Not as a Stranger (1955) – full review!
Not as a Stranger (1955) – full review!
Odd casting which includes a plethora of recognizable character actors in cameo roles some of which are uncredited mark this drama which celebrates the profession of medical doctor; it was also producer Stanley Kramer’s directorial debut. Based on Morton Thompson’s novel its screenplay was written by the husband and wife team of Edward and Edna Anhalt (Panic in the Streets (1950)). The film’s Sound was nominated for an Academy Award (Watson Jones received an Oscar nomination for his only movie). Olivia de Havilland plays a Swedish immigrant nurse; Robert Mitchum a poor heartless but intellectual medical student; Frank Sinatra is also a medical student as is Lee Marvin (though only briefly)! Broderick Crawford plays a medical school professor Charles Bickford an aging small town doctor (not so unusual I guess) and Harry Morgan plays de Havilland’s Swedish father! Also in the cast are Gloria Grahame playing a divorcée with designs on Mitchum’s character late in the film Myron McCormick as the small town’s incompetent doctor-administrator Lon Chaney Jr. as Mitchum’s drunken father Jesse White as a small town lawyer who dates Grahame’s character and Whit Bissell as the stereotypical ‘doctor of the wealthy’ who also teaches at the medical college. Among those who appear uncredited are: Paul Guilfoyle Frank Jenks Nancy Kulp and Will Wright as patients Juanita Moore as the wife of a laborer on Grahame’s horse farm Jerry Paris as yet another intern and Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer as an expectant father.
Lucas Marsh (Mitchum) is a brilliant yet poor medical student who has problems relating to other people. His only friend is also his roommate Alfred Boone (Sinatra); Marvin plays another student named Brundage (as does Paris uncredited as Thompson). When his drunken father (Chaney Jr.) for whom Lucas has no compassion spends all of his mother’s money meant for her son’s education Lucas must find another way to pay for school. During an awful date with blonde near spinster Swedish immigrant nurse Kristina Hedvigson (de Havilland) and her parents (Harry Morgan and Virginia Christine who was actually 4 years younger than de Havilland) Lucas learns that she’s got nearly $4000 in savings. Despite Alfred’s shock and protestations Lucas proposes to and then marries Kristina whose experience helps him through medical school as well. All the students struggle with the class taught by Dr. Aarons (Crawford) and Alfred even pokes fun at his professor. Lucas struggles with "being right" versus being respectful of a visiting professor Dr. Dietrich (Bissell) who makes his living performing highly profitable operations on wealthy patients. Many patients (including some of those mentioned earlier as uncredited actors) are seen by the interns. When Lucas’s father dies he ends up taking it out on Alfred but they remain friends and both graduate. Alfred goes off to become a doctor like Dietrich while the most talented student Lucas decides to work in the small town of Greenville under Dr. Runkleman’s (Bickford) tutelage; McCormick plays Dr. Clem Snider who’s more of an administrator and hence a liability as an anesthesiologist in the operating room.
Though the Marshs have a loveless marriage it isn’t threatened until Lucas meets divorcee Harriett Lang (Grahame); White plays Ben Cosgrove a lawyer Mrs. Lang dates regularly (twice a week) – there’s no passion in their relationship either. A plethora of patients with all different kinds of troubles or symptoms and forms of payment cycle through the small town clinic. Eventually there’s even a typhoid patient who Lucas with Kristina’s excellent professional assistance is able to save. But the expected affair between Lucas and the horse riding Mrs. Lang is eventually begun (when Moore’s husband is injured); but it’s a small town so everybody soon knows; Kristina naturally is the last to know. She finds out when by coincidence Alfred comes for a visit; he knows her secret that she’s 3 months pregnant (a fact Lucas doesn’t know). But when Kristina learns of his straying the Marsh’s split up. Something Lucas seems to struggle with more than she does especially when as expected Runkleman finally dies from hemorrhaging Lucas unable to save him or admit he’s gone until Snider prods him. Lucas then rushes "home" to Kristina where he sobs "help me" before they embrace and the film ends.
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