Rewind, Review, and Re-Rate: ‘People Will Talk’: Focus on a Healthy Spirit as Well as a Healthy Body

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G | 1 h 50 min | Romantic Comedy | 1951

Screenwriter-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s tongue-in-cheek film has a hard time taking itself seriously, opening as it does with the comically self-conscious line, “This will be part of the story of Noah Praetorius, M.D. That is not his real name, of course …”

The winsome, if enigmatic, Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant) uses unconventional techniques to cure. His more conventional, less recognized colleagues envy him. Instead of emulating him, as they should, they seek to discredit him. Led by the devilishly dogged professor Rodney Elwell (Hume Cronyn), they try to turn his friendship with the equally enigmatic Mr. Shunderson (Finlay Currie) against him. Cornered but cocksure, Praetorius doesn’t do himself favors by falling in love with a fetching female patient of his, Deborah (Jeanne Crain).

Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant) and his patient, Deborah (Jeanne Crain), in "People Will Talk." (20th Century Fox)
Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant) and his patient, Deborah (Jeanne Crain), in "People Will Talk." 20th Century Fox
Mankiewicz wrote screenplays for over 15 years before he turned to directing. Here, he indulges that love for writing with a rapier wit and directs an assured cast. With all the rigor of an endoscopy, his droll lines interrogate truisms about love, life, death. And society’s wagging tongues.

An aged bed-ridden patient sighs: “It’s not much fun when you get to be old.”

Praetorius, checking her pulse: “It’s less fun if you don’t get to be old.”

Mankiewicz’s jibes about health and sickness are three-pronged. First, through Praetorius’s enviable record with patients, he pays serious tribute to doctors who focus as much on a healthy spirit as they do on a healthy body. Second, through Elwell’s inimical inquisition into Praetorius’s reputation, he takes a comical swipe at quacks preying on gullible folk. Finally, through Praetorius, Mankiewicz wisecracks about doctors so obsessed with disease and profiting off it that they hurry through treatment without holistic diagnosis, cementing patient dependence instead of doing the opposite.
Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant, L) has ideas that differ from colleague Dr. Elwell (Hume Cronyn), in "People Will Talk." (20th Century Fox)
Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant, L) has ideas that differ from colleague Dr. Elwell (Hume Cronyn), in "People Will Talk." 20th Century Fox

Praetorius’s former housekeeper, Sarah Pickett, and her aside against conversing behind “closed doors,” spoofs those who unjustly accuse the reputable of impropriety. Prime-accuser Elwell’s name seems a play on the phrase “ill will,” typical of wags who cast aspersions in bad faith. And Praetorius’s first name is a play on the biblical “Noah,” who was also roundly mocked.

Through the character of Shunderson, the aide shadowing Praetorius, Mankiewicz seems to say that accomplished men, too, need a conscience-keeper to avoid succumbing to mediocrity.

The Imperceptible Human Spirit

Praetorius believes that patients are sick people whose feeding, bathing, and resting routines must be inspired by what’s best for their recovery. They’re not “inmates” whose routines can be toyed with to suit busybody doctors and nurses. He parrots Deborah’s absent-minded epithet for him (“pompous know-it-all”) hinting first that, if he’s pompous, he isn’t a know-it-all, and second, that the latter descriptor fits others in his profession quite snugly.

“The human body is not necessarily the human being,” Praetorius tells medical students. Understanding bone, muscle, and tissue from months of cadaver-cutting in classrooms may tell all about the body but little about the person. Personhood is expressed in love, hate, desire, hope, despair, memory. And sensitivity to a patient’s personhood is what eludes even revered doctors.

Praetorius is gifted enough to also conduct the university orchestra. One scene has him comically correcting bass-player friend Prof. Barker (Walter Slezak) to play in step with his baton and the rest of the orchestra, rather than merely as soloist. It echoes his earlier allusion to a soul that, like it or not, harmonizes body parts no matter how proficient they are individually.

(L–R) Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant), Prof. Barker (Walter Slezak), and Arthur Higgins (Sidney Blackmer), in "People Will Talk." (20th Century Fox)
(L–R) Dr. Praetorius (Cary Grant), Prof. Barker (Walter Slezak), and Arthur Higgins (Sidney Blackmer), in "People Will Talk." 20th Century Fox

What’s Praetorius saying about the world of syringes, serums, and syrups? The imperceptible human spirit holds sway over the obvious body. But doctors who don’t appreciate the orchestral analogy with Barker shouldn’t be so surprised when they treat body parts in isolation and end up with dysfunctional, if not downright suicidal, humans. Deborah’s attempted suicide is more than a plot device.

Praetorius smirks, “The nerve of some doctors, giving people up for lost, as though they’d found them in the first place.”

The film satirizes willful defamation much like “Meet John Doe” and “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.” The masses shower love on a mysterious, caring figure, and then a mischievous minority abruptly brands him a fraud.

Some of Mankiewicz’s meandering scenes (around toy trains, or Deborah’s uncle and his farm) come off as camp. But his lines are otherwise sharp, thoughtful, and wry, especially when voiced by the charming, classy Grant, not a cuff out of place, even during a frenzied session conducting Brahms’s “Gaudeamus igitur.”

A nurse, finding Praetorius lost in thought, asks if he’s all right. He dismisses it at his “usual twilight sadness” and wonders, poetically, if it ever struck her that days die as people do: battling for every last moment of light before they give up to the dark.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s tongue-in-cheek film "People Will Talk." (20th Century Fox)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s tongue-in-cheek film "People Will Talk." 20th Century Fox
‘People Will Talk’ Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Starring: Cary Grant, Hume Cronyn, Finlay Currie, Jeanne Crain MPAA Rating: G Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Release Date: Aug. 29, 1951 Rated: 3 stars out of 5
Rudolph Lambert Fernandez
Rudolph Lambert Fernandez
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Rudolph Lambert Fernandez is an independent writer who writes on pop culture.
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