them out. It's through Jackson's meandering thoughts about the use and properties of ether that Morton accidentally comes up with using sulfuric ether inhalations to knock people out safely.
Now, this isn't a straight drama from Sturges. He obviously can't ignore the impulse to deliver comedy where he can, and while it does provide some of the weird tonal imbalances in the film, these moments are probably the heights of the film. The biggest moment is Morton trying out the compound for the first time on Frost, having gotten an impure mixture from the chemist that caused a drunken and violent effect on his patient rather than a sleeping effect. It's a showcase for Demarest to just go nuts, and it's an entertaining little sequence.
The central conflict within Morton that the movie never really addresses is the idea that he's keeping the use of ether a secret (calling it letheon) in order to protect his business but he wants to give it to hospitals for free for the betterment of humanity. If he ends up giving away industrial sized amounts of letheon to hospitals across the world...will he be able to pay for that? And it's there because Sturges, adapting a book by René Fülöp-Miller, never even comes close to the idea that maybe Morton was less responsible for the use of ether than he ever said. This is where a more-serious minded approach to the material might have worked, using a critical eye to look at the amorphous nexus of invention around an existing compound and properties already described in medical textbooks. Instead, Sturges leans heavily into the idea of Morton being a secular saint free of critique other than he loved too much.
The ending is really weird, too. I mean, not just from the image which is all proto-religious of Morton essentially being a gift from God to help a girl about to go under the knife despite the medical community's rightful resistance to using an unknown compound during procedures, but also in terms of the actual movement of plotting. We don't get a whole lot of time with it, the film cutting to credits right as a door opens and Morton gets welcomed with open arms, but it doesn't make sense. He's been sent away because they won't use his compound, and he just shows up and they welcome him openly? It honestly just doesn't make sense.
So, this is the first real stumble of Sturges' directing career. It's a weird mix of heavy drama, biopic, hagiography, and comedy that never comes together. It works best in the comedic space, but that never holds for more than a few minutes at a time, forgotten for much longer in between moments. The historical angle is interesting, but far from the focus. The hagiography is a mess and is the focus, and it doesn't work.
I mean, it's helped by the fact that it's a grant 81 minutes long and has some chuckles along the way, but this is really just...weird.
