White Angel, The

Kay Francis portrays a woman who dedicates her life to humanity in this stirring true story of Victorian England's greatest heroine. Trained in Europe as a professional nurse, Florence Nightingale (Francis) finds no hospital in London will hire her. Defying the tradition that wartime nurses be men, Florence travels to Scutari, Turkey, where she tends to British casualties of the Crimean War. Fighting disease in the wards and in trenches, Florence wins the love of the patients, soldiers and public as she battles the surgeons and politicians who oppose her methods at war and at home. The rare screen biography that sticks close to the facts, The White Angel "presents honestly, graphically and dramatically the major episodes in Miss Nightingale's gallant crusade in behalf of nursing... one of the most important in the history of medicine and public health" (The New York Times).

• biography
• drama