Night Nurse (1931)

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Barbara Stanwyck stars in this pre-code drama about a scrappy young nurse trying to save two sick children from an evil chauffeur (Clark Gable) whose poisoning them so he can marry their drunk mother (Charlotte Merriam) and steal their trust fund. Night Nurse is a great vehicle for Stanwyck, who spends the first half of the film befriending wise-cracking Joan Blondell and falling in love with an amorous bootlegger (Ben Lyon) while she works toward her nursing degree. The second half gets much darker, with the system failing Stanwyck at every turn as she tries to draw attention to deadly crime unfolding before her eyes.

Since this is a pre-code film, you can expect two or three gratuitous undressing scenes between the nurses and a scuffle in which Gable knocks out Stanwyck with a punch to the face. I wish the third act were more viscerally satisfying — you really want to see Gable’s character suffer more. But Night Nurse features fun characters and packs a lot of storytelling into a brisk seventy minutes. It’s another solid entry in the diverse filmography of director William Wellman (Wings, The Public Enemy), with a satisfying resolution only pre-code Hollywood could get away with.