Nurse in Las Vegas

By Jane Converse, ©1975

Cover illustration by Allan Kass

Lana was never sure if she had taken the Prince case because of the lure of Hollywood and Las Vegas, or because Dr. Gil Whitaker had practically forbidden her to get involved. But what started out as an uncomplicated case and a chance to be near the doctor she loved turned into a nightmare. Her patient, famed comedian Reggie Prince, decided he wanted a closer relationship with Lana than medical rules required. And he certainly was a charming host, surrounding her with the glamour of TV, nightclubs, and posh estates. But nothing seemed to work out right. As Reggie’s attentions increased, Gil seemed to content to drop out of the picture. Was she doomed to lose the man she loved over a one-sided flirtation with a Hollywood Romeo…?

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“A thing doesn’t hurt any less because it’s trite.”

“If this is what the doctor ordered, I’m ready to cooperate.”

“She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, a sultry siren-type who had taken on pounds along with years and was now desperately trying, with the aid of cosmetics and an expensive, hopefully slimming pants suit, to fight the battle against middle age.”

REVIEW:

Our heroine, Lana Stafford RN, is a dope. She’s in love with Dr. Gil Whitaker, who operates a specialty practice, treating patients who are movie stars, writers, and television personalities. He’s gone to lunch with her a few times and once to the movies, but he just hasn’t demonstrated any real interest, damn the man. Then Lana learns of a private duty job caring for one of his patients, fading comedian Reggie Prince, and decides to apply for the job, just so she will be able to see Gil from time to time … and, just maybe, “in a glittering atmosphere, not hushed and subdued and miserable, where she wasn’t overworked empathizing with a dying patient, he would see her in a different light.” Gil takes her to dinner in an attempt to talk her out of the job, calling her childish and naïve to think that caring for this allegedly glamorous personality will be anything but hell on wheels. But she insists until, “half irate,” he agrees to take her to meet Reggie Prince to see how awful he really is.

At Reggie’s monstrous, Grecian-style mansion, the Prince puts on quite a show, screaming at his employees and discussing the merits of rose-hip tea and ocean kelp diets with Gil. The doctor, the only one in the room with any sense, suggests that instead of dieting, Reggie should stop drinking, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, and popping benzos, but Reggie seems less than interested in this advice. So naturally Lana decides to take the job, because “it would be fun, going to Vegas, being around during the filming of a TV special,” even though Gil is livid that she has disregarded his advice. Maybe not the best way to win his affection, but that’s just my opinion. Curiously, Lana seems bewildered that Gil doesn’t kiss her goodnight when he drops her off.

On the job, she finds she has little to do except lie around the pool and unsuccessfully attempt to persuade Reggie to stop drinking, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, and popping benzos. Despite his utter disregard for her advice, and his increasing regard for her figure, Lana adopts a protective attitude toward him, suggesting to his ex-wife and current girlfriend that Reggie is “wound up like a clock spring,” and doesn’t need them “hassling him about whatever it is that’s annoying you.” This does not win her any friends, needless to say, and it’s also rather inexplicable, as there is really nothing at all in this character to arouse pity.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the story involves watching Reggie wind himself and his staff into increasing frenzies as they prepare for the taping of a TV special that they are writing and producing. Reggie is in dire straits, it turns out, and the special is intended to revive his wilting career. Lana feels increasingly sorry for him, despite his abusive and self-destructive behavior, and continues to feel puzzled and hurt that Gil is cold and distant. Neither of her attitudes toward these men is in the least bit comprehensible, which makes the book seem a lot longer than it actually is.

Eventually Reggie and his motley staff head for Las Vegas to tape his show. Given the hysteria Reggie has worked himself into, it is small wonder that the show is a complete flop. Lana, oddly, lies to him and tells him how great he was—she’s traded in the role of nurse for that of major enabler. Then Reggie starts gambling heavily with three vicious-looking sharks, and when the big loss comes, Reggie literally hustles Lana out the back door onto a private jet that takes them to his ranch in Texas. The rest of the gang catches up a few days later, scared and pissed off, and Reggie’s business manager has been beaten to a pulp to boot. Turns out Reggie’s in the hole for $150,000 and has 48 hours to pay or he’ll be fish food—but naturally he’s in debt up to his bloodshot eyeballs and can’t come up with the dough. When the thugs finally track Reggie down, they’re not too happy, and one of Reggie’s party is murdered. Lana is kidnapped so they can “dispose of the witness”—though they could have just killed her on the spot—but before they have a chance to do her in, the cops track them down, shoot up the car, and rescue Lana, miraculously unhurt. Reggie is carted off to the psychiatric ward, and Lana has two pages at the end to admit how wrong she was to not do as Gil had asked. And listen to his admonishments: “Like, when you promise to love, honor, and cherish, that’s not the end of the line. You’ll have to listen to my advice. When I think I know what’s good for you, you’ll have to pay attention,” he tells her, and not at all smugly, either.

Jane Converse does enjoy the over-the-top Hollywood character, but Reggie is just an abusive ass, unpleasant to read about. Lana’s inexplicable concern for him and immediate enlistment as enabler-in-chief makes the book even less enjoyable. Jane Converse will always occupy a tender place in my heart, largely for her magnificent Surf Safari Nurse, but this was just not one of her better efforts, and I suggest that you leave Las Vegas behind.

Television Nurse

By Jane L. Sears, ©1963

Just before Doctor Duncan Manley left for Europe he had shared a dream with Nurse Joan Shipley: when he returned he would set up a practice somewhere far from the phony glamour and the phonier symptoms of the Hollywood Hypochondriac Set. His eyes had told Joan that she was included in this dream. Now Duncan was back, but not where he belonged: in an operating room, with Joan by his side. Incredible but true, Duncan had turned television actor in a series called THE AMERICAN DOCTOR. Why? Surely the owner of Sunset Hospital, who was also the series’ chief backer, could not have compelled him to do it. Joan’s conscription as technical advisor was another story. She couldn’t risk dismissal from the hospital with the word UNCOOPERATIVE scribbled across her record. But Duncan was a free agent. Or was he? What had happened in Europe to change him so completely, and to destroy Joan’s most cherished hopes?

GRADE: B

BEST QUOTES:
“There is no pseudo sophisticate propped atop a hospital bedpan.”

“She reminded him of a typical California orange: large, lush and mouthwatering, but hollow inside.”

“He had that Ivy League tastefulness you seldom saw in native Californians.”

“Gathering up her bottles, her lotions, her creams and polishes, her cigarettes, beach towel, robe, sandals, straw handbag, transistor radio, and three white Poodles that had been lolling in the shade, Lace made a stiff-backed exit.”

“The love he felt now was an intelligent, mature love. An all-encompassing love which, while it delighted and amazed him, also filled him with an agony even seven scotches didn’t dull.”

“How he envied that bastard smoking over there under the grid—that Doctor Duncan Manley with his hound-dog eyes and jutting chin which dames always figured denoted some kind of stalwart strength rather than an excess of bone formation.”

REVIEW:
Joan Shipley is a young nurse working at Sunset Hospital in Bel Air, California. She’s been waiting for Dr. Duncan Manley to return from Europe, where he’s been studying abdominal surgery for the past year. They’d never even dated, no promises were made before he left, but the two were just so, well, simpatico—“ideas and opinions meshing so perfectly they had often glanced at each other in quick surprise. ‘I was just going to say that!’ or, ‘That’s exactly the way I feel!’ ”—that, now that he’s back, Joan can’t believe a marriage offering isn’t in the works.

Until she hears that, instead of starting up a practice in a “small California town, still simple and untouched,” where she can work alongside him, “their ideals and dreams holding them firm and sure in a land of shaky foundations and artificial emotions,” the doctor has taken a starring role in a pilot for a television show called AMERICAN DOCTOR (the all-capital letters is, unfortunately, how the name is shouted at us through the entire book). Instantly, she is transformed into a seething, frigid little Popsicle. When she meets Duncan in the elevator and snubs him, he tells her that he has to do the show: “I … I can’t explain it, Joan.” Of course, we savvy VNRN readers instantly understand that some form of blackmail is at play here, having seen this exact same plot twist, oh, dozens of times before. But does Joan clue in? We savvy VNRN readers instantly understand that she will not! For the rest of the book, we listen to Joan’s constant and endless internal rants against Duncan: “Oh, what had happened to him? How could he come here day after day and waste time mouthing words from a television script when people needed his skills and services at the hospital?”

But we must keep the sparring couple in close proximity, so at the same time as she learns of Duncan’s role in the TV show, Joan is informed that the hospital’s owner, whom she cannot refuse for fear of losing her job, is insisting that she serve as technical advisor to the starlet who has the role of nurse. Claudine Christopher is staging a comeback after her seven-year-old child star son, Benjy, died. Claudine has some sort of hold over Duncan, who drops his petals and folds his tent every time she insists he do this or that for her. Joan briefly wonders about this, but it never occurs to her to ask Duncan about it. No wonder he chases her with such determination.

Another of Joan’s flaws is that, for all she now despises Duncan for not ministering to the “simple people in California with complicated stomach aches,” she herself is a bit of a snob. She’s grown up with money—her mother is a famous, and shallow, interior designer to the stars. She went to Stanford for her undergrad degree (apparently she couldn’t get into Berkeley). “She had a style, a sleek, smart class,” and her clothes are always so much more sophisticated than the gaudy Hollywood people around her. She is wooed by Ad Cartwright, the show’s totally fabulous and phony director, who “talked in italics,” air-kisses everyone, and says things like, “I’ll be miserable if you don’t come to cocktails Thursday!” When he tries to impress Joan by taking her to the best restaurant in town, she snarkily mentions that she is personally acquainted with the chef and his repertoire: “I really prefer gigot d’agneau to the gelantine of duck in port they serve here, but then Alexandre can prepare anything from the entire French haute cuisine, don’t you agree?”

The writing is clever and amusing, and some of the minor characters are very enjoyable—thankfully we do get to spend a fair amount of time with Ad Cartwright, both from Joan’s perspective and also inside his head as well. But Joan is not an especially endearing heroine. Her relentless, over-the-top fury at Duncan comes across as stupid and irritating, especially since we are treated to generous helpings of it in every chapter, and as it is more than obvious that Claudine has forced Duncan to do the show. I don’t really mind an overused plot device—i.e. the misunderstanding that one party cannot explain to the other keeps the star-crossed lovers apart—but it really ought to make sense. Why is Joan’s anger so unrelenting and all-possessing? Why are Duncan’s actions so totally unforgiveable? I could not understand Joan’s feelings, so I couldn’t sympathize with her, or even like her, which pretty much undoes the main foundation of a VNRN. While the writing makes this book worthwhile, I still left it feeling unsatisfied, because I felt that, after everything she put Duncan through with her unjustified rage, Joan didn’t really deserve her inevitable happy ending.

Studio Nurse

By Virginia Roberts, ©1961

Being studio nurse meant for golden-haired Lori Todd sharing all the excitement of Hollywood picture-making, as well as taking care of Producer Mike Lancaster’s ulcer. Mike’s worry was the picture that would never be finished… Lori had two worries. Handsome Mace Hunter, test pilot for Pacific Aircraft, who persisted in risking his life daily for the sheer adventure of it… and naval Lieutenant Dirk Patou. The future Dirk offered Lori was both stable and secure, and in his white uniform Dirk was every bit as handsome as the test pilot who simply would not listen to reason…

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTES:
“ ‘Bill Cox has an iron hand,’ she reminded him. ‘He’ll spank her if she doesn’t follow orders.’ ”

“Sleeping keeps me from drinking coffee.”

“ ‘What he needs,’ Lori theorized, ‘is a good wife to take care of him and boss him around.’ ”

“I didn’t know you’d look so fragile and blonde in your uniform.”

“Hildegarde, maybe if you’d have gone to charm school, like I suggested, you’d have a job somewhere else by now.”

REVIEW:
Lori Todd lives in a rooming house off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood with four other people, plus the landlord and the “colored” cook. She’s a nurse at Richlieu Pictures in Culver City, where she ministers to extras and tries to encourage the spoiled leading lady, Wendy Wilks, to show up on time and put a little effort into her acting. It’s not working. Wendy is the daughter of the millionaire who is bankrolling the film, and if she feels like taking three days off to go party in Las Vegas, well, that’s what she’s going to do.

But truthfully, Lori is about as detrimental to the film as the apathetic starlet. Right off the bat, in Chapter 2, she brings her landlady’s dog to work with her because, “being a city dog, he doesn’t get the exercise he needs.” In the middle of shooting a scene involving a large number of extras and a horse, the dog, which Lori has not even put on a leash, runs onto the set and spooks the horse, which plunges through the crowd, injuring five people. A woman loses a front tooth, another sustains a concussion, and one man has two broken vertebrae and has to remain in the hospital for “an indefinite number of weeks.” Lori gives not one moment’s thought to her role in this tragedy, instead concentrating on the superstition that “accidents always came in threes.”

And she doesn’t waste much time bringing on the next catastrophe. She’s concerned that director Mike Lancaster is developing an ulcer, and insists that he take a few weeks off. This means that Mike, who has been gently coaxing Wendy through her role, is replaced by an assistant director who is a bit less patient. In his very first day on the set with Wendy, he is filming a scene in which she has to ride a burro. It turns out that Wendy has a pathological fear of burros. “It was one of those things requiring psychoanalysis to be understood,” deduces Lori, the medical marvel, and frankly, I think Wendy would find the time and money involved in getting to the bottom of this phobia well worth the effort. But at the traumatic moment, when Wendy, quaking with fear, insists on getting off the burro, the assistant director calls her “some little dumb, spoiled doll,” and Wendy up and quits.

This could spell ruin for Richlieu Pictures. Mike is on the hook for $750,000 to Wendy’s father—“the figure seemed tremendously big, like the national debt,” Lori thinks—so without a finished film to release, the studio will go bankrupt. Lori is deputized to break the news to Mike, on holiday in Hawaii. His reaction—and sensitive readers may wish to avert their eyes here—is, “Oh—rats!” Lori helpfully reminds him, “You said yourself that the picture was jinxed—that it would never be released. If it hadn’t been this, it would probably have been something else.” What a thoughtful thing to say.

When Lori’s not building up the spirits of her director, she’s worrying about her boyfriend, Mace, a test pilot, because, you know, those planes could crash! Mace even proposes, but she tells him, “I’ll never marry you as long as you’re a test pilot.” Which essentially puts that relationship on ice. Not to worry, though—the nephew of her landlady is a hot Navy lieutenant who went to Annapolis. Dirk is putting the moves on Lori on their first date, and is speaking of marriage on their second—right before he sails off for three weeks. When the landlady starts planning the reception, Lori nods and smiles.

Back at work, director Mike has dug an old script that his father wrote out of the closet, phoned Central Casting, and now he has a hot property on his hands. Everything is going very well, “But then she remembered—trouble comes in threes.” So Lori is not at all surprised when one of the lighting guys topples off a scaffold. He’s a hemophiliac, and Lori turns to her ex-boyfriend Mace to fly the man to see a cardiologist. This is of no use whatsoever, because it turns out the patient has an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Because of his hemophilia, the doctors can’t operate, and the patient has only six months to live. Lori bravely visits the patient, who tells her he can’t wait to get out of the hospital so he can find a new home for his little dog. “Sure good thing I’m a widower and not leaving a wife behind. Only my sister.” Another job well done for Lori.

But with disaster number three over with, we can have a really great party celebrating the premiere of Mike’s fabulous new Oscar contender!!! And pick out a husband, too!!

Studio Nurse is not impossible to get through, but it’s nothing really special. Despite the fact that you’re supposed to be inside this movie studio, you really don’t get much of an idea of what it’s like to make a movie, beyond the stereotypical nursing of the petulant star. With over 30 characters to keep track of, it’s a little confusing trying to remember what’s going on. And it’s never a good sign when you pick up a book again, having laid it aside the night before, and have to flip through it to remember what the plot is and the main character’s name. And our protagonist is not the most endearing heroine I’ve ever met, even if she is perky and blonde. The book isn’t badly written, but it’s just not very much fun. Which doesn’t give you very much reason to read it.

Nurse in Hollywood

By Jane Converse, ©1965
Cover illustration by Robert Abbett

Her ash-blond hair. Her big brown eyes. Her pert figure. These were only frosting to her personality—a personality that was pure whistle bait. So what if Kitty Walters was a nursing student just three months short of graduating? So what if her idea of heaven was the symbol R.N. pinned on a starched white uniform? Phil Harlan wasn’t called “Boy Wonder” for nothing. He was dynamic, magnetic, charming, a glib Svengali whose record of convincing was 100 percent. Phil Harlan would have no trouble turning a dedicated would-be nurse into a determined Hollywood starlet. At least that’s what Phil Harlan thought …

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTES:
“That’s what M.D. stands for, didn’t you know? Mighty Dictator.”

REVIEW:
I was looking forward to reading this book because of the Richard Prince painting of the same name, done in 2004. He created a series of paintings based on the titles of vintage nurse romance novels, including Surfing Nurse, Dude Ranch Nurse, and Danger: Nurse at Work. Clearly I am not the only one drawn by such fantastic titles.

The actual story, however, is not as intriguing as the painting. Kitty Walters is three months shy of graduating from nursing school, dating resident Rex MacMillan. He says he loves her, but she thinks he is “caustic and superior … he lived medicine; he was surgery. … He thinks the world begins and ends with a hypodermic needle.” On study night in the nurse’s dorm, when they should be studying the names of the leg muscles, the students are watching Career Girl, U.S.A., a show that travels from town to town, “interviewing the outstanding local career girl,” with musical numbers as interludes. Something tells me this show would not knock Dancing with the Stars out of the ratings.

Dr. MacMillan is not a fan of the show, because he thinks the career girls are “picked for her measurements … The typical career girl’s apt to be a pleasantly plump, unglamorously efficient bank clerk from Podunk, Nebraska.” Well, not all of them. Kitty’s dorm-mates have sent her photo to the Career Girl producer, Phil Harlan, because he is looking for a real-life career girl to star in the movie version of his TV show. (It’s curious to ponder an era in which a working woman was such a novelty that she deserved her own film.) They’ve asked Kitty for an interview, and when she walks in the door on “those perfect Walters gams,” Phil takes one look at her and starts to gush: “You are it! You are she! She is her! We are made!”

When she tells Rex that Phil has offered her a two-year movie contract, he tells her she’s a fool to chuck her nursing career. “It was reminiscent of the time Kitty’s father had told her that she lacked the guts to finish a nursing course”—which was a large part of why she signed up in the first place. So she instantly decides to drop out of school and accept Phil’s offer. She is driven by “an insatiable restlessness, a desire for newness and excitement”; “though she knew her gain would probably never wipe out her loss, she also knew that pride would not let her turn back now.” This girl has a few issues she needs to work out.

So off she goes to Hollywood, where she finds a snazzy new apartment, Asian furniture, and a lot of new party dresses—and then she hangs around the house, waiting for Phil to call, for weeks. While she could have been finishing school. The film director, Damon Dyer, is a fat, has-been alcoholic with fabulous lines like, “Here, let me get you a weak ginger ale,” or, “Go embellish Mother Nature while I pop around the corner. I believe I noticed a haven for weary travelers as I drove up.” He is critical of Kitty, telling her, “To be driven is tragic but understandable. Merely to fall into a trap because you’re mildly intrigued …” But he is also kind, and takes her to a Christmas party at Phil’s house that the host neglected to invite her to.

Eventually Phil shows up with a script, and since Kitty has nothing else to do, she memorizes it from beginning to end. But on the first day of filming, which is in the desert 30 miles from LA, Phil fires the script writer and tosses out the script, writing a new one on the spot, which even Kitty can tell is wooden and hackneyed. So the actors spend a lot of time waiting around the set, contemplating Phil’s rapid crash, while Phil argues with Damon. Soon Damon walks off the set, and is promptly bitten by a rattlesnake. While Phil screams that someone should be cutting Damon’s leg and sucking out the venom (gross!), Kitty snaps at him to keep quiet, coolly packs the leg in ice, and keeps the patient calm en route to the hospital. After that, without Damon behind the camera, Phil is directing, too—and everyone can see that this production is going straight to video.

Kitty tries to quit, but Phil threatens her with a breach of contract suit. Then Rex shows up out of the blue on the set, and Kitty drums up an argument with him that even she can see is absurd. “She was succumbing to the same perversity that had made her defy her father when he had objected to her nursing career, the same mindless obstinacy that had prompted her to fight with Rex once before, discarding an R.N. degree three months before graduation for this debacle in the desert. She regretted her words in almost the same instant that they spilled from her, yet spewing out her anger seemed the only balm for her injured pride.” But then there’s a terrible sandstorm, and some nearby tourists are injured and require immediate medical attention—there’s nothing like a compound fracture of the leg, facial lacerations and third-degree burns to bring a couple together. Whether they are able to heal an impulsive would-be nurse’s psychological difficulties remains unanswered.

Sending Kitty into a miserable experience in Hollywood was a bit too easy; a deeper (yes, I am not afraid to use the word in referring to a vintage nurse romance) book would have bestowed her with success in the movies, yet still allowed her to choose nursing in the end. The writing was hardly Jane Converse’s best, though the character of Damon Dyer was certainly memorable. While it had some interesting bits, Nurse in Hollywood was not worth memorializing in paint.