Movie of the Week: Men in White (1934)

This week, Clark Gable is a workaholic intern at a hospital and Myrna Loy is his neglected fiance in Men in White.

Clark is George Ferguson, a medical intern at a prestigious New York hospital. He is serious about his profession and works night and day. During this time period, medical interns and nurses even lived at the hospital, having little time for social lives. Myrna Loy is his heiress fiance, Laura, who flits around being frustrated that he has no time for her. (I’m not quite sure how they even found time to date and get engaged when he’s seemingly always working?) She wants him to open up his own private practice after he finishes his internship, so they can settle down and have a normal life. He has aspirations to join Dr. Hochberg (Jean Hersholt) in Vienna for at least a year for medical research. One night after Myrna and Clark argue over his lack of time for her, Clark finds comfort in the arms of pretty nurse Barbara (Elizabeth Allan).

Elizabeth’s character ends up pregnant after their one-night encounter.  Thanks to the editing room chopping and dicing to make the film approved by the Production Code, to deduce that they even had sex requires you to pay some serious attention. She comes to his room to borrow some notes. They’re both a bit shaken after a little girl in their care nearly dies. They embrace, share a kiss. She has to wait until no one is in the hall to leave his room, you know, so nobody gets the wrong idea.  Before he leaves, he says, “The coast is clear now, you’d better go.” Instead, she sits on his bed. The last shot in the scene is her sitting alone on his bed, removing her nurse’s cap.

Next time we hear of her is from Hersholt’s character, saying she needs an operation. “A burst appendix?” Clark asks. “Worse,” Hersholt says grimly. Clark looks thunderstruck. “Why didn’t she just come to us?”  From this we are to deduce that she was pregnant and since she was unmarried, went to get a back alley abortion, there was a serious complication and now here she is in the hospital. Huh?

“I loved you, I don’t care,” Elizabeth tells Clark before she is put under anesthesia. Myrna, a visitor in the operating room, overhears this, puts two-and-two together, and faints. Clark confesses to not loving Elizabeth, but promises to marry her as soon as possible because “her life is shattered.” The plot doesn’t age well, does it? Well, poor Elizabeth dies, in a long scene that involves Clark methodically shutting her eyes and slowly lowering her bed. Naughty girls who have premarital sex always have to die in 1934, don’t they? Like I said, it doesn’t age well.

Clark and Elizabeth’s off-screen relationship fared much better, as the two struck up a romance during filming. Myrna Loy recalled that Clark took an instant liking to Elizabeth on the first day of production. She said he would greet Elizabeth every morning with coffee and cakes and that they would spend all their time between takes chatting.

The platonic part of their relationship didn’t last for long, despite the fact that both were married. Elizabeth’s husband, Wilfred O’Bryen, was back in London and Clark’s second wife Ria was oblivious as usual. After production on Men in White was over, Clark pushed MGM to sign her to a long term contract. Their love affair continued off and on for about two years. They were careful not to be photographed together but were known as one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets. She was not the only one on Clark’s dance card either, as he dated many others in those two years. She was one of the ones that fell to the wayside after Clark began seeing that sassy blonde Carole Lombard in 1936.

The original Broadway production of this play, written by Sidney Kingsley, ran for 351 performances and won a Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1934. Louis B. Mayer salivated at the opportunity to cast his new goldmine Clark Gable in a surefire dramatic hit and bought up the film rights. It was the first property bought by MGM with Clark specifically in mind for the lead, which is rather ridiculous since Clark is undoubtedly miscast in this role. Not that he doesn’t do a fine job with what he was given to work with, but why on earth would you take the red-hot lover man of Red Dust, Hold Your Man, No Man of Her Own and Possessed and throw him into a medical drama where he wears pretty much nothing but what amounts to a white Frankenstein outfit?

He is wearing entirely too much stage makeup here for whatever reason. The foundation is caked on and his eyebrows are drawn in with what looks like a Sharpie. He reminds me a bit of Eddie Munster.This film is definitely not his best look.

And while I adore Myrna Loy and think they have great chemistry together, this is definitely their least sizzling onscreen pairing. Her spoiled heiress character is quite irritating. She agrees to marry him, knowing his profession, then stomps her foot and complains like a toddler when he has no time for her. Myrna can do better than this role, most definitely.

On the same token, Hersholt’s character stands around lecturing Clark about the importance of work and chastises him for ever leaving the hospital. What kind of life is that? A man can’t go out to dinner? Go to his own wedding rehearsal? Get married and have a family?

The end of the film is Myrna and Clark realizing that Hersholt is right. “It’s bigger than any of us—humanity,” Myrna says melodramatically. We assume she goes back to her life of shimmery evening gowns and jewels and Clark goes off to Vienna to study medicine and never have a personal life. Oh, and Elizabeth is dead, all thanks to a one night stand. A happy ending?

MGM was quite dedicated about making this a SERIOUS medical drama. There is, oddly, very little music or score in this film. It’s actually rather off-putting. The hospital set is absolutely fantastic–Art Deco in every detail, complete with the dramatic winding staircase!

I just feel like Clark and Myrna are wasted in these roles and they could have been handed over to some little B-listers.  It’s one of those films that wouldn’t have gotten made post-1950 because people could see more thrilling things on their television sets at home. Perhaps it would have been better if they could have at least said the word “pregnant.”  Oh well, shows what I know, the film was a big hit for MGM and made over $15 million (in today’s dollars) in profits.

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