Very Cool!!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This seems to start out as a thin exploitation (tame now) flick with Stanwyck down to her undies twice in the first fifteen minutes. It then evolves into a decent little thriller that is worth a view for early crime-drama buffs, pre-code buffs and, of course, Stanwyck buffs.I don't want to get into the plot too much because at just over an hour there isn't that much plot to unravel. Let's just say it's a pretty ugly theme with children involved. As tame as this is nowadays, this one ain't for the kids.Stanwyck is good enough though not her usual, stellar presence; she comes off a little stiff and unconvincing in parts. Joan Blondel is very good as the roommate but fades into the background in the latter half. Clark Gable is kind of one-note as the creepy chauffeur. So there are no career defining, must see performances. But these are minor quibbles on my part; it's still a solid way to burn an hour-ten.

A good but not great entry into the Stanwyck canon. In this one she becomes a nurse and gets into some predictable and some unpredictable situations - odd how customs of an earlier generation can seem quaint and out-of-date to succeeding ones. Often its seems they had short-cuts to solutions of dilemmas - medical and legal, for instance - that take us a great deal of time nowadays. Suffice it to say that she is the main reason to see this peculiar '30's artifact, and she delivers another startlingly plucky performance - as always,she is not as fragile as she seems.Check out Clark Gable in a one-dimensional performance as a brutal chauffeur, before he hit stardom. Ben Lyon does a very agreeable turn as her bootlegger boyfriend. And, not to mention the dependable Joan Blondell as her best pal.Don't get me wrong, it's interesting enough. It's just that the subject matter is way off the beaten track. Makes you wonder,did this type of situation ever arise in the '30's, or any other decade?

"Night Nurse" released in 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression, was the kind of film Warner Brothers cranked out at that time. Barbara Stanwyck plays Lora Hart, a woman down on her luck who applies to become a nurse. She does so, with success. The initial part of the film takes us into the inner workings of a hospital -- circa 1931. Stanwyck is befriended by a fellow nurse, played by Joan Blondell, who provides much comic relief throughout the film. Stanwyck's first assignment is to take care of two sick children of a wealthy mother. Soon she begins to realize there is a sinister plot to starve the children so various people can profit from the children's trust fund. The children's mother is a serious alcoholic and seems to completely ignore her children, leaving them in the care of nurses and a housekeeper. A young Clark Gable has an eerie and threatening presence playing a chauffeur, who apparently is in league with the alcoholic mother and the children's sleazy doctor. Brought into the mix of all these characters is a charming bootlegger (prohibition was still the law of the land) played by Ben Lyon. He falls for Stanwyck after she patches him up from a bullet wound and doesn't report it as required. The film is clearly "pre-code" meaning the code was down in ink but largely ignored by studios until enforcement in 1934. There are some scenes of Blondell and Stanwyck dressing and undressing, and we see them in their undergarments several times! Liquor flows freely, despite prohibition and there are several scenes of various drunken party-goers. One drunken man tries to assault Stanwyck. There is some fairly graphic violence by 1931 movie standards. There is also some funny, snappy dialogue from Stanwyck and Blondell. My favorite line is when Stanwyck, after wrestling with the drunken, neglectful mother, looks down at her passed out on the floor and says "You mother..." I won't give away the ending, as it is a bit bizarre, but this is an entertaining film. See it just for Stanwyck. She gives a spirited and tough performance.

**SPOILERS** Shocking film involving the brutal and Neanderthal Nick, Clark Gable, the family chauffeur and his partner in crime the unscrupulous Dr. Milton Ranger, Ralf Harolde, planing to do the unthinkable; Starving two little girls Densey & Nanny, Betty Jane Graham & Marcia Mea Jones, to death in order to get their greedy hands on the girls trust fund money!Getting the two girl's widowed mom Mrs. Ritchey, Charlotte Merriam, good and drunk Nick and Dr. Ranger also known as "Twitchy" cut down the food intake for Desney & Nanny slowly having them die from malnutrition. That's until the in house night nurse Lora Hart, Barbara Stanwyck, shows up on the scene. Trying to get the two girls help, and away from Dr. Ranger, Lora is threatened with bodily harm or worse from the brutish Nick who's, from judging his gangster-like manner, killed before and, with little provocation, will kill again!**SPOILER ALERT** Lora herself ends up on the receiving end of a straight right, that almost knocked her bottom teeth out, courtesy of Nick when she dared to try to call the police to get them to rescue little Desney & Nanny. Despertely Lora finally gives in and gets her bootlegger boyfriend Mortie, Ben Lyon, to do the job that nobody seems to want to do! Put and end to Nick's reign of terror, on the Richey household, by finally putting him out of operation and in his place: The City Morgue!Electrifying performance by a very young, just out of her teens, Barbara Stanwyck as the heroic as well as abused, by her boss Dr. Ranger, nurse Lora Hart. Risking both her job as well as her health, in volunteering for a massive blood transfusion, Lora went out of her way to save the little girls who had only days if not hours left to live. It was when Lora's good friend, who got her the job as a nurse in the first place, the kindly but looking the other way, in what Dr. Ranger was doing, Dr. Arthur Bell, Charles Winninger, finally grew a pair of you know what and not only came to Desney and Nanny's rescue, in defiance of the evil Dr. Ranger, that this horror or horrors the wanton starving of the little girls finally came to and end! Together with that motley crew of murderous sickos weirdos and drunks like Mrs. Ritchey and her always boozed up boyfriend Mack, Walter McGrail!