Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Scott44 ***User reviewer Ron Oliver ("Tough Stanwyck Drama", Ron Oliver from Forest Ranch, CA, 9 February 2004) has a nice review. Dougdoepke ("It Ain't Young Doctor Kildare", dougdoepke from Claremont, USA, 14 January 2007) has a good commentary focusing on the upcoming Hays Code repression. Reviewer Mucifer ("why this is the best film ever (especially if you are a pediatric night nurse)", mucifer, 8 November 1998) discusses this as a cult film for hospital workers. Barnesgene ("Effect on Farmers", barnesgene from Virginia, U.S., 19 July 2007) discusses the film's societal distance from rural America.*** "Night Nurse" (1931, William A. Wellman), a lurid medical drama/thriller, is "pre-code" naughtiness. Arriving three years before the Hays Code, and during the full wrath of the Great Depression, it speaks for the huddled masses and moral transgressors both. As if thumbing his nose at the restrictions to come, Wellman's "Night Nurse" provokes the self-ordained moral watchdogs of the 1930s in many ways. Even the central heroine (Lora Hart, played by the indubitable Barbara Stanwyck) will show leg and/or maintain a relationship with a young bootlegger/gangster if it benefits her.Lora, young and under qualified, uses her feminine wiles to obtain a job in a hospital as a nurse. (The highly regimented work conditions recall sweatshops.) She is taken under the wing by Nurse Maloney (Joan Blondell). While trying to evade a pair of grabby male interns, the two violate hospital rules and are punished with night duty. During one shift Lora violates hospital rules again by not reporting her treatment of a bootlegger with a gunshot wound. The bootlegger is grateful for Lora's discretion and falls in love with her. Soon after, Lora is transferred to a bizarre, nightmarish mansion. In the manor are a group of drunken adult aristocrats who party perpetually. In a quiet room away from the ongoing party, Lora is charged with tending two bedridden toddler sisters who are heirs to a fortune. Lora discovers the children are being deliberately starved to death. She then realizes she has uncovered a very dark criminal conspiracy that involves a chauffeur and the children's doctor. (BTW, the medical wisdom of curing a hungry child with a therapeutic milk bath instead of a solid meal is possibly controversial today.)The cast, led by 24-year-old Stanwyck, is great. Stanwyck, who happens to undress before the camera on multiple occasions, is a very beautiful but tough presence. While having empathy for her patients she is capable of standing toe-to-toe with Nick (Clark Gable), the brutal chauffeur. Gable's bestial character, who strikes women without hesitation, might have been very frightening for the time; he's psychotic and instinctively murderous. Gable, not yet a big film star in 1931, has a screen presence that mesmerizes even today.Joan Blondell, portraying Lora's streetwise nursing friend Maloney, is also beautiful and her character is daring. The two nurses are like sisters, just like the siblings in the mansion. Ben Lyon is Mortie, the likable bootlegger. At the film's conclusion, his romantic relationship with Lora reaches a very high level of moral ambiguity. How we feel ethically about the final reveal is very unusual for cinema of any period.As tough as Lora reveals herself to be, she has some beautiful lines that may have offered hope to downtrodden audience members of the time. I like how Stanwyck expresses her economic desperation to Maloney with a world-weary but still hopeful voice. I also love her signature reply to Maloney: "in a big way, sister."Cinephiles who wish to see a solid, Depression-era medical thriller with tenuous ethical boundaries should see this. Does a milk bath cure the malnourished? Are there circumstances which warrant breaking rules? The answer to both is: In a big way, sister.

utgard14 Tough young nurse Lora (Barbara Stanwyck) is assigned as personal nurse to two children. She comes to believe they are in danger from their alcoholic mother and her brutish chauffeur Nick (Clark Gable) . When she gets no help from her superiors, she turns to Mortie (Ben Lyon), a bootlegger she treated for a gunshot wound. Wonderful Pre-Coder from director William Wellman. Stanwyck is very good in an early role. Clark Gable makes a great heavy. Sassy Joan Blondell is lots of fun. Charles Winninger, Vera Lewis, and Ralf Harolde offer fine support. Ben Lyon, largely forgotten today, does remarkably well here with actors who would go on to become screen legends. Don't miss those scenes of Stanwyck & Blondell undressing. Scenes like that are what Pre-Code film lovers live for.

atlasmb "Night Nurse" is representative of pre-code era films--only slightly risqué by today's standards. It is also representative of the times in the sense that Hollywood seemed to be enamored of the medical profession--both doctors and nurses--during the period, with many such scripts being produced. I think it is due to changing views about medical professionals, instigated by medicine being more science-centered. Audiences probably learned a lot about medical procedures and standards that were somewhat new. This makes such films interesting now from a historic standpoint; and they are interesting as comparisons to today's methods. What we most learn is that standards of care which are en vogue almost always look primitive (and ignorant) by standards only fifty years later.Joan Blondell and Barbara Stanwyck star in this film about the education, training and practicing of nurses. Stanwyck's character trains in a hospital after no medical education. The girls knock heads with the nurse in charge of their training (and their morals). They deal with the orderlies and physicians who, being male, have a sense of entitlement. Eventually, they get jobs in private care, tending to two young girls who seem neglected.Clark Gable portrays a belligerent chauffeur with suspect intentions, though his part is a minor one. He plays "sinister" very well, perhaps a clue to his later successes portraying men who are somewhat threatening (like John Garfield).At one point--as Stanwyck tries to unravel the mystery of the young girls' declining health--the film slows. Otherwise, I found it interesting on many levels. It is fun to see Blondell and Stanwyck as such young women. Even then, Stanwyck commanded the screen with her intensity, when necessary.

Ed Uyeshima This tense 1931 melodrama stars a very young Barbara Stanwyck in the title role as Lora Hart assigned to take care of the two young daughters in a wealthy family. However, she uncovers a plot hatched by their alcoholic mother to kill the girls in order to steal their trust funds with the assistance of a nasty chauffeur and a corrupt doctor. Directed by William Wellman, the movie features several risqué moments with Stanwyck and pal Joan Blondell dressing and undressing in their uniforms, as well as moments of unexpected violence. Again, Clark Gable shows up in a sinister role as the chauffeur and slaps Stanwyck around with convincing malevolence. While I prefer her work in 1933's "Baby Face" on Volume One, no one shined more than Stanwyck in these pre-code films since her non-nonsense manner was a perfect fit for the era's candor and directness.