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.

Navy Nurse

By Rosie M. Banks
(pseud. Alan Jackson), ©1960 

Alice Smith, pretty Navy nurse, had an attack of love at first sight. And she didn’t want to be cured. The man was tall, good-looking and French. Thrilled by his kisses, Alice longed for the day when she would be Mrs. Jacques Stern. But Jacques never talked of marriage. And he was mysterious about his private life, especially the source of his wealth. Meanwhile, the Office of Naval Intelligence had rated Jacques “top priority.” And handsome Morgan O’Neill, ONI agent, was making a particularly thorough check. Morgan loved Alice deeply. He’d stop at nothing to save her from the dangers that threatened her happiness—and her life. 

GRADE: B+ 

BEST QUOTES: 

“If you look like that, why do you need to say anything?”

“The fact that she is, well, homely should make her an excellent, obedient, and faithful wife.” 

“Had she lived in a society which approved of polyandry she might have been completely happy.” 

“This Communist thing is getting to be a bore.” 

“Your heart does not leap into your throat, the nurse in her told her, but, oh, yes, it does, said the girl, the woman.” 

“Morgan had thrown his arms around Alice to prevent her from pitching forward. Even at the moment of danger he had experienced a thrill at feeling the warm suppleness of her body pressed in fear against his. It was like making love in the millionth of a second.” 

“He’s out this minute shopping for an engagement ring and I’ll need a magnifying glass to see the stone.” 

REVIEW: 

It simply cannot be denied that adopting as your pen name that of a fictional character—herself a romance novelist of the most torrid kind, having penned the renowned Only a Factory Girl—is absolutely sublime in its cleverness. Add to that the fact that my esteem for the original Ms. Banks’ creator, P.G. Wodehouse, is nigh reverential, and my hat is doffed in deep respect to the Rosie M. Banks who brought us Navy Nurse. It doesn’t always pay to open a book with this sort of obligation already hanging over you, but Ms. Banks very nearly manages to be worthy of it. Very nearly. 

First off, her writing is quite good. Maybe a little too good, in fact. Where are the heaving bosoms, the stolen glances, the bitter tears we would expect of someone who has chosen such an eponym? What we get is that crisp, fresh, almost innocent prose that to me evokes the 1950s, when everyone wore their shirts tucked in and their hair neatly combed, and blasphemed by cursing, “Golly!” But at the same time, the writing is entertaining, smart, and lively. As just one example, Ms. Banks describes the audit of a crooked French character’s bookkeeping: “And so the little purple figures, with their crossed sevens and their guileful misdirections, began to tell a curious story.” 

The actual story, however, is less of a nurse romance than a spy novel with a nurse as a peripheral character. Indeed, we spend the entire second half of the book, right up to the last two chapters, hanging out with a gang of communist spies, following the intricate machinations of their plot to get the suave Frenchman Jacques Stern to marry Navy nurse Alice Smith, so as to milk her and her officer friends for military secrets at vodka-soaked cocktail parties for years to come. It’s an interesting enough thriller, if a little confusing at times, trying to remember who is double-crossing whom, but it just wasn’t really what I signed up for. 

When we’re not witnessing conversations with the mysterious ringleader behind a one-way mirror, the untimely deaths of various characters who get in the way, and naval intelligence officers scrambling to catch up with the bad guys, we drop in for a quick visit with Alice. She has another boyfriend, naval intelligence officer Morgan O’Neill, who is madly in love with her. She, from the first day she meets him, believes “he would be a close friend, something like the brother she never had.” When Morgan proposes, knowing full well he will be rejected, she complies, telling him, “I do not love you in the way that would make for a happy marriage.” After all, “it was Jacques who excited her, Jacques whom she wanted to marry.” Well, we know full well she will change her mind, for two simple reasons: (1) No VNRN heroine ever marries a foreigner, and (2) no VNRN heroine ever refuses a man in uniform. Hit the road, Jacques. 

You know he will, and you can even figure out that Morgan will have a hand in bringing Jacques and his gang to justice. But the patriotic whitewashing of every difficult fact, such as Alice’s abrupt change of heart toward Morgan, is too facile for a writer of Ms. Banks’ talents. I’m not one to throw away such promise so easily, though. She’s apparently written at least three other VNRNs, Surgical Nurse, Ship’s Nurse, and Settlement Nurse, so I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt until the evidence of these books comes in.

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Nurse Paige's Triumph

Teresa Holloway, ©1972

“Tell Navy … Sara … saboteur—” The patient’s words were plain enough, but what did they mean, Paige Hayden wondered? Her father, a retired naval intelligence officer, and his successor, Capt. Hank Davis, thought they knew: “Sara” was the giant U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga, but what kind of sabotage was planned, by whom, or when, they couldn’t guess. Anyway, the top-secret mystery was none of Paige’s business… Until she found a corpse floating in the river. And then David—Dr. Dave McLaurin, the dedicated young cardiologist she loved—was kidnapped, sending the nurse on an impulsive cross-country flight to trap a traitor…

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTE:
“Next time I’ll greet you in such loungewear slinkiness that you’ll have no thought for broccoli hollandaise.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Paige’s Triumph is actually more of a mystery story than a romance, and includes two kidnappings, a gun in the glove box, theft of a top-secret explosive, and a drowned man fished from the ocean. I have to give the author a little credit for trying to make her book a little bit more than the usual VNRN, but unfortunately it wasn’t done very well, so you know exactly what’s going to happen next, and the mystery itself is so mundane that it’s difficult to care one bit. The reviewer giveth and the reviewer taketh away.

Paige works in the cardiac unit with hot and hunky cardiologist Dr. Dave McLaurin. One rainy evening she’s looking out the hospital window and sees two people struggling in a green Pontiac, one of whom is wearing a white suit. “A white suit? On a day like this?” She’s caring for a new patient who’s had a “stoppage” of his heart. The ID bracelet he wears names him as E. Dyal, and that is what everyone calls him; though he’s awake and alert and chatting with Paige, no one apparently thinks to ask him what his name is or anything about himself. She’s telling E. about her father, retired Navy intelligence, “one of the keenest and most active special agents the country had during the dangerous years after the end of World War II.” Suddenly the man rattles himself. “ ‘Navy. Tell—Navy—Sara—saboteur—’ The whisper, rasping, died in the old man’s throat. The line on the monitor, that thin thread of electronic life, died, too.”

When she gets home, she tells her father about her deceased patient, and he immediately calls two Navy intelligence officers over to the house to hear her story. It turns out there’s this aircraft carrier in the harbor called Saratoga, and some new high-tech explosive device has recently been stolen from the Navy. So the Navy starts working on the case, but Paige always seems to land—inadvertently, of course—in the middle of any actual developments, in between her dates with Dr. Dave. For starters, she’s driving home from work the next evening when she sees a body—wearing a white suit!—floating in the river. So she hops into the water, takes off her polyester pants (I am not kidding), ties them around the body (the white suit is a Navy uniform), and tows it along the embankment until she gets to a place where she can climb out again. Just as she is heaving herself over the rail, along comes a car—“unbelievably, it was Dave.” That’s not the end of the coincidences. He stays with the body while she drives off in Dave’s car to get help, wearing Dave’s raincoat—the body still has her pants—and when she returns, Dave and the dead sailor are gone. Two of the bad guys who tossed the body into the drink were out for a drive when they just happened to come across Dave and their victim and abduct them both.

Back at home, Paige gets a call from a woman working with the bad guys, ordering her to meet them in the parking lot of the hospital with some sodium pentothal. “Why sodium pentothal?” Paige asks herself. It’s an excellent question, but never mind about that, because we’ll never find out, or who the sailor was, or why he was struggling with someone in the Pontiac, or why he was killed, or even what happens to his body. Paige takes Dave’s car to the hospital, and while searching the glove box for a tissue to blow her nose, she finds a .32 instead and stuffs it in her waistband (she’s put on new pants at home). After stealing the “truth serum” from the ED, she is wandering around the parking lot when she bumps into Dave! The kidnappers have sent him out to collect the drug, so she hands it over, along with his doctor’s bag with the pistol now concealed inside. After making out with her, he blithely goes back to the kidnappers’ car. He’s not in league with them, he’s apparently just too dumb to walk away when he has the opportunity. (It isn’t until they take him back to some hospital outbuilding and he finds the pistol in his bag that he encourages them to release him.)

After lots more conversations with Navy and FBI agents, who tell her that E. worked in the laundry room at the hospital, Paige is at the bus station to buy a newspaper when she hears the same woman who called her, in the phone booth saying that she’s taking the bus to Dallas. Has anyone used the word “unbelievable” yet? Paige instantly makes a phone call, but does she contact her friends at the FBI and tell them what bus the woman is on? No, she calls the hospital to leave a message for Dave that she will call him tomorrow, and buys a ticket for the same bus. When the bus finally gets to Dallas, after repeated stops along the way during which Paige is always unable to phone anyone, she instantly loses the woman she is following. But remember, this Paige we’re talking about. “As luck would have it,” we are told, one of the FBI agents she has met literally brushes past her to the phone booth, and she hears another conversation that implicates him in this plot to blow up the Saratoga. This woman has got to start buying lottery tickets.

Back at home (she took a 747), Paige learns that the Navy is in the process of collecting the bad guys, including the traitor FBI agent. She’s on her break at work when it occurs to her that E. would have had a locker in the hospital laundry room, which may be where the missing explosive is hidden. Sure enough, all she has to do is open the locker and there it is! Those FBI agents have nothing on Nurse Paige. She stuffs the explosive—where else?—into her pants, but Paige’s luck suddenly goes sour. One of the bad guys happens to arrive just as she is walking out of the laundry, grabs her, relieves her of the rest of E.’s stuff, and locks her in a room in the basement. Unbelievably—there’s that word again—she is rescued minutes later by Dr. Dave and two FBI agents who just happened to be at the hospital when she didn’t come back from her break. She and Dave fall into each other’s arms, and the world is safe for young love and aircraft carriers again.

The coincidences just never stop with this book, and they’re so bizarre that even the characters notice; Dave sums up just a small selection of them at the end: “By a strange coincidence, Paige is there when Dyal tries to square himself with his God and his country. Then she’s at the window when the poor sailor tries to free himself of he-knows-not-what conspiracy.” The plot is totally unbelievable, but not so outrageously that you get to have a good laugh at it, except possibly for the scene where she has found a body floating in the ocean and tied it to her waist using her pants. The sabotage scenario is so removed from the story that it never really concerned me. Should I really care about this aircraft carrier? Even the romance aspect of the plot barely caused more than a riffle. Her relationship with Dave seems to be progressing swimmingly throughout the story, and the only hiccups are her insecurities—does he really love her?—and the little fight they have at the end of the book when he unexpectedly decides to join the Navy. But no worries, he gets to stay right at the same hospital where he’s always worked. It’s just not a book that elevates the pulse or the interest, for better or for worse.