Nurse Romance Stories: Romantic Marriage 2 - "Her Father's Image"

There's a couple of things I'd like to say before getting into this story. First of all it is how much I enjoy those Ziff-Davis/St. John comics from the early 50s, with Romantic Marriage and Cinderella Love being two of my favorite romance titles. I especially like the ones with painted covers. Gorgeous! Issue 2 from 1950 (no month specified) appears to me to be swiping an image from a contemporary British comic, the Eagle, which began publication in 1950. The Eagle featured Frank Hampson's famous sci-fi series, Dan Dare, and although I couldn't find an exact match to the soldier on the cover of RM2, here's a couple of pics of Dan Dare to give you the idea that it might be so:

Well it might be just a coincidence but the first thing that came to mind when I saw the cover of RM2 was "Dan Dare!" Anyway, back to the nurse romance story. When Nurse Gail Gordon helped car crash victim Norman Crandall through his most critical period of recovery to the point where he could be released from hospital, she became attached to him as the product of her intervention. When he asked if she would be his private nurse she eagerly accepted, not having thought what kind of person he actually was. Therefore, although it turns out Norman is loaded and lives with his aunt in a stately home, we can't accuse Gail of gold-digging - she had no idea!

Norman's not a uniform fetishist, so when Gail sheds her nurse clothes and slips into a swimsuit, revealing herself to be a brunette bombshell, Norman instantly gets the hots for her - the very hots! And its no surprise by now that Gail finds herself head over heels in love with Norman. But then Gail notices the similarity between Norman and her father, and she resolves to complete the likeness by molding Norman's personality until it matches that of Daddy. Couple of things here - first, girls do apparently have an subconscious tendency to seek partners with characteristics that in some way reflect their father (e.g. Dad was physically abusive to Mom, so daughter ends up in a domestic violence situation herself). Secondly, there's this womanly thing of wanting to change the man of her choice into the image she has constructed of her ideal man (which sometimes manifests as wanting to reform a bad but 'really misunderstood' guy). It's hard to know where stereotypes end and reality begins in this realm.

For rich guys, yachts are kind of obligatory, as much as the stripy shirt and hat are for the yachtsman. And yachts are great places to declare undying love for your woman. But now that Gail has Norman under her spell, the transformation process has to begin. First non-smoker Norman is encouraged to take up pipe smoking. Next, he's a pacifist but Gail's dad loves hunting, so now Norman has to go along with Gail's desire that he go out and murder innocent wild creatures. Buying all the hunting gear and weapons isn't a financial issue for Norm, and neither is getting out into the wilderness to bag some game - he's got a sea plane! But suddenly events take a turn for the worse when Norman, unfamiliar (as already noted) with firearms, accidentally shoots the family lodge's caretaker, Pierre. Good job Gail's a nurse, huh!?

With good weather and Norman's sea plane, it's possible to get Pierre to a hospital in around an hour, tended by Gail. When Pierre pulls through, Gail again attributes his survival to her intervention, but here comes the reckoning. Gail thinks she's saved Norman from a manslaughter charge, but Norman has a different perspective. He gives it to Gail straight - Pierre's near death experience was directly the result of Gail trying to manipulate Norman into adopting various traits of Gail's father - okay Norman shouldn't have gone along with it, but it's not happening from here on. Gail admits she's been misguided in her actions, but she loves Norman anyway and no longer foolishly thinks he should change. A close call, and now everything should be hunky dory right? But wait - suddenly Gail's back to her scheming. Gail's dad meets Norman, and seems awfully keen to have Norm head up his Alaska oil project. Gail's back in full transformation mode, thinking that Norman will be like her Dad after all, a businessman. Norman is hesitant to accepts Gail's Dad's offer, but goes along with it to please Gail again. Things are, however, beginning to fall into place in Gail's head, and she starts to get some realizations regarding her Dad's enthusiasm for having Norman, and his money, in charge of the Alaska thing. Oh boy!

So here's the irony. Gail's dad, Mr. Gordon, is a stock swindler, and he used Norman's good name to persuade investors to buy worthless stock. The whole thing tumbles down, Norman takes the rap, and he has become like Gordon, another swindler. Gail realizes too late that she loved Norman just the way he was and should never have tried to change him. Fortunately (maybe Norman's good reputation working in his favor here) the DA has been ready to give Norm a chance to clear himself. As Gordon spills the whole story in his conversation with his daughter, Norm and the DA's representative are listening outside. Norm is cleared, Gordon is arrested, and Gail has inadvertently informed Norman that she wants him just the way he is - no more meddling trying to change him. Norman's a real gem - he overlooks all the trouble Gail has caused him starting with her assuming ownership of him at the hospital, and they're going to marry and live happily ever after. Norm is even going to ensure all those swindled investors get their money back, meaning Gordon will be out of jail in a week or so. Happy ending! But we went through some tribulations to get there for sure.

This tale delivers a lot of stereotypes about women in general, but what is the story's lesson about nurses?  Well this one assumes her successful care provision entitles her to ownership of the recovered patient, an entitlement to determine aspects of the patient's life. In this case the patient was someone she fell in love with, who also turned out to be the most eligible bachelor imaginable - money, looks, impeccable character, willingness to go out of his way to please the woman he loves, the ability to overlook faults in others. Gail's a lucky girl - lucky because what she put Norman through would have driven an ordinary mortal away on day one!

Money is the Honey

Reading "Will The Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up" from Girls' Love Stories 147 the other day on Sequential Crush set me thinking about the role wealth plays in the stratification of our society. When anyone mentions the Indian caste system you'll hear groans and judgmental attitudes from all over, but when you think about it, our society is in its own way just as hung up on wealth and status. Things have changed a bit over the years, maybe. Instead of a young woman's father telling her suitor that he expects him to be able to keep her in the manner to which she is accustomed, the women themselves do the talking. In Indian society a woman traditionally would marry a man of equal status to herself, but could also marry a man of a higher caste if he'd have her. But to marry 'down' to a lower caste man would violate accepted norms. This expectation of remaining within one's stratum in society is also there in the west - we just don't call it a name like 'the caste system', and it's a little more subtle, more informal than formal, but it's a force at work in society nevertheless. In Girls' Love Stories 147 the 'loser' in the story was a 'gold digger', a woman planning to snare a wealthier man so she could up her station in life. I started to look around and quickly came across some variations on this theme. Heart Throbs 1 (Quality Comics, August 1949) has a couple of stories with differential wealth as a stumbling block on the path to romance. In "Spoiled Brat", lonely millionaire's daughter, Mona Barclay, surprises herself by falling in love with a hired hand on board Daddy's yacht.

The assumption of superiority that accompanies wealth appears to be a barrier that Mona uses, in this case, to avoid confronting her true feelings regarding Bill. Those feelings become evident to Mona later in the story when the yacht is in trouble in a Caribbean storm. Mona sees Bill injured and instinctively goes to his rescue while putting her own safety in danger. Its also a new side of Mona that Bill hadn't known existed, and its enough to tip the scales in his heart towards declaring his love for Mona.

What we don't see is Mona's father's reaction to this union. Will he suspect Bill of using his daughter to get at the Barclay fortunes? Will Mona really be able to cope with such a drastic reduction in household income if she and Bill live true to the statement that they'll manage on a sailor's wages? The cultural differences between the two are likely to create distance in a number of areas of their marriage. But the story's author stops at the point where everything's really hunky dory, without troubling our minds with worries about what might not work out.

Another story in the same comic, "Double Masquerade", is a version of the gold digger story mentioned above. Judy is an office worker, a typist, fed up of existing in the lower socio-economic stratum of society. She's saved up a bunch of money, bought herself some great clothes, and she's off to stay at a swanky country retreat, Lakeshore Manor, where she fully admits she will make every attempt to find herself a well-to-do husband. Very similar to the Girls' Love Stories 147 plot. At the Manor she plays it cool, then the opportunity for a handsome gentleman to step in is provided by Judy's horse bolting. It looks to Judy like everything's going according to plan.

 

They fall in love, but Judy has to repeatedly avoid Marty's questions about her family. Judy doesn't want to let go of him, believing him to be a member of a wealthy banking family, but her love for him is real, and her conscience won't let her go through with the charade. She fesses up to Marty that she's just a poor stenographer, but runs off too soon for Marty to tell her it doesn't matter 'cause he's from the lower echelons of society himself. Marty's persistence catches him up to her where they can both come clean about their masquerade and their true feelings for each other. They can both live with their failed ambitions to become rich by tricking the other because they've found something more. And don't you think their comparable backgrounds will assist in allowing them to make a good go of their marriage?

Then I took a look at the second story in Intimate 1 (Charlton Comics, December 1957), entitled "Late Love". This is a 5-page short story highlighting awareness amongst the impoverished of how financial difficulty places additional stressors on a marriage, putting it at greater risk of failure. So accepting of this principle was Carmen, that she never entertained the idea of marrying the man she'd loved since high school, because he couldn't provide the financial security she required to make her feel that her future marriage would succeed.

Carmen turns down Brick Howell's proposal's of marriage, telling him straight it's because he's poor. She doesn't count the acreage his grandfather left him as worth anything, but Brick has faith that one day, as the area develops, his plot will be sought after and worth a bundle. Carmen dates one guy after another, but can't connect with them because she's in love with Brick. She finally gets a handsome, rich guy, Clay Mason, interested in her, and mentally prepares herself to settle down with him. But seeing Brick brings it all back to her, and she knows he's the only one for her. She gives up her requirement for her man to be rich, and agrees to marry Brick. Just then Clay turns up, steps aside seeing that Carmen obviously  adores Brick, and announces that he's just purchased Brick's land for a tidy sum. So Carmen gets her financial security after all - if only she'd had more faith in Brick's vision, they could have been together all this time. Still, better late than never. Again, though, this story brings up the issue of wealth, in this case being the concern of a woman requiring monetary assets as a precondition of marriage. Strangely enough, this behavior is supported by research that shows women are more attracted to guys with money, while men are more interested in a woman's looks, and its all very Darwinian and down to what's going to produce offspring most likely to survive. So when romance comics incorporate these societal stereotypes (comic book writers pull ideas from, for example, existing media or simply from life itself) there's a lot to the stories in terms of giving us glimpses of patterns in human behavior. Comic book - 10 cents. University research - thousands of dollars. Hmmmm...!