Cary Grant plays a gynecologist....
The end.
Just kidding. I just thought you might enjoy the idea :) Well, Cary Grant plays Noah Praetorious (really) a rich doctor/gynecologist/shaman/musician that has his own method to treat patients: he actually cares about them, just like Patch Adams. But he's not like a clown, he talks to people wearing an elegant suit and sees that they're comfortable. The movie has two main threads: his relationship with Jeanne Crain and an investigation against him held by a medical board.
The cool thing about People Will Talk (directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, one of my faves), is that it deals with subjects that are touchy even today: single moms, alternative medicine AND an alternative medicine practitioner marrying a young patient/single mom. There is also a scene in which Cary unveils a young woman corpse in front of a class (not the whole body of course, but head and shoulders) and I thought that was kind of unusual in an old movie.
Well, Cary marries pregnant Jeanne (the real father was a soldier that died in the war and she says she wasn't sure about him). It's super refreshing to see these kind of topics being treated in a movie from 1951 and it's really nice how Cary deals with both situations, in a very natural way, always trying to reassure and comfort Jeanne and the audience. And he becomes an even stronger figure when you learn that Jeanne and her dad are living with a very unkind uncle that treats them bad.
The chemistry between the main stars is great and you really root for the couple. This is one of my favorite scenes, in which Cary starts "chasing" Jeanne and ends up trapped:
Then, there are terrific secondary characters: the Wicked Witch playing a woman that gives information against Cary, Finlay Currie playing a mysterious man that follows Dr. Praetorious everywhere, Walter Slezak is really funny as Cary's friend and Hume Cronyn as the detestable "medical prosecutor".
It seems that Cary "refused to acknowledge this film" and I've read a lot of comments from people saying that this one is a stinker. Some say that it should have been called People will talk, talk, talk..., an idea I find really funny, but untrue. I never even thought that they were talking too much. Others say that the genre is not very well defined (a fact I hate in Made for each other, for example) but I never took this movie like a comedy. It's just a film dealing with several topics in a serious way, with some fine comic relief moments.
So, follow my advice, you won't regret: this is a very interesting movie. I even included Noah Praetorious (I like writing that name) and Deborah Higgins in the 20 coolest couples from Classic Movies (I find "fashionably attractive or impressive" the fact of a doctor marrying a pregnant patient, especially if the doctor is Cary Grant).
And guess what? You can watch it on Youtube: http://youtu.be/T3NU9Zk1L-k
