The Nurse's Secret (1941)* 1/2 (out of 4) Boring mystery from Warner has a man found dead with a gunshot wound to his head. Everyone believes it was suicide but Inspector Patten (Regis Toomey) thinks someone murdered him. To try and turn up some clues, he has his nurse girlfriend (Lee Patrick) enter the home and take care of an elderly woman and sure enough more bodies pile up. THE NURSE'S SECRET is pretty bland from start to finish and in a genre full of bland pictures, this one here has very little going for it. I think I've watched just about everyone one of these type of movies that come on Turner Classic Movies and this here is without question one of the weakest. I think what hurts the film so bad is that it runs just 64-minutes yet it feels much longer than GREED. The entire story isn't all that interesting and it's clear that they're trying way too hard to be mysterious. I say that because there are so many red herrings and each of them are portrayed in such an over-the-top way that it's obvious to tell that none of them are going to turn out to be the killer. With that said, this is one of those films where things just happen for no apparent reason and there's really no crime to figure out because you know that in the end there's going to be a group of people gathered and one of them is going to start singing. Patrick is fairly good in her role as the nurse and I also enjoyed Toomey. Julia Bishop is good as one of the suspects and I also enjoyed Charles Waldron in his part. THE NURSE'S SECRET is only going to appeal to film buffs who must check out every "B" picture that the genre has to offer.

Regis Toomey, Lee Patrick, Julie Bishop, and Clara Blandick star in "The Nurse's Secret," a 1941 remake of Warner Brothers' "While the Patient Slept" The story concerns a suicide that Inspector Patton (Tooney) thinks is murder. The members of the household all act strangely, and Patton (Toomey) sends in his girlfriend, nurse Ruth Adams (Patrick) to take care of the elderly woman in the home (Blandick) who broke down after finding her nephew's body and to see what she can find out. There are plenty of suspects, as well as things that go bump in the night.Average film, and I frankly wasn't sure at first if it was supposed to be funny or not as it was so over the top. Patrick had a nice, energetic personality, but it felt like these people were directed to act as if they were on stage rather than before a camera. Way too big.You'll see lots of familiar faces in this, though: Julie Bishop, George Chandler, Charles Trowbridge, Virginia Brissac - names that might not mean much to you but the faces are instantly recognizable.It's just okay.

This film is a remake of the 1932 Warner Brothers film "Miss Pinkerton". Warner Brothers was a major recycler of movie material with the same movie sometimes being remade twice during the 30's and 40's. The original film did not really have any precode moments to speak of. It was just a creaky old house murder mystery with Joan Blondell in the role of the nurse of the old lady who had the terrible shock of discovering her nephew's body. George Brent played the inexperienced police detective who was out to solve the crime.In this film Regis Toomey is the inexperienced detective and Lee Patrick is the nurse. Regis Toomey is better at playing a bumbling detective than George Brent - Brent just played the part too deliberately. On the other hand I think I prefer Blondell in the original as the nurse. Lee Patrick certainly could play the "wise cracking dame" pretty well, but she was 40 when this film was made versus Blondell who was 26 when she played the role and was more age appropriate for the part.The one thing that has improved over the years were production values - the sound recording is better, and you can see detail better even though this is an old dark house. Still, I think there is nothing of note that this remake adds to the original. If you haven't seen "Miss Pinkerton" I think you'll like it, but if you have seen the original I'd just stick with that.

This is a nice little mystery from Warner Brothers in the 1940's and I thought it was much more enjoyable than the original version that was made by the same studio in the 1930's. I always thought that Lee Patrick was much underrated as an actress, but this is just another good movie for a very good actress.