Four Girls in White (1939) User Reviews

A Surprisingly Good MGM B-Picture

[Handlinghandel · 6/10 · 23 April 2006]

This is a typical medical melodrama -- minus Dr. Kildaire. But Simon does an unusually good job keeping it moving. And the cast is superb. (It even includes Tom Neal -- as a doctor, no less.) Florence Rice is the star. She's made up more glamorously than usual. She was an excellent actress who never really made it. Here she's very good as a girl who becomes a nurse in order to marry rich. She betrays a few people along the way, inadvertently, but redeems herself.

Also good is Ann Rutherford as her sister. She's in the same nursing class. Mary Howard is touching as another of their classmates.

The men take the back seat. Alan Marshall is good as the heartthrob on the staff. So is Kent Taylor as a playboy patient Rice sets her sights on.

For a period, it becomes a disaster movie. As such, it's very effective -- though it's best in its romantic parts.

Una Merkel Provides A Reason To Watch

[aimless-46 · 5/10 · 9 March 2006]

Somewhat over-wrought melodrama about the trials and tribulations of working in a big-city hospital in the late 1930's. There is a great deal of emphasis on the selflessness of these caregivers, including a doctor who is tempted by the big money of private private practice but stays true to his mission. The hospital is amazingly orderly, quiet, and clean. Would have been good for recruitment.

The title refers to Norma (Florence Rice), her sister Pat (Ann Rutherford), the super dedicated Mary (Mary Howard), and the irreverent Gertie (Una Merkel). Merkel and Buddy Ebson provide much needed comic relief. Rutherford is quite good as the wholesome and perky little sister but Merkel is the reason to see this film. Her talent for comedy is amazing and after seeing her in "Four Girls in White" you will be on the lookout for more of her films.

The climatic train wreck-dam bursting sequence provides a glimpse into the staging of a low budget disaster back in the old days. The camera stays tight on the action, making very little seem like a really big deal.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Sort of like a Dr. Kildare film....but starring the nurses.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 7 November 2016]

The title to this film is a misnomer. While it's called "Four Girls in White", the film really focuses mostly on one of them, Norma Page (Florence Rice). It shows her entrance into a nursing training program as well as their progress...as well as the high attrition rate. However, partway through the film Page Page gets herself into trouble and her completion of the program seems in doubt. Can she possibly show everyone that she's a selfless team player or is she destined to be a washout?

This is a very nice film starring many of MGM's lesser-known actors and actresses. However, it looks nicer than the typical B and is entertaining. What also is a surprise is the big climax scene--the dam break scene is incredibly well done and looks far nicer than a B should look. Worth seeing.

Above average B-film with a glossy look...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 9 March 2007]

It's amazing that even when MGM made programmers they never spared the Metro gloss for photography, sets, etc., even when there were no stars on the bill but up and coming young players. For this one, it looks as though MGM used their Blair Hospital sets from Dr. Kildare.

ANN RUTHERFORD and top-billed FLORENCE RICE are sisters who go through an extensive nursing program where the staff includes smartly dressed male interns like PHILIP TERRY and TOM NEAL with ALAN MARSHALL as a surgeon. And for comic relief there's BUDDY EBSEN, JESSIE RALPH and UNA MERKEL.

The story charts an amusing course for four girls in white as they become nurses after some rigorous training. Sparks between Rice and Marshall are evident from their first meeting and we know a romance is in the works. Rice is spunkier than usual for someone usually cast in demure roles and Marshall makes an attractive leading man--you have to wonder why MGM never groomed him for big time stardom. As for Rice, she looks like a young Madeleine Carroll in her close-ups.

It's a lighter look at nurses on and off duty with occasional romantic interludes. Rice's romance with spoiled rich man KENT TAYLOR takes place aboard his fancy yacht. The plot at this point turns to romantic rivalry between sisters over a man and continues to accent trivial fluff despite a dramatic incident at the hospital involving a violent patient.

You can almost predict a happy ending in sight, but not before a very dramatic train wreck amid a bridge collapse complete with floods that engulf the interior of a train. For this sequence alone, with Rice redeeming herself in Marshall's eyes after a stormy argument, the film emerges as a better than average programmer after a heavy dose of syrupy material.

Summing up: Trivial B-film fluff given the glossy treatment by MGM. All the pretty nurses look as though they just came from the MGM beauty parlor but the final emergency call involving the bridge collapse is handled with gripping realism.

nurses in the 1930s

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 7 November 2015]

Florence Rice, Ann Rutherford, Alan Marshal, and Kent Taylor star in "Four Girls in White," an MGM B movie from 1939.

MGM's B movies were always more like A-, as they took great care with these films, used to groom future stars.

This movie follows nursing students through their years of training, particularly Norma and Patricia Page (Rice and Rutherford). Other students include Una Merkel and Mary Howard. Howard's character has a child she had to leave behind in order to become a nurse and make a better life for both of them.

Norma has her eyes on a doctor (Marshal) who, if he would go into private practice, could make a whopping $50,000 a year, which today would be over $800,000. After they break up, she sets her cap (as my mother would say) for the grandson of the hospital's founder (Kent Taylor). When he invites her and her sister to go cruising in his yacht on their vacation, Norma is determined to go at any price.

Mildly entertaining though a little confusing for newer fans, as Alan Marshal and Kent Taylor were both in the Clark Gable mold and kind of looked alike.

The women have the stronger roles, and they're all good, including Jessie Ralph and Sara Haden. Buddy Ebsen is funny in the comedy relief part.

Florence Rice was a young beauty, but MGM at some point must have decided she didn't have much spark and didn't give her the opportunities. She did some radio and TV before entering into a happy marriage and retiring.

Dr. Kildare fans will recognize the sets.

The Nurses Of Rutland

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 2 April 2010]

Watching Four Girls In White and knowing what I know about how these decisions were made back in the day, I got the feeling that this was a film probably made because Louis B. Mayer did not want to keep the Dr. Kildare sets idle too long. So this predictable, but still decent medical melodrama was made concerning for nurses doing their training at Rutland Hospital.

Our four protagonists are sisters Florence Rice and Ann Rutherford, young mother Mary Howard, and for comic relief Una Merkel. The four start their training at the same time and become roommates. The four are very different personalities ranging from the serious minded Mary Howard to Florence Rice whose real aim is to land a rich doctor.

The doctors there are also pretty different and they're giving Rice the once over. Alan Marshal who is a dedicated ER man likes what he sees, but is repelled by her attitude. Never mind though, Rice sets her cap for rich doctor Kent Taylor who would rather be mixing business with pleasure. His idea is to take the family yacht to the South Seas and combine research into tropical diseases with a little cruise.

Rounding out the cast are supervisors Sara Haden and Jessie Ralph and hospital orderly Buddy Ebsen also more comic relief.

There are laughs and heartaches and tragedy in this film about the nurses from Rutland. Though this film may very well have been an afterthought from the studio bosses and it doesn't contain any A list cast members, it's still a decent though predictable medical story.

Nurses working in a Hospital

[ksf-2 · 6/10 · 2 April 2012]

For the most part, it's an episode of General Hospital….The quadrangle of nurses (Thus the title Four Girls in White) is played by Florence Rice, Anne Rutherford, Una Merkel, and Mary Howard. The doctors and nurses walk around, mostly blandly reciting their lines. The one bright spark here is Jessie Ralph, who was the nagging foil to W.C. Fields in some of his movies. (If you can catch her in Walking on Air, or They met in Bombay, she is just GREAT in those… one of my favorite actresses!) There's a tremendous emergency scene near the end, and the special effects aren't bad for an MGM shortie from 1939. Someone who was in hot water earlier on, may get the chance at redemption during the crisis. In one scene, the director Sylvan Simon allows the action to happen without talking, which added to the suspense; talk there would have taken away from the scene. Also keep an eye out for a 30-ish year old Buddy Ebsen in one of his earlier roles… it must be Buddy Ebsen day, since Turner Classic channel also just showed "Yellow Jack" earlier today. Not a bad film, but needed a better script or something.

This film has aged like fine cottage cheese...

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 12 December 2018]

And I do emphasize cheese! In spite of that, I would not say to stay away.

At any rate, the "four girls in white" who sign up for nursing school are Norma Page (Florence Rice), her kid sister Pat (Ann Rutherford), single mom Mary Forbes (Mary Howard), and Gertie (Una Merkel) - Una always provides the comic relief, and she is a bright spot in the picture.

Although the title talks about four girls, this is primarily Norma's journey, as she enters nursing school to land a doctor for a husband. It isn't long until she sets her sights on brilliant physician Stephen Melford (Alan Marshall). However, her constantly nagging him about going into private practice where he could make a mint drives a wedge between them. Then she turns to rich playboy Bob Maitland , who is a patient in the hospital. Complications ensue as Norma slowly learns the value of self sacrifice and the folly of selfishness, which in her case, has at least one tragic consequence.

The bad? Nursing in 1939 looks remarkably like housekeeping - doing laundry, feeding patients, washing dishes, taking temperatures...oh, and if something interesting happens, call a doctor, who is ALWAYS a MAN. And the pay is appropriately low because in 1939 all nurses (at least in this movie) are women. Being a RN today looks nothing like this, as RNs are tasked with work far more complex. To give the film credit, this probably IS what nursing looked like in 1939, but that doesn't mean I have to like it!

The ugly? Before Louis B. Mayer finally ruined Buddy Ebsen's career, he gave him several B- roles at MGM, in this case that of disorderly orderly "Express". He is just not funny and why does poor Una Merkel have to always fall for the career runt of the litter? She's so cute and perky! Also, one of Norma's first unselfish deeds on her road to righting her moral compass is to... fix her naive inexperienced baby sister up with that wolf Maitland she was trying to matrimonially nab?!?? Yikes! How long before baby sister is a sadder but wiser girl, wedding ring or not? Finally, this film is obviously trying to tap the successful Kildare series of the same era, but Alan Marshall as part Errol Flynn and part Kildare just doesn't cut it, and I guess Miss Tobias as the head nurse who is battle axe on the outside, heart of gold on the inside, is supposed to be filling Lionel Barrymore's shoes, but she just doesn't do it for me either.

The good? The film does have some poignant melodrama and an irreversible tragic turn I just was not expecting from an MGM B of the era. Plus there is a dynamite action filled finale. I'd say on the whole it is a take it or leave it proposition.

A valentine to the women who do more than empty bed pans

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 26 June 2022]

Meet nurses Norma (Florence Rice), Mary (Mary Howard), Pat (Ann Rutherford) and Gertie (Una Merkel) in this medical drama that was meant for MGM to reveal to the movie going public that Dr. Kildare's hospital was not the only medical facility in the world. I'm wondering if this was meant to be a series, just like on daytime TV when the soap opera "The Doctors' had competition from a short-lived serial ironically called "The Nurses". Here, the young nurses and the young doctors are under the thumb of the veteran nurses who literally can flip them over their shoulder if they have to.

You wouldn't have a movie about medical professionals if you didn't have a grouchy head nurse, and in this case, it's Jessie Ralph whose lemon puckered personality and voice always had a hidden heart of gold, even when telling off Nick Charles. "What did you want him to be wearing? A raccoon coat?", she cracks at one nurse who is surprised to see a male patient undressed. Sarah Haden pops over from being Aunt Millie in the Andy Hardy series, greeting the new nurses but unfortunately not being their mentor like Lionel Barrymore would be to Lew Ayres. It's obvious that Ralph is in the same position that Alma Kruger was in the "Dr. Kildare" series, then in its second year.

For every nurse, there's a man, and in the case of this film, it's Alan Marshal, Kent Taylor, Buddy Ebsen, Philip Terry and Tom Neal. Not exactly one doctor for each nurse, so one man will be alone, but it's obvious that Ebsen and Merkel in the comic relief roles will end up together. This has the tribe of every medical drama, but thanks to the MGM gloss, it's very enjoyable, well written and acted. The serious elements of the film are aided by the light-hearted moments, especially when Marshal points out to Ralph that she's just an old softy at heart, and you can see Ralph melting under his attention.

Entertaining But Highly Flawed Drama

[HarlowMGM · 5/10 · 19 January 2009]

FOUR GIRLS IN WHITE is a rather entertaining hospital drama with a few fatal mistakes to keep it from being really good. This attractive MGM programmer casts four studio contractees in the lead: beloved perennial second-lead Una Merkel, rising ingénue Ann Rutherford, and two actresses the studio briefly considered star material, Florence Rice and Mary Howard. The four play four-year nursing students at a metropolitan hospital. Merkel and Howard are dedicated nursing students (Howard has a baby daughter but it's never clear whether she is a widow or a unwed mother) while Rice is in it strictly in hopes of landing a successful doctor or rich patient as a husband with baby sister Rutherford tagging along for the ride.

Rice's character is the main one and immediately sets her sights on the hospital's star surgeon, Alan Marshal, a brilliant physician who has rejected the idea of opening a private practice pampering the wealthy so that he can serve patients that really need him. Rice successfully vamps him but when he is unmoved by her prodding him into his own practice and after too many dates are interrupted by emergency calls, she dumps him and immediately goes in pursuit of wealthy Kent Taylor, a patient with minor injuries. After a minor spat with Taylor, she learns he is checking out and so she leaves the critical care patient she has been assigned to watch to patch things up with him, basically leaving Mary Howard no choice but to abandon the nurses' desk to watch the patient which gets Howard into major trouble.

Character actress Jessie Ralph gives the film's best performance as the bullhorn by-the-book head nurse/teacher in one of the more prominent roles of her career. Una Merkel and Buddy Ebsen (in one of his handful of young screen appearances) are delightful in semi-comic roles while Mary Howard is quite poignant as the gentle Mary. Alan Marshal is quite dashing and does good work as the moralistic doctor but it's difficult to believe such a brilliant physician could have ever been blind to Rice's machinations.

The movie, alas, makes a major error in making Rice's character too selfish and predatory (despite a even-tempered surface) which completely destroys any sympathy one is supposed to later feel for the character, and when her scheming inadvertently leaves a child motherless, it's even harder for the audience to forgive her than the nursing staff. Rice is quite pretty but not a strong enough actress for the predictable final reel change of personality to be credible. Ann Rutherford is usually a charming ingénue but here she has an insipid part and she gives a terrible performance in the scene where she denies her love for Taylor, a scene that most definitely needed another take. FOUR GIRLS IN WHITE could have also used another draft to make it more palatable.

Another reason to watch

[chank46 · 10/10 · 13 March 2006]

Another reason to watch this delightful movie is Florence Rice. Florence who? That was my first reaction as the opening credits ran on the screen. I soon found out who Florence Rice was, A real beauty who turns in a simply wonderful performance. As they all do in this gripping ensemble piece. From 1939, its a different time but therein lies the charm. It transports you into another world. It starts out as a light comedy but then turns very serious. Florence Rice runs the gamut from comedienne to heroine. She is absolutely delightful, at the same time strong, vulnerable evolving from a girl to a woman.Watch her facial expressions at the end of the movie. She made over forty movies, and I am going to seek out the other thirty nine. Alan Marshal is of the Flynn/Gable mode and proves a perfect match for Florence. Buddy Ebsen and Una Merkel provide some excellent comic moments, but the real star is Florence Rice. Fans of 30's/40's movies, Don't miss this one!

Quite Nice

[utgard14 · 6/10 · 8 November 2013]

Entertaining medical drama from MGM, the same studio that produced the wonderful Dr. Kildare films. It's a fairly routine story helped by an immensely likable female cast, including two of my 1930s/40s crushes: Ann Rutherford and Una Merkel. Also Florence Rice, Mary Howard, Jessie Ralph, and Sara Haden, who are all very good. The male cast includes Kent Taylor, Alan Marshal, and Buddy Ebsen. A quality group of stars for a B picture like this. It's a nice picture that would be of interest to those who like medical films of the period like the aforementioned Kildare series. MGM was especially good at producing this type of melodrama.

Stiff upper lips all around

[jjnxn-1 · 5/10 · 2 April 2012]

In that golden year of 1939, the same year that she played Careen, Scarlett O'Hara's youngest sister in GWTW Ann Rutherford also appeared in this earnest programmer. She's one of the title girls although not the most heavily featured, that would be the forgotten Florence Rice, but she's pert and strictly secondary which would explain how she could appear in EIGHT! films that year.

As for the rest of the film it's second feature, bottom of the bill stuff all the way. The lives and challenges of young nurses has been examined many times and nothing new is added here. Everyone performs professionally but without distinction, the unique Una Merkel livens things up whenever she pops in but she is also mostly on the sidelines. Everybody gets to prove their mettle by the end no matter how far they've strayed during the overheated melodramatics.

Didn't live up to its promise

[Gypsy1962 · 4/10 · 25 May 2012]

I had rather high hopes when I learned this film had a 1939 release and the first 10 minutes or so were quite entertaining. I thought I was in for a pleasant comedy, but the laughs ended early. Everything went downhill at about the midway point, and never recovered. Florence Rice was capable enough in her role, and of course Una Merkel is always a delight, but they weren't enough to carry the weak script and ham-handed situations. It was nice to see Tom Neal in a small part, and Buddy Ebsen as well, and Jessie Ralph was good in her role as the head nurse who doesn't take any guff from anyone. Overall, though, I'd say you can skip this one.

Not much unique or compelling in this sub-75 minute B comedy romance drama

[jacobs-greenwood · 4/10 · 19 December 2016]

Directed by S. Sylvan Simon, with a story from Endre Bohem and Nathalie Bucknall and a screenplay by Dorothy Yost, this B movie comedy romance drama features Florence Rice, Una Merkel, Ann Rutherford, and Mary Howard in the title roles; they play nursing students hoping to become nurses.

Rice's character Norma Page is the exception, she hopes to marry a rich doctor or a wealthy patient of the hospital; Rutherford plays her younger sister Pat. Howard plays the tragic character, Mary Forbes, a single mother who hopes that her three year investment in school will enable her to better provide for her two year old daughter Susan (no mention of where Susan is staying in the interim).

Merkel's ravenously hungry "all the time" character Gertie Robbins is, of course, the film's comic relief along with Buddy Epsen's gawky, lanky orderly, Express. Neither is given a lot of screen time, relatively (especially Merkel), and their characters are all but forgotten by the end. Alan Marshal plays Dr. Stephen Melford, the first man Norma has designs on, and Kent Taylor plays the other, Robert Maitland, a wealthy patient whose father helped found the hospital. Jessie Ralph plays the nurses' stern taskmaster, Miss Tobias; Sara Haden plays Miss Bennett, the nurse who's one of the hospital's ranking administrators.

There's really not a whole lot unique or compelling in this short, sub-75 minute picture. The students are initially "green", and not serious enough in Miss Tobias's opinion about their tasks at hand. But in her drill sergeant way, she whips them into shape while Norma works diligently to get Dr. Melford's attention. The passage of time is shown through montages of their training.

Though Norma does "hook" Melford, she comes to realize that he's too idealistic to leave his $5,000/year job as the hospital's "top dog" surgeon for ten times better pay in private practice. When Maitland is checked into the hospital (with a bullet wound?), she gets her chance to move on to another, more promising opportunity.

Irresponsible Norma asks Mary to watch her patient while she tends to Maitland who, though he's initially rightly suspicious of her gold-digging intention, falls under her spell after too easily accepting her self righteous denial of it. Naturally, something bad happens while Mary is trying to be in two places at the same time for Norma such that she's the one who gets in trouble for covering for her friend. Mary's vacation is suspended by Miss Bennett such that she's unable to visit her now almost 5 year old daughter.

When Maitland is ready to check out of the hospital, he arranges to take Norma and her sister along as nurses to tend to his complete recovery. After a short time on his yacht, however, the joke is on Norma since Maitland becomes interested in her "tom boy blooming into womanhood" sister Pat. So she, instead of Pat, returns to the hospital in hopes of graduating. But, of course, while she vacationed and Mary could not, Mary gets killed. The fact that Mary had been paying attention to her daughter's drawing in lieu of watching her dangerous patient is lost on the other nurses who would rather blame Norma for the tragedy.

Naturally, even Dr. Melford couldn't save Mary despite his surgical talent and the emergency operation. Norma decides to resign, but just after she's mailed her resignation, a nearby train accident-dam break incident requires the hospital's entire staff to respond. Miss Tobias sees that Norma would like to help, and invites her along despite her letter. Given a second chance, Norma performs bravely and is almost killed when the dam finally breaks and the flood almost kills she and Dr. Melford, who were in a partially submerged train car recovering other patients. After they're rescued, Norma rededicates herself to her newfound profession.

Florence Rice as Florence Nightingale wannabe

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 24 July 2022]

Opening shots consist of stock footage that has already been seen in a Dr. Kildare movie. So it's no surprise when four nursing interns arrive at a facility where they're enrolled in a rigorous training course, that it looks a lot like the Blair Hospital set from the Kildare series.

Except Doctors Kildare and Gillespie are nowhere to be found. In their place, we have a handsome surgeon (Alan Marshal) as well as a few other nice looking doctors (Tom Neal and Phillip Terry) who treat patients. Marshal's character serves as a mentor to nearly everyone on staff. He will also be a love interest for the most important nurse trainee (Florence Rice).

Typically, MGM cast Miss Rice in romantic comedies with Robert Young, who speaking of medical stories, would later become known for his role as Marcus Welby M. D.

It's all pretty formulaic as far as these things go. The studio's usual polish is in evidence, even if this is for all intents and purposes just a glorified "B" picture. The titular four are basically archetypes, constructed and performed in way that will keep us engaged for 73 minutes.

We are told that the "girls" are enrolled for different reasons. (No male nurses are included.) One of them is here for love of the profession. One (Mary Howard) is here because she needs a stable career to support her infant child. One is here to serve others. And one-- Rice's character-- is here for reasons of her own. At first we don't know what her purpose or agenda might be. But then it is made clear that she's here to snag a man, a rich handsome one.

Besides Miss Rice and Mr. Marshal, several other notable stars have key roles. Una Merkel appears as down-home type gal studying medicine. Plus we have a sister for Rice, also intending to be a nurse, played by Ann Rutherford, who must have been on a break from all those Andy Hardy pictures.

In charge of the nursing students is MGM character actress Sara Haden. And then there's a crusty old-timer (Jessie Ralph) who is essentially the female version of Dr. Gillespie. She barks orders from dawn till dusk.

Providing comic relief is Buddy Ebsen as a wacky orderly. He's paired up with Miss Merkel, since she is not going to be given the film's most important romantic plot.

In some ways the main quartet functions like a group of new recruits in a medical army. We learn their program of study will last three years. Not all of them will make it to graduation day. And for those that do survive and become licensed nurses, their achievement will occur after constant spills, mistakes and near catastrophes.

Most of the subplots are punctuated with humor. But halfway through the story, there are a few startling developments...such as an altercation with a violent patient; and a train wreck in which passengers' lives must be saved. The makers of the film do try to convey the idea that nursing is a noble profession. The character played by Florence Rice is no Florence Nightingale, but she tries to do her best and ultimately she succeeds. Just as she planned, she becomes an R. N. as well as an M. R. S.