Movies about medical students are either sensitive (the unattractively-titled but sweet GROSS ANATOMY) or vulgar (nameless hordes of t&a US comedies), but they always end up straying into some hinterland of conflicted response at some point, due to the strange nature of medicine and the peculiarities involved in acquiring knowledge of it.
MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S is a very obscure ’40s drama set in a boarding house for aspirant doctors, run by Lillian Gish. Miss Susie is of course an ANGEL (Gish enters ablaze with backlight, so we know this, but the casting is already a heavy hint), but she does run a household stocked with skeletons, and the above Varga pin-up on the bathroom ceiling. Like I said, weird.
The film is noteworthy for being directed by the soon-to-be blacklisted John Berry, who does a nice, discrete job, benefitting from Charles Lang’s dramatic cinematography. Berry is one of the unfortunate ones whose career was just getting going, whose style was just emerging, and whose loss to the American cinema can’t really be accurately estimated.
The other noteworthy thing is Veronica Lake, top-billed despite quite a small role in what is very much an ensemble piece (Sonny Tufts gets the most screen time — regrettably, perhaps, but he’s not bad here). Lake is minus her trademark peekaboo curl, sacrificed to the war effort, but proves, in her few scenes, that she was more than just that gimmick. I suspect the prominent credit/small role reflects confusion at Paramount as to what to do with her — they paired her with Alan Ladd again, stuck her in a western (a good one, RAMROD, but westerns are often the sign of a female star on the slide), and had her play in the English-language version of STRONGHOLD while Sarita Montiel took the role in the Spanish-language version. It feels like there was a lack of confidence in her.
Here’s her first, and biggest, scene in MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S, which I find quite affecting. I could have saved it for Christmas, but it doesn’t seem quite fair to hit you with a scene like this at such a vulnerable time ~
Amazing how effective a distant foghorn can be…
shadowplay 