White Corridors *** (1951, James Donald, Googie Withers, Godfrey Tearle, Petula Clark, Jack Watling, Moira Lister, Barry Jones, Megs Jenkins, Basil Radford) – Classic Movie Review 13,568

The 1951 hospital drama film White Corridors stars James Donald, Googie Withers, Godfrey Tearle, Petula Clark, Jack Watling, Moira Lister, Barry Jones, Megs Jenkins, and Basil Radford.

Director Pat Jackson’s 1951 hospital drama film White Corridors is based on the 1944 novel Yeoman’s Hospital by Helen Ashton, and stars a long list of local luminaries headed by James Donald, Googie Withers, Godfrey Tearle, Petula Clark, Jack Watling, Moira Lister, Barry Jones, Megs Jenkins, and Basil Radford.

White Corridors is a well made and enjoyable, if sentimental medical drama set in an English Midland city general hospital, with the accent on the day-to-day medical routine as Dr Neil Marriner (James Donald) finds an experimental cure for a penicillin-resistant infection disease, though romance gets a look in when doctor Sophie Dean (Googie Withers)’s engagement to Dr Donald is threatened by a posting to London.

Meanwhile the two doctors fight to try to save the life of Tommy Briggs (Brand Inglis), a little boy with blood poisoning (septicaemia). But, while drawing blood from the boy, Marriner accidentally infects himself and becomes seriously ill. He asks Sophie to give him his experimental serum if there is no other hope.

There is nice, brisk star acting from these two players, plus appealing turns from a clutch of British stalwarts, notably including 19-year-old Petula Clark as Joan Shepherd, and comic relief from Radford as a meddling retired civil servant.

This mix of laughs and tears was very popular in its day, deservedly so, with professional, realist-style direction from wartime documentarist Jackson, who also co-writes with Jan Read.

Also in the cast are Avice Landone, Bernard Lee, Bruce Seton, Patrick Troughton, Dandy Nichols, Fabia Drake, Mary Hinton, Gerard Heinz, Philip Stainton, Dana Wynter, and Mignon O’Doherty, every one a winner.

Mignon O’Doherty was in the original London stage cast of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,568

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