The Hasty Heart is the second best known work of author John Patrick, his biggest triumph being The Teahouse of the August Moon. It ran on Broadway from early to middle 1945 while there was still very much a war going on in the China-Burma-India Theater for 204 performances. It starred Richard Basehart, Anne Burr and John Lund on stage.
Those same roles were taken by Richard Todd, Patricia Neal, and Ronald Reagan in the screen adaption directed by Vincent Sherman. About the only change that was made was a brief prologue showing exactly how Richard Todd got his injuries. After that the entire film is set in a hospital along the Assam front in that theater.
The Hasty Heart is a story about the wounded Richard Todd who doesn't know that while seemingly recovered he lost a kidney and the other one is irreversibly damaged. He will die within a matter of weeks and nurse Patricia Neal moves him in with some other convalescent soldiers including an American, Ronald Reagan and tells them to be easy with him.
Easier said than done because Todd's a really hard case. He's a bitter angry man, a foundling with no family or friends to speak of which is why they aren't writing him his ticket back home, he's got no one to go back home to.
Richard Todd got his first notice in The Hasty Heart with the American public and during the Fifties he made as many films on this side of the pond as in the United Kingdom. Todd was a real life war hero so in playing this part he brought a wealth of bitter experience among dying men. Todd got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and his competition included, John Wayne for Sands of Iwo Jima, Kirk Douglas for Champion, and Gregory Peck for Twelve O'Clock High. The eventual winner though was Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men.
Patricia Neal as a young contract player with Warner Brothers also got her first really good part as the compassionate nurse. And a veteran contract player with Warner Brothers who left the movies for another career, Ronald Reagan got some of the best notices of his career. The Hasty Heart is definitely one of the three films most identified with him in a good way, the others being Knute Rockne - All American, and King's Row.
The Hasty Heart is a fine film about the tragedy of war and the worst tragedy of going through life without friends. Make sure to catch it if it's ever broadcast on TCM.
