Once to Every Woman

Quite some time back, TCM had a night when they premiered three pre-Codes that I had obviously never heard of before. Since I tend to enjoy pre-Codes, I recorded them all, and only recently finally got around to watching the last of them, Once to Every Woman.

The title isn't quite clear, although the woman in question is Mary Fanshawe, a nurse who is played by Fay Wray, showing she was much more than the scream queen from King Kong. She's the head of nursing at a hospital where the chief of staff is an aging surgeon, Dr. Selby (Walter Connolly). Working on staff with Selby are a couple of younger doctors, Jim Barclay (Ralph Bellamy) and Freddie Preston (Walter Byron). Dr. Barclay is the sort of up-and-coming doctor whom you can expect is going to take over after Selby retires -- and time is really beginning to catch up with Selby, although he'd rather not retire.

Barclay is also the sort of doctor who would be right for Mary. But right now she has the hots for Freddie, largely because every young nurse seems to have the hots for Freddie. And Freddie is certainly willing to take advantage of that fact. Nurse Doris (Mary Carlisle) also has a thing for Freddie, and those two would be better off together than pairing Freddie with Mary. Doris even has the experience to know that this is the case, but what experience she has in romance she doesn't have in nursing, as she's forgetful and constantly ticking off Mary. (To be fair to Mary, she's right to be ticked off, as the duties Doris is shirking are important ones.

The subplots involve a biopsy surgery that Selby is supposed to perform that's going to test whether he still has to ability to perform complex surgeries, as well as Freddie shirking his duties when he can't be found at a critical juncture. Dr. Barclay covers for Jim for whatever reason, and this threatens to screw up the professional relationship with Mary. But Once to Every Woman is the sort of movie where you know the right people are going to wind up together at the end.

If that sounds like a relatively brief synopsis to Once to Every Woman, well, that's because it's a fairly brief movie, clocking in at around 70 minutes. The screenplay is based on a story by A.J. Cronin, who also wrote the novel that became the doctor picture The Citadel as well as the source material for the early Gregory Peck movie The Keys of the Kingdom which is currently in the FXM rotation. If you've seen either of those movies, then you'll be able to spot the sort of value judgements Cronin is making in this movie, too.

Having said that, there's nothing notably wrong with Once to Every Woman; it's more that it feels like it's not breaking any new ground and is more solid entertainment for people for whom going to the movies every week was a thing and needed a production line of new movies to be released. In that regard, it succeeds.