When nice guys turn nasty: ‘The Good Nurse’ could follow in the Oscar footsteps of ‘Night Must Fall’
Oscar-winning Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”) has been testing out his darker side of late. The baby-faced 40-year-old British actor has made a name for playing nice, often complex guys. But last year, he turned that persona on its ear in London’s West End playing the smarmy and decadent Emcee in the revival of the musical “Cabaret.” He won the prestigious Olivier Award for his performance.
And now he’s giving a killer of a performance as a serial murderer in Netflix’s fact-based thriller “The Good Nurse.” Redmayne’s hospital nurse Charlie is friendly and sweet with a great bedside manner. But beneath this caring visage lurks a vicious mind who killed at least 400 patients at various hospitals over the years.
Doing a 180 from his usual fare, recalls Robert Montgomery’s shift with 1937’s “Night Must Fall.” Best known these days as the father of Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched” fame, Montgomery was one of MGM’s biggest stars of the 1930s excelling in romantic comedies. He was handsome, affable. Before breaking into movies in the late 1920s, Montgomery had appeared in several Broadways plays including a trifle called “Bad Habits of 1926”.
By the mid 1930s, though, Montgomery was itching to do a film with a big more grit. But the studio’s Louis B. Mayer brushed him off. The actor’s protests got louder after he saw Emlyn Williams’ “Night Must Fall” on Broadway in 1936. He was enthralled with this captivating gruesome story set in the English countryside about a charming young sociopath named Danny who inveigles himself into the household Mrs. Bramson, a grumpy elderly woman (Dame May Whitty) and becomes her constant companion. But just what is in that big hat box that Danny wouldn’t let anyone touch? Could it contain the head of his decapitated victim.?
Then New York columnist Ed Sullivan wrote “Robert Montgomery, cocktail-shaking smarty of films, rebelled and asked to be assigned to ‘Night Must Fall.”’ Eventually, Mayer relented. “They okayed me playing it because they thought the fan reaction in me, would humiliate me.” According to TCM.com, Montgomery was so confident he could play a serial killer, he even helped subsidize part of the film’s budget.
Dame May Whitty, then 72, reprised her Broadway role. Here’s a bit of trivia: “Night Must Fall” marked her debut in a sound film. Rosalind Russell, who was rising in the ranks at the studio, was cast as Olivia, Mrs. Bramson’s niece who sees through Danny’s ruse. John Van Druten adapted Williams’ play and Richard Thorpe directed.
Reviews were strong with the New York Daily News proclaiming that the movie “lifts the MGM actor out of the lower brackets, where he has slipped because of shoddy materials, into an eminent position among the top-notch Hollywood players.” Variety mused that the film “may be art, but it’s not box office.”
But it was. Not only was it a critical achievement, “Night Must Fall” scored at the box office. Both Montgomery and Whitty earned Oscar nominations and the film swept the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures earning honors for best film and acting for the two stars.
Ironically, according to TCM.com, Mayer handed out flyers at the Hollywood premiere “disclaiming the film. Mayer also personally supervised the making of a trailer which preceded the film, also warning filmgoers of its experimental nature.”
So, did the film’s success bring better role for Montgomery?
Not at first. He found himself back in the comedy genre, but he did get a chance to work with Alfred Hitchcock and Carole Lombard in the Master of Suspense’s only comedy, 1941’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Montgomery received a second Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the 1941 fantasy “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” which was remade 37 years later by Warren Beatty as “Heaven Can Wait.”
He later became a director making his debut with the quirky 1946 film noir “Lady in the Lake,” which uses the subjective camera, so audiences only see his character of gumshoe Philip Marlowe in mirrors or windows. And he 1950, Montgomery moved to television, scoring a huge hit with the NBC dramatic anthology “Robert Montgomery Presents” which ran until 1958. Montgomery earned an Emmy nomination in 1952 and he series bagged an Emmy for Best Dramatic Program in 1953.
Montgomery died in 1981 at the age of 77. Matthew Broderick, then best-known as Ferris Bueller, took on the role of Danny in a 1999 Broadway revival to a glowing review from the New York Times which said that his “terrifically smart, fully engaged portrait of a sociopath may unnerve audiences much as Robert Montgomery did.”
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