Carol (Sally Forrest) and Guy (Keefe Brasselle) are an up and coming dance team. However, Carol contracts polio and is now unable to walk. Much of the film is set at a sanitarium that treats paralysis victims and is both about her treatment and adjustment to her new life. Like most people facing this, she goes through severe bouts of depression. It becomes so bad that she pushes Guy out of her life--though he loves her and seems accepting of her disability. Will Carol be able to make a new life for herself or will she give way to defeatism and failure?

This is a pretty unusual film. Despite as many as 58,000 cases of polio in the US (about half of which resulted in paralysis) and a president (FDR) with polio, films act as if the disease never existed. You just don't hear about it in movies for the most part--and "Never Fear" is a rare exception. The only film of the time that reminds me of this is "The Men"--though this is about soldiers who are paralyzed as a result of war wounds. And, both films are quite similar in themes and quality. While "The Men" is a must more prestigious and big-budget movie, director Ida Lupino did a wonderful job in "Never Fear"--providing it with realism that you often don't find in 'disease' films. Very informative and well done all around--with fine acting (by relative unknowns),script and direction--and shot almost documentary style. Well worth seeing.

Finally, let me explain my score of 9. Sure, it's not as pretty a film as many A-pictures. BUT, as a lower-budgeted B, it has a HUGE payoff dollar-for-dollar. You can easily see why Lupino was soon given more chances to direct other B-budget films.

Ida Lupino directed this story of Sally Forrest, a dancer who contracts polio and winds up doing a long stretch in a rehabilitation facility. It seems to be one of a spate of movies in the last half of the 1940s that dealt with physical disability, some better than others. "The Men" was far more dramatic and so was the blinded John Garfield in "Pride of the Marines". The plight of one of the characters in "The Best Years of Our Lives" was heartbreaking.

Along with other studies of disabilities, like "Bright Victory," "Never Fear" is rather routine. It takes us through the varying degrees of acceptance of the disability and shows us what the process of rehabilitation and physical therapy look like. It's not a bad film. It's just that it was one example out of many, and some of the others are better done. We're looking here at a movie with animated points of view. It's largely predictable and the performances -- again, not shameful -- just pedestrian. And the central figure is a woman instead of a wounded veteran. The principal idea behind her recovery is a cliché. Therapy doesn't work unless you FIGHT for it to work. You must WANT to recover. You have to "stop feeling sorry for yourself." That takes us into free will and a bit beyond, which is unfamiliar territory for me.

Sally Forrest is an attractive actress and appears to have had some dance training. Her on-screen career was that of a dancer who was a rising star before being struck down by the virus. As her fiancé, Keefe Brasselle hits his marks and projects the proper emotions. Hugh O'Brian is on hand as another patient to provide reassurance. Confined to a wheelchair, he struts less than usual.

Ida Lupino's direction is functional but sometimes it's hard to tell what's going on. At one point, Forrest collapses emotionally and shouts at Brasselle, "I'm a CRIPPLE!" She and her lover then have an angry exchange and Lupino has framed Brasselle with a life-sized statue of Pan or Bacchus -- or sometimes only its mysterious shadow -- behind him. The image is marked and repeated. If the director was getting at something, it eluded me.

Polio was a terrible disease. President Franklin D. Roosevelt literally could not walk. Photos always show him seated or holding someone's arm. Both of his legs were encased in steel braces, and he imitated walking by swinging his right and left hips forward, one at a time, the momentum carrying each leg with it. There was a massive outbreak in the US as recently as 1952, and it left some dead and the rest disabled to some degree. Due to considerable effort by WHO and The March of Dimes, Jonas Salk developed the first vaccine, which virtually eliminated the disease in all but a few nations. Salk refused to patent his discovery. He gave the cure to the rest of the world, free of charge. Where are the altruists of today?

My grandmother took me to see this film when I was 9 years old.It was at the start of the great polio scare in the U.K.The cinema was the Playhouse in Guildford situated in the Playhouse arcade,an area with rather twee shops(well,it was Guildford in 1950) and a teashop. Of course I wasn't aware that Ida Lupino had directed,co-produced and written "Never fear".For better or worse it was entirely her creature. In the movie business such power was rarely given to women. To my mind that makes her an auteur - or should that be auteuse? The one thing that stands out in my mind from that original viewing 55 years ago is that when polio struck the dancer the camera went out of focus and for years afterwards I thought that losing the focus of your eyes was a sign of the onset of polio.And they say that movies don't influence young children. In fact "never fear" has proved to be a well-made and effective movie in the genre now called rather unkindly "Disease of the Month". It's a very professional job by all concerned and if that sounds as if I am damning it with faint praise it is not the case. Anyone looking for "A woman's touch"(usually meant in a patronising and sexist way)will not find one.It stands up on it's on merits.