Antonius Block Interesting sets, blending high tech and art deco with an almost expressionist feel, are the highlight of 'Men in White'. Director Ryszard Boleslawski also uses shadows and some interesting framing to create a film that is often beautiful to watch.It's also interesting to see Clark Gable in the role of an up and coming doctor who finds himself pulled between his personal life (a fiancé, played by Myrna Loy) and his professional life (the desire to someday work for a renowned doctor, played by Jean Hersholt). The film spends quite a bit of time establishing the fact that he takes the job seriously, cares for his patients, and that the job requires a lot of sacrifice. Therein lies its main problem - it's more than a little heavy-handed in its "job or career" theme. It's based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play, but almost as if it were written as propaganda by someone in the medical field. When Myrna Loy dramatically proclaims "It's bigger than any of us...humanity" as she contemplates the importance of being a doctor, I laughed out loud, and not in a good way. I've seen Myrna in a lot of films, and that moment is the worst I've ever seen for her. It's not all bad, and the best line in the script is when Hersholt puts things in perspective, saying that doctors are still groping around with respect to their knowledge of the human body, but they're doing so more intelligently than twenty years ago, and in twenty more years their understanding will be better still. A very interesting part of the plot is when a young nurse (Elizabeth Allan) suddenly needs an operation herself - and we realize, without it being explicitly mentioned, that she attempted an abortion on her own. The restraint heightens the shock and drama, and I couldn't help but wonder how many women this happened to prior to abortion being legal. The Catholic Legion of Decency didn't want viewers to think about that, and put the film on their no-watch list. Unfortunately, it's handled melodramatically, including Loy ludicrously appearing in the operating room. The film appears to have just made it in just before the Hays Code was enforced, but the fact that it was looming also appears to have affected the story line in the adaptation of the play, which is unfortunate. There are some moments of levity in an otherwise heavy film. Young interns pursue women, scamper about in towels, and quip things like "That's the trouble with being in love - it kills your sex life!" I smirked as several times a characters says someone else needs a spanking when they're not cooperating, e.g. Loy to her father, the doctor to Loy, etc. Perhaps the funniest inappropriate line was from the lab technician, who raves in the presence of a man grieving over his wife's cancer, "Say, George, you know that Simpson gal down in X-ray? She was over at Fleischer's, table next to mine. Oh, she's luscious. Had on one of those dark tight silk things. Does she dress close to the skin. Boy, what a chassis. What a chassis."It's interesting to see "state of the art" medicine in 1934, the sets are very nice, and the film deserves a look for its star power and the reference to abortion. Just guard your expectations, as the plot is not very well developed, and the script is preachy.

Noir Dame After films like "Convention City" stirred a growing uproar by groups like the Legion of Decency, the Hays Production Code swiftly shut a tight lid on controversial subjects. "Men in White" is very much a pre-Code film - a grimly realistic "slice of life" circa 1934.Sandwiched between his tough gangster roles in "Baby Face," "A Free Soul", and the macho-romantic roles he later specialized in (as in "It Happened One Night" and "Gone With the Wind"), this is one of Clark Gable's best performances. Underplayed wonderfully, Gable plays a moody doctor torn between marrying up, and his desire to further medicine and save lives.This is one of several pairings Gable had with Myrna Loy; in "Wife vs. Secretary," "Manhattan Melodrama," and "Men in White," their romances are compulsively watchable, but obviously headed for turbulence. You could boil it down to tension between his brusque, "salt of the earth" masculinity, and Loy's caring, but slightly petulant "uptown girl" persona. If the "Gable" type and the "Loy" type in these films made a "go of it", it would not be a marriage made in heaven... That's telegraphed from the first reel. But it is fun to watch.If you enjoy watching Loy as a witty, knowing wife in "The Thin Man" series, or frothy screwballs like "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," you'll probably dislike her one-note, high-maintenance character here. As another reviewer said, she's nothing like Nora in this picture.The story and characters are not especially like "ER", which focused on emergency medicine. "Men in White" is more similar to the modern "Gray's Anatomy," or "St. Elsewhere." In all three story lines, young interns (and student nurses) find themselves at a crossroads, struggling to balance their professional ambitions with personal needs. "St. Elsewhere" also introduced us to older physicians with feet of clay, struggling to save their beloved hospital from budget cuts. Sure, those two descriptions cover some of the characters on "ER" - and on plenty of other films or TV shows without a medical setting... but "Men in White" is special for what it implies about the early 1930s, a time when the medical profession was neither resented or put on a pedestal, but simply portrayed as a special calling.This is also a time before soap operas and romantic films used "Doctor" as shorthand for "good catch". The hospital in question here runs a deficit, led in spirit by the research-oriented Dr. Hochberg (played, fittingly, by Jean Hersholt, one of Hollywood's most famous philanthropists). Hochberg's work is his life; he is an idealist who can barely imagine that a young doctor would not want to follow the same path. Another older doctor talks longingly of the dramatic changes that have occurred in his career, such as the introduction of hygiene methods - "sterilized" masks, coats and gloves were still pretty new. And there's a short scene where a hospital administrator blithely suggests that laboratory technicians should be fired to make more money. (Today, of course, lab costs are a money maker for some hospitals.) All in all, worlds away from "white lab coat" syndrome, bottom-line focused HMOs, and other modern problems of today's hospitals. SPOILER What makes this a pre-Code film, and likely prevented it from gaining more modern viewers or distribution, is a delicately played trio of scenes. One of the characters has had a back-alley abortion, and is rushed into surgery. The word "abortion" is never said, but 1930s viewers were on the level.

busterbluesun this is one of the few gable movies that i like. i was surprised by gable's acting, it was so unlike his macho man roles. his humanity came out in this performance. loy was a little irritating to me, which is rare, i so love her movies with William Powell. she seemed like a spoiled rich girl, unaware and uncaring of the plights of the sick and ailing, so unlike her Nora Charles rich girl. in it's own way it is a forerunner of er, not quite so fast-paced, but intense all the same. i was a little confused about the ailing nurse, it wasn't clear to me whether she had an abortion or if she had tried to commit suicide. perhaps some parts had been cut out that better explained it, although i watched it on tcm, they usually show movies in their entirety. i did have to chuckle at loy's serious line about "humanity", and her look away. it seemed a little overdone. a very good movie, ahead of it's time.

Sleepy-17 Two things are surprising about this film: Clark Gable could really act and Richard Boleslawski knew what to do with a camera. There's a muted fantasy aspect about this film, and there are cinematic statements, made through symbols, that remind one of "Citizen Kane". "Men in White" is a filmed play, done so convincingly that even a cynical viewer can be persuaded to judge the medical profession as one of honor. Richard Boleslawski has been greatly overlooked as a stylist, and Gable as a real actor, before he became crusted over. There's a scene, where he rips a hypodermic needle from the hands of an incompetent doctor, that really works well.