The Caretakers

The Caretakers is a 1963 United Artists film drama starring Joan Crawford, Robert Stack, Polly Bergen and Janis Paige in a story about a mental hospital. The screenplay was adapted by Henry F. Greenberg from a story by Hall Bartlett and Jerry Paris based on the 1959 novel The Caretakers by Dariel Telfer. The film was produced and directed by Bartlett and co-produced by Paris. The Caretakers is reminiscent of a 20th Century Fox film set in a similar hospital, The Snake Pit . Young, optimistic psychiatrist Dr. Donovan MacLeod wants to prove his theory that mental patients can benefit from group... therapy. His method of treatment, with no violence or punishment, is met with a great deal of resistance from his unyielding and self-righteous head nurse, Lucretia Terry, who believes in traditional methods such as strait-jackets and padded cells for treating the mentally ill. Head of the hospital Dr. Harrington is weak-willed. Terry's assistant, nurse Bracken, supports her superior's stand. After much trial and error and the harrowing near-rape of a patient, MacLeod's ideas prevail in spite of the opposition and meet some success.
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