The Caretakers (1963) is a United Artists feature film starring Joan Crawford and Robert Stack 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 the 20th Century Fox mental hospital film The Snake Pit (1948).

Plot and cast

Young, optimistic psychiatrist Dr. Donovan MacLeod (Stack) 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 unyielding and self-righteous head nurse, Lucretia Terry (Crawford) who believes in traditional methods such as strait-jackets and padded cells for treating the mentally ill. The head of the hospital Dr. Harrington (Herbert Marshall) is weak-willed, and nurse Bracken, Terry's assistant, (Constance Ford) 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. Patients include a distraught mother Lorna Medford (Polly Bergen); a former prostitute, Marion (Janis Paige); a pyromaniac, Edna (Barbara Barrie); and a former schoolteacher, Irene (Ellen Corby). Others in the cast include Virginia Munshin as Ruth, Diane McBain as Alison, Sharon Hugueny as Connie, Susan Oliver as Cathy, Ana St. Clair as Ana, Robert Vaughn as Jim Melford, and Van Williams as Dr. Larry Denning.

Production notes

Co-writer/co-producer Jerry Paris also appears in The Caretakers as a passerby into whom Lorna bumps on the street.