By
Anne Federwisch
Photos courtesy of New Line Cinema
Sandra
Bullock and Chris O’Donnell have the leads in Richard Attenborough’s new
movie, “In Love and War,” but Red Cross nurse historian Jean Waldman, RN,
played a leading role behind the scenes as technical adviser, complete
with her own personalized director’s chair.
The film chronicles the World War I romance between 18-year-old Red Cross ambulance driver Ernest Hemingway (O’Donnell) and 26-year-old Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky (Bullock). The relationship inspired Hemingway to write A Farewell to Arms a decade after the war. The film, however, is based on von Kurowsky’s diary.
Waldman’s meticulous research into 1918 nursing lends authenticity to the medical aspects of the movie, from the equipment in the operating room to the bandages used in the battlefield.
Before her stint as technical adviser, Waldman had researched World War I nursing in her work as full-time volunteer nurse historian for the American Red Cross, headquartered in Falls Church, Va. But never before had she delved so deeply into the details of the time. “I had been working for about a year answering World War I questions people would call [the Red Cross] and ask. Things like they thought their grandmother was in WWI in France and would we have any information on the base hospital, or even somebody asking would we know what country a nurse was in [during the war],” she said. So when the fax came in from the “In Love and War” production company, it was routed to her.
That fax was the start of what Waldman described as “an incredible experience that I’ll never forget.” She spent six months perusing documents in the National Archives and the Red Cross record center to satisfy the production company’s seemingly insatiable appetite for detail. She traveled to Italy, England, and Canada to provide on-site expertise during three months of filming. She searched through personal narratives, pictures, and other records to find out what medicines were used and how equipment was sterilized. “Then the questions became broader and covered everything from the ambulances, the canteens, even the Hershey Bar wrapper of 1918,” she said.
Waldman said that her biggest challenge was to help the production company convey the reality of nursing in those days. “To [help them] understand the system, to understand what the role of the head nurse meant, to understand the strictness of the rules, or wearing the proper uniform, of working in those long-sleeved, long-skirt uniforms. The point was to not let it be [the TV show] ‘ER’,” she said. Because nursing techniques have changed considerably since World War I, the chaotic pace of “ER” does not portray nursing as it was 80 years ago, she said. However, she said that nursing was no less honorable a profession.
Waldman said she advised Attenborough to make von Kurowsky
more of a nurse and less of a medical student. “There are certain things
that would not have happened between a physician and a nurse at that time,”
Waldman said. 
Originally,
the script called for von Kurowsky to not only suggest a new method of
wound irrigation to the physician, but to also carry it out. Although Waldman
could not persuade Attenborough to remove the scene, she said the script
was rewritten so that the other nurses warned von Kurowsky that such unorthodox
behavior would undoubtedly get her in trouble.
Waldman did persuade the cast and crew to make other changes. “One of the first ones that helped me get over my nerves was that they wanted Sandra to sit on the [patient’s] bed. And I just said, ‘Never, no, can’t!’ You’re standing there in front of Richard Attenborough and Sandra Bullock saying, ‘You can’t do this!’ and they changed the scene,” she said.
Waldman said that Bullock in particular was interested in performing nursing procedures correctly. Before filming started, Waldman arranged for nurses at a Washington, D.C., area hospital to work with Bullock and other actresses on techniques they would use in the movie. “We had a little skills room where we did transferring from the bed to the stretcher, making a bed, and all that. She [Bullock] just loved it. She was great. The nurses wanted her to come back and work for the summer,” Waldman said.
During filming, Waldman said she often pointed out to Bullock when she was contaminating the mock sterile field around a fictitious wound. “It got to the point where if someone was trying to make her do it, and she knew it wouldn’t be right, she’d look up at me and be all flustered,” Waldman said. “When they’d cut [the action], she’d say, ‘See, I didn’t do it. I didn’t break the sterile field.’ She really wanted very much to do things correctly.”
But “correctly” in 1918 often meant something different than it does today. Today’s health professionals may cringe at the inconsistencies in the use of gloves and sterilized equipment in the movie, Waldman said, but such was the case in 1918. “When you read the actual accounts of 1918, there wasn’t that consistency,” she said. “From the photos that we have in our archives, you could see some people would have gloves on and some wouldn’t. It wasn’t universal.” The gloves of the time were black, bulky, and difficult to don, Waldman said.
Waldman said overall everyone seemed receptive to her research and suggestions. The production crew seemed to have memorized the reams of material she provided. “If a question came up about the uniform, the costume people could tell me the page number. ‘Oh no, that’s OK. The cape goes over that shoulder. It says so on page 360.’ So they really used the material [I provided],” she said.
But sometimes artistic license won out over authenticity. “They didn’t use the red crosses on the nurses caps, because of how it looked through the camera. Your eye was drawn to it,” Waldman said.
Generally, though, the production company tried to present an accurate picture. “Of course, none of us knows exactly what it was like. We’re guessing,” Waldman said. But thanks to her intensive research and on-site advice, “In Love and War” makes a well-educated guess about Red Cross nursing in 1918.