Never Fear

Tragedy of a young dancer stricken with polio at the beginning of her career. Carol (Sally Forrest) and Guy (Keefe Brasselle) are partners and fiancés. They give shows at night clubs and are about to tour the U.S. The girl’s sudden condition rules out their future together as there is no certainty if she will ever be able to stand on her feet again. The boy, her father and doctors offer huge support, but the determined dancer cannot accept her fate. From the moment she enters a rehabilitation center till she walks out the hospital door on her own, we bear witness to a slow and painful process of her physical and mental recovery. Guy fights his own struggles: to keep their relationship going, to remain employed and to continue working without his dancing partner. Postwar America lures us with a vision of happily married couples, women go to work, but femininity is invariably defined by fertility. Ida Lupino shared her own experience with the movie’s Carol – she went through a bout of polio herself as a teenager. It is worth mentioning that the year 1950 saw the discovery of a vaccine against the disease by a Polish emigrant to the United States, Hilary Koprowski. The movie was shot at the Kabat-Kaiser Institute in Santa Monica that opened in 1948.