Yellow Jack (1938) User Reviews

The Walter Reed Story

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 10 October 2005]

Yellow Jack is a film that should be seen more often, if for no other reason than that people should know and appreciate who Walter Reed was and why the United States Army named its medical facility after him.

Sidney Howard had written a play about Reed and his efforts to find a cure for yellow fever, popularly called yellow jack. The original play brought in the British army efforts to do the same thing as well. All that was eliminated and we concentrate on Reed here. Just as well that movie audiences were not diverted from what was going on in Cuba.

Walter Reed was a member of the army medical corps who headed a team of doctors sent specifically to find a cure for yellow fever. Previous reviewers have noted what a scourge it was in the western hemisphere. During a hot summer, the mosquitoes who were the carriers, went as far north as our mid-Atlantic states.

Reed met a lot of resistance, but he was fortunate to have as the Governor General of Cuba after the Spanish American War, Leonard Wood. You see, Wood was a doctor and had joined the army medical corps himself. Wood is played in the film by Jonathan Hale.

Yellow Jack ran for 79 performances during 1934 and the part of the Irish sergeant was played by James Stewart on Broadway. In fact Stewart's performance was noticed by MGM which signed him and brought him to Hollywood. Why they didn't use him in the film, God only knows.

In his entire career in the cinema, I don't think Jimmy Stewart ever attempted any kind of accent, even when he was playing an ethnic or regional type. I'm sure he knew his limitations there.

Now I have heard far worse attempts at a brogue than Robert Montgomery's effort. It's passable enough and Montgomery is a skilled enough player to smooth over the rest. Montgomery is a sergeant in the medical corps and four of his men and he volunteer to be exposed to the Yellow Fever to prove a theory that certain mosquitoes spread the disease. The rest of the volunteers are Sam Levene, Alan Curtis, William Henry, and Buddy Ebsen. Sam Levene was the only member of the original Broadway cast to repeat his role on screen.

Lewis Stone, best known to movie audiences as Judge Hardy, is a stern and dedicated Walter Reed. Like so many scientists Reed met with a lot of ridicule from the medical profession. There always is ridicule until the experts are proved wrong.

If there is a flaw in the film it's Virginia Bruce. Her romance with Montgomery doesn't really advance the plot and she looks out of place, fresh as a daisy for someone working in the tropics.

I'd have liked to have seen more of Charles Coburn as the doctor who Reed based his ideas on and less of Ms. Bruce.

Still and all Yellow Jack is an entertaining and informative film about some very courageous people.

Somewhat like a bad imitation of a John Ford movie

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 28 February 2015]

It is circa 1900 in Cuba, and after quickly winning the Spanish American war, the American military is finding more casualties and danger in the mysterious "Yellow Jack" or Yellow Fever than it ever found in the easily dispatched Spanish troops. There are multiple theories as to what causes the disease, and Walter Reed (Lewis Stone), a group of physicians, and a group of ordinary soldiers are set to the task of determining the actual cause.

The dialogue that is written for the ordinary enlisted men which is supposed to demonstrate camaraderie, personal dreams, personal fears - the kind of scenes that John Ford excelled at directing - is just awful. It drifts between boring and silly, especially the lines Buddy Ebsen is stuck with. Among the soldiers is Irish American John O'Hara (Robert Montgomery), in probably one of the worst roles MGM ever gave him.I wonder who exactly thought that Robert Montgomery playing this role with an Irish Brogue was a good idea?

For some reason absolutely beyond me, O'Hara is just mad about nurse Frances Blake (Virginia Bruce). Granted, O'Hara's approach is not at all smooth nor conscientious, but nurse Blake is just plain awful to the guy. When she's not being condescending to John O'Hara, she's trying to use her feminine wiles to get him to volunteer for what could possibly be a deadly experiment in such an obvious way that even the rather thick O'Hara gets that she did not decide to meet him in the moonlight because she suddenly found him irresistible.

When O'Hara does volunteer for Reed's experiment on the cause of Yellow Jack, Nurse Blake probably makes him wish he would die of the disease just so he wouldn't have to listen to her droning speeches and pontificating that are supposed to be encouragement and flattery?? He probably liked her better when she didn't like him, because she talked less! So what's good about this movie? Lewis Stone as Walter Reed, and believe it or not, I really liked Virginia Bruce here. MGM often cast her as demure likable girls, and she really has me disliking her here, so her performance was good and showed she had range as an actress, it was just a bad role. Also, although everyone has probably heard about Walter Reed, this film tells you his role in eliminating a common killer that was a problem not just in Cuba, but in the U.S. southern states until the cause was found.

Probably worth it just for the historical angle.

Interesting mainly for the casting...script from Sidney Howard play is too talky...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 13 December 2007]

YELLOW JACK is not the enthralling film it should have been about a subject like finding the cure for YELLOW JACK (or malaria), and too much of the early set-up for the story is so talky that right away you can almost see the wheels turning slowly in Sidney Howard's stage play.

But once it gets down to the experimenting, it becomes more interesting to watch. Then again, there are plenty of flaws in the material. One is the insistence on using ANDY DEVINE as comic relief throughout. He makes such a buffoon of the squeaky-voiced dimwit, that his character becomes nothing more than a cartoon. Adding to the unreality, is the appearance of cool blonde VIRGINIA BRUCE as a hard-working nurse in Cuba, looking as fresh as a cucumber no matter how unbearable the heat or how trying the situations are. She looks perfectly groomed in every loving close-up and her acting is, as usual, bland.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY's brogue seems to have annoyed many viewers here, but he does an okay job with the accent. Only question is, why did he have to be portrayed as an Irishman in the first place? And furthermore, why given the name of John O'Hara, when we already had a famous writer by the same name known to the public? Montgomery sounds much like the character he played in NIGHT MUST FALL, but at least his performance here is far better and more convincing than Miss Bruce's work.

Other cast members are competent enough, but little screen time is given to CHARLES COBURN in a minor role as a cynical doctor. Those that make the biggest impression are ALAN CURTIS (handsome man was leading man material and deserved better than this kind of supporting role), SAM LEVENE, HENRY HULL (although a bit overwrought), and in a very brief role as one of the first victims, PHILIP TERRY.

Interesting mainly for the cast and the unusual aspects of the story, but definitely a film that needed to be made more cinematic rather than stagebound with too much talk during the first half-hour.

Walter Reed goes after malaria

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 2 April 2015]

"Yellow Jack" from 1938 is based on a play by Sidney Howard. It stars Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Andy Devine, Henry Hull, Buddy Ebsen, and Charles Coburn.

In 1898, hundreds of soldiers are dying from "Yellow Fever," known as "yellow jack." Major Walter Reed (Stone), who is a physician for the Army, is trying to find what causes the infection. He draws upon the work of a Dr. Finlay (Coburn), who has been laughed out of conferences for his views.

It has to do with mosquitoes, but there is only one way to find out -- do comparative studies with soldiers, some bitten, some not, some living where people died, others not. But no one will volunteer.

These scientific discovery stories were all the rage in the '30s - Madame Curie, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, The Story of Louis Pasteur, etc. Unfortunately "Yellow Jack" is the weakest.

Because it's based on a play, it's talky. I don't mind talky if the dialogue is scintillating. This wasn't. Also, some of the acting is so far over the top it never landed on earth. Robert Montgomery's brogue was AWFUL, way overdone. Buddy Ebsen's okefenokee swamp accent was worse. Painful. Andy Devine was also out there.

Consequently, I wasn't drawn in by what should have been a compelling story. Lewis Stone was a sincere Reed, and Coburn as Finlay was good as well. Virginia Bruce gives a lovely performance. But it was hard to feel anything for that bunch of buffoons - that's how they came off.

In Search of Clues to a Deadly Disease

[Uriah43 · 6/10 · 21 January 2019]

This film begins in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American War with the victorious American army now facing an even more deadly foe-yellow fever. And the concern is even more heightened due to the fact that nobody knows what causes it or how it is spread. So fearful that the returning soldiers may bring this deadly disease back to the United States the army sends a team of highly respected doctors led by a man named "Major Walter Reed" (Lewis Stone) to look for answers. Unfortunately, after a full year in Cuba he is forced to admit to the commander of the area that he is no closer to finding the cause or the cure than he was the day he arrived. Then one day he is apprised of some research conducted by a local doctor named "Carlos Finlay" (Charles Coburn) who had proposed a cause for the disease almost 19 years previously but was derided for it. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a decent drama which contained elements of suspense and romance within the plot as well. And even though it was clearly dated, I still found it to be somewhat enjoyable and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

Mosquitos and mascara, and a phony John O'Hara

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 4/10 · 25 March 2005]

'Yellow Jack' is a goodish, proficiently made Hollywood drama which is weakened by several poor artistic decisions, and rendered absolutely ludicrous by one especially bad decision (which I'll describe presently). The film deals with an inspiring true story in medical history, namely the attempts of the U.S. Army Medical Corps to find a cure for malaria, also known as yellow fever and 'yellow jack'. This disease, spread by mosquitos, was so virulent in tropical regions that it seriously hampered the efforts to build the Panama Canal, as well as similar endeavours in Cuba and elsewhere. I'm only slightly familiar with the facts of this story, so I can't say how accurate this movie is. However, some of the actors in this cast are playing actual historic figures ... notably the underrated Jonathan Hale as Major-General Leonard Wood, the officer in charge of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission. Also excellent here is MGM stalwart Lewis Stone as Major Walter Reed, and Frank Puglia (whom I usually dislike) as Aristides Agramonte. Less impressive is Henry Hull, trying hard to be a serious "ack-torr" instead of portraying a believable character. Hull is cast as Jesse William Lazear, a physician who -- in real life -- deliberately infected himself by allowing 'loaded' mosquitos to transmit the malaria virus to him. Hull's performance makes Lazear look ridiculous rather than heroic.

The film takes place in Cuba in 1900, hard upon the Spanish-American War. Dr Wood and his staff have found a potential treatment for malaria, but must test it on human subjects. Although one might expect Dr Wood to be the central character in this medical drama, the screenplay oddly emphasises one of his test subjects. (This is one of the bad decisions which I've mentioned, but not the worst of them.) Five medical volunteers are found; the de-facto leader of these is played by Robert Montgomery, as an Irish-American trooper named John O'Hara. Is Montgomery playing an actual historic personage? If not, it seems a strange decision for his character to be named John O'Hara, as this is the name of a best-selling novelist who was already well-known in 1938.

There are the usual Hollywood monkeyshines with history, notably in the casting of Virginia Bruce as an army nurse. An extremely beautiful blonde with great sex appeal but very little acting ability, Virginia Bruce is usually someone I'm delighted to see on the screen. Here, however, I find her beauty distracting. I can't believe that any woman as glammed-up as this would have been working as an army nurse in 1900. During Louis B Mayer's reign as head of MGM, the studio had a firm policy that no leading lady would be depicted in an unglamorous manner. So, we get nonsense like this with army nurses getting the glamour treatment. No matter how steamy the swamps of Cuba might get, Virginia Bruce's mascara never wilts. She has a couple of very beautiful close-ups here ... but that beauty works against the plausibility of this story.

One of Montgomery's fellow guinea pigs, played by Buddy Ebsen, is a feller named Jelly Beans. I found this nickname hugely implausible. Did jelly beans even exist in 1900? Even if they did, 'Yellow Jack' takes place largely in a military compound under military discipline: surely Ebsen's character would be referred to by his name or his rank, not some twee nickname. Ebsen was a talented character actor, but here he's been given a badly-written aw-shucks role, and he just can't make the character credible.

The supremely bad decision was made by whoever decided that Montgomery should play his role with an Irish accent. Did I say Irish? I meant 'Oirish'. Montgomery's begorrah brogue is so full of Killarney blarney that it damages any plausibility in his characterisation, as well as the performances of other cast members in his scenes. Here we have a true story that ought to be dramatic and gripping on its own merits, yet Montgomery and Ebsen -- and, to a lesser extent, Henry Hull and Andy Devine -- are walking about with big red neon signs over their heads, flashing the words 'FICTIONAL CHARACTER'.

On the positive side, 'Yellow Jack' features some extremely impressive montages by the brilliant Slavko Vorkapich. They belong in a better film. I'll rate this movie just 4 out of 10.

The End of Yellow Fever

[theowinthrop · 8/10 · 10 October 2005]

The film was shown today on Turner Movie Classics, so I watched it. From what I understand, this film is pretty accurate as far as it goes. During the Spanish American War most American military casualties were due to Yellow Fever, not to Spanish bullets. In fact, many of the troops died in the U.S. after they were returned from Cuba. Yellow Fever epidemics in the Western Hemisphere were a noted part of life. In the 1790s, when the national capital was Philadelphia, there were terrible epidemics in 1793 and 1794, causing the government to briefly shift to another local town. Various southern cities frequently had epidemics (New Orleans did - notice the plot of Bette Davis' movie JEZEBEL, set in 1852 in New Orleans). The cause of the disease was unknown, but it was believed to be highly contagious.

The situation had gotten more intense after the death rate of the Spanish American War, but also with the increased realization that the disease had to be conquered if American hopes for a canal across either the Isthmus of Panama or across Nicaragua was attempted. This is tied up in the film in Henry O'Neill's supporting role as Major Gorgas, the health officer who helped clean up the Canal Zone to build the Panama Canal - and who stresses the point to General Wood and to Major Walter Reed (Lewis Stone). Yellow fever, or Yellow Jack, had to be conquered.

The film (based on a play by Sidney Howard) tells how Major Reed was aware of the work (long unheralded outside of Cuba) of Dr. Carlos Finlay (Charles Coburn) who spent two decades studying the mosquito that he was certain transmitted the Yellow Fever virus (through the female of the species) from people on a one to one basis. Reed has to prove this or medical science will need decades of research to figure it out (thus delaying the canal). He decides to have soldiers volunteer for an experiment involving some in getting stung by the female mosquito.

The film examines the five volunteers (Robert Montgomery, Buddy Ebsen, Sam Levine, William Henry, and Alan Curtis) who decide to do the test - Ebsen, Levine, and Henry to test the old contagion theory in an isolated house full of clothes and bedding used by former Yellow Fever patients and victims, and Montgomery and Curtis in an anti-septic house where Curtis is bitten, and Montgomery is not (it may still be possible for the germ to be contagious after it is given to the first victim). When Curtis gets ill, the possibility that Montgomery might be one of the few who are immune has to be tested - so he has to be bitten by a mosquito on his own afterward, just to show he was susceptible to the disease, but not threatened by contagion.

I recognize that there is criticism directed at some of the actors, but I find that the criticism is hardly fair. Montgomery had used a Welsh accent the year before in NIGHT MUST FALL, possibly his greatest film performance. It sounds natural enough. Moreover, I have heard some British thespians try accents (including Irish) and sound forced. Think of Olivier with his patented German accent (based on Albert Bassermann's voice), or Margaret Rutherford doing an Irish accent (in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT). No matter how hard you can try, Irish accents done by non-Irish people sound full of blarney. It is rough to knock Montgomery for not being born in Ireland and trying to talk like one. Isn't that part acting - trying to play a role you don't totally fit in reality? His performance as the character of John O'Hara is pretty solid. He likes Virginia Bruce, but it takes some convincing (mostly due to the death of Henry Hull's Dr. Lazare) for his conscience to get him to lead his men to take the plunge and volunteer.

The rest of the cast do well. Ebsen as a southern boy who sees the volunteering a chance to get $300.00 to set himself up very comfortably back home. Levine sees it as a chance to help publish a newspaper in Passaic, New Jersey (he seems to be a trifle radical in political opinions). Stanley Ridges as Stones' assistant is critical about the experiment, especially after Lazaire dies. He sees the loss of Lazaire (whom he considers civilization) too great for any possible gain by the experiment. His performance may be the best in the film. Hull's performance is that of an overly enthusiastic assistant, who dies (in the film) ironically by a mosquito that he did not expect. But his performance is actually correct. Andy Devine's performance was for comic relief, so it was not overdone. Charles Coburn plays Dr. Finley as a brilliant researcher, but as cynical because his studies have previously been dismissed or ignored by official medical science. And Virginia Bruce does a decent job as the nurse who helps convince Montgomery to consider volunteering, and then stays with him to give him the extra impetus to beat the disease when he finally gets it. It is not a masterpiece, but it certainly maintains one's interest and keeps the audience's attention. I give it an "8" out of "10.

Pretty good but not the most exciting topic, that's for sure.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 11 September 2011]

'Yellow Jack' is a nickname given to Yellow Fever--a mosquito-borne illness that strikes people in the tropical regions of Central and South America as well as Africa. The inspiration of the film was the US taking temporary possession of Cuba following the Spanish-American War--and the US Army found itself dealing with huge outbreaks of the disease. In response, the US Army Medical Corps began working on a cure--and such work continued when the US began working on the Panama Canal (such as trying to find ways to eradicate the mosquitoes in swampy places). This film is specifically about the work done by the Medical Corps in Cuba starting in 1898 to determine how the disease was spread--by individuals, water, food or some other vector. However, according to IMDb, the film misrepresents the actual research as only volunteers used were one doctor and one nurse--not the four soldiers portrayed in the movie.

The film has an interesting cast. In addition to starring Robert Montgomery, Lewis Stone, Virginia Bruce, Andy Devine, Charles Coburn and Henry Hull. The film is engaging and mildly interesting--but not one I would rush to recommend. Part of it is because they slightly misrepresented the research but mostly because it's just not super-exciting stuff! Well made, however.

By the way, the Panama Canal comment at the 75 minute mark was odd. The film was supposedly set around 1898 (more or less) but the canal wasn't begun by the US until about 1904 (and not completed until about a decade later). This is a small error--just a few years off.

Slow-moving, gloomy story!

[JohnHowardReid · 4/10 · 1 June 2018]

Producer: Jack Cummings. Copyright 17 May 1938. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture. New York opening: 19 May 1938. U.S. release: 27 May 1938. Australian release: 18 August 1938. 83 minutes.

NOTES: The stage play opened at the Martin Beck on 6 March 1934, running a modest 79 performances. Guthrie McClintic directed James Stewart (in the role played by Montgomery on screen), John Miltern, Geoffrey Kerr, Sam Levene, Myron McCormick, Eddie Acuff, Barton MacLane, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Keith, Millard Mitchell, Whitford Kane, Lloyd Gough, George Nash and Katherine Wilson.

COMMENT: Despite the top cast, this is a "B" film, unimpressively directed by George B. Seitz from a slackly written and very stagey screenplay by Edward Chodorov, based on the stage play Sidney Howard wrote in collaboration with Paul de Kruif. Maybe M-G-M made this film to cash in on Howard's name as screenwriter for Gone With the Wind, though the stage play itself won several critics' awards.

Alas, Montgomery is allowed to give another of his phony impressions of low-life subjects and the art direction by Cedric Gibbons and Eddie Imazu is drab and uninspired. And as entertainment, the slow-moving, gloomy story is rather lacking in all the qualities picture-goers have come to expect of M-G-M. True, the support actors give it a damn good shot, but this isn't enough to get Yellow Jack over the line.

facts on John James O;Harra

[leonard-gilbert · 8/10 · 12 December 2013]

Hello all, James O'Harra who was 1 of the volunteers used by Dr.Reed in the yellow jack experiment was my great grandfather and I just want to say that the part in the movie where the nurse in the movie and John James O;Harra end up in a relationship is not accurate, he never married her. I do have a picture of him with Teddy Rooselvelt and the rough riders down in Cuba, after he came back from Cuba he had spells with fevers up to the day he died in 1947 according to my grandmother on my mothers side. He is buried in the Beverly National Cemetery in Beverly,NJ in the Spanish American War section of the cemetery. I haven't seen the movie and only have ready the reviews of the movie, I have been trying to find a copy of the the movie, anyone who know how to obtain one please let me know.