Note: The show was not syndicated (not enough episodes) so it does not loom large in popular memory like Perry Mason. But some episodes are posted to You Tube, by some miracle without commercials. If your schedule is anything like mine, it’s hard to find 50 minutes, but try it, you might like it if a dark medical drama for grown-ups is your cup of tea.
To the Pure - Ben Casey (Season 1, Episode 1)
I was five when this premier episode aired in October, 1961. Of course I don’t remember this particular episode, but I do remember as a little kid I thought as cool beyond belief the show’s opening of the hand drawing the symbols ♂, ♀, ✳, †, ∞ on a blackboard, as cast member Sam Jaffe recited, “Man, woman, birth, death, infinity.” I still think it’s beyond cool, so beware - some of my critical stances are those of a five-year-old.
Our protagonist is a gifted neurosurgeon at County General Hospital. Dr. Ben Casey is also the colleague from hell. In an intense opening scene of a failed resuscitation, he chews out a fellow doctor for losing an elderly patient: “You probably didn’t kill him but you didn’t do anything to keep him alive.” His mentor Dr. Zorba scolds him for bawling out x-ray technicians and for bullying badly needed nurses so badly that they resign. Casey’s fighting with higher ups on whether to proceed with a risky surgery on a nine-year-old boy with bad blood vessels in his brain.
For 1961, the show is diverse way beyond our post-modern expectations. The nine-year-old patient and his mother are Spanish-speakers named Salazar. Casey has a Japanese-American friend and colleague played by Aki Aleong. The elegant and intelligent Bettye Ackerman plays a female doctor. Sam Jaffe as Dr. Zorba indicates origin with lines like “Maybe I stand on my head and speak to them in Greek” but a Yiddish lilt (especially the high notes) makes clear the character was meant to be Jewish.
The five-minute conversation when old Dr. Zorba upbraids young Dr. Casey is so well-written and well-played that one wonders if the two actors brought a real-life discomfort with each other to the scene. Zorba’s harsh line “Now get out of here, you make me sick to look at you” sounds like it comes straight from his heart.
Which brings us to prickly Vince Edwards. In the anti-hero tradition of the late Fifties and early Sixties, he’s difficult to like but a force of nature like Marlon Brando’s Kowalski or Paul Newman’s Hud. His dark Italian look* contrasts with the hospital whites such that he pops on the monochrome screen, compelling our attention. He gives the part intelligence, skill, dedication and a confident tough strength. Mrs. Salazar says, “You don’t talk like a friend but I trust you.” The kid asks him, “Doctor, how come you never smile? You don’t like me?” The scene with Dr. Maggie (Bettye Ackerman) is totally in character. After awkward silences on their date, his sweet talk: “Whenever I hold a woman, I take her pulse” and “You’re fairly attractive but you talk too much.”
The black and white makes the action look starkly realistic. The failed resuscitation of the geezer was probably not so wrenching as real life but it was convincing enough to me (identifying with the geezer and all). In a grisly scene of a lumbar puncture, a young girl with rabies jerks around during the procedure and exposes Casey to the virus. Casey is not a candidate to take any vaccine because of allergies. The 30-day waiting and watching for the emergence of symptoms like fever, headache, anxiety, confusion, and agitation is marked the old-fashioned way, x’ing out days on a wall calendar.
Anybody who's watched a lot of noir knows its look is more than light coming through venetian blinds. It’s impressive how director Moser employs black, white, and grey and lighting to provide contrast and fascination to the settings. The contrasts are emphasized by odd points of view, such as seeing the ceiling go by while lying supine on a gurney (hey, I’ve done that). Such as the disorienting shot of queasily looking down into the operating theater. Such as the black microscope in the foreground with Casey in white in the background. Settings are spellbinding: the nightmarish tunnel connecting the hospitals, Casey’s spartan hospital quarters, the night club where Casey and Maggie dance, Casey’s distorted vision of contracting rabies.
Finally, the setting of the hospital stokes our natural curiosity and jitters about hospitals, medical procedures and caregivers. Casey observes, “Most doctors are like most people – you ask them to trade an old idea for a new one and they jump out of their underwear.” This still feels true. To the ordinary person, instruments and devices still look shiny, delicate, mysterious, and vaguely menacing. To our post-modern eyes, the 60-year-old tech seems coldly metallic and somehow stately. Huge wall units with five-spoke hand wheels, rectangular indicators, and huge dials seem imposing and alien. Not at all like our portable, plastic, touchy electronic devices nowadays. Plus, Casey’s hospital is a lot quieter than our hospitals are now with their continuous beeping, chiming, dinging, droning, humming and buzzing
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