Cinema: Behind-the-Times Pioneer

The Caretakers. Fans of medical drama are well aware that when young doctor and old doctor disagree, the young doctor is right. So it takes little ingenuity to know whom to root for when Robert Stack, an earnest young doctor, comes into conflict with Joan Crawford, an aging, hardened head nurse, over how to handle the patients in a mental hospital.

Stack (warmly): I say they must be treated as normal human beings entitled to respect and human rights.

Crawford (coldly): But they can only be handled by the intelligent use of force.

Preparing for the intelligent use of force, Joan holds judo sessions for the staff, and that about sums up her approach to her work. Dr. Stack, in contrast, is a pioneer, a man of vision. Unfortunately, he is a generation or so behind the times, and his pioneering proceeds along a well-traveled road. He has what he apparently considers a revolutionary new idea for treating borderline cases. He calls it group therapy. The doctor likes to sit in his office and tune in, by way of closed-circuit TV, on Polly Bergen, Janis Paige and other patients down in the group-therapy room. It is a pretty good show, too, what with Janis, as a nymphomaniac, showing a comic flair in her gag lines —some of which might have been pretty funny in some other movie. “They ought to stick you in the men’s ward,” a fellow patient says to Janis. “That’s the best offer I’ve had in three months,” she replies.

But group therapy in a mental hospital is hardly a suitable subject for laughs and leers. After a while, Nurse Crawford’s distaste for the proceedings begins to seem understandable.