It’s implied, but never mentioned in “The Babe Ruth Story” (1948). Even in “Love Story” (1970), they never say the word ‘cancer’ or ‘leukemia.’ But surely there are some movies out there in the old days (eh, pre-1970) where the word *cancer is actually used.
*Or something that is by definition cancer, like leukemia or lymphoma.
I remember a discussion of cancer in Rebecca. It played a part in the death of the first Mrs. de Winter, but wasn’t what ultimately killed her.
Film date: 1941
Cool, what did they say?
The original Ocean’s Eleven with the Rat Pack had one of the characters (in a plot that wasn’t part of the remake) becoming ill. He asks his doctor “Is it the Big Casino?” I took that to be a euphemism for “the Big C,” cancer. The doctor’s reply isn’t shown, but it’s implied to be yes.
start at 1:57:00
In the book the doctor didn’t use the c word - talked about a ‘growth, deep seated’, but a character in the next chapter did.
Doctor uses word ‘cancer’ in film.
I just noticed how I never hear anyone these days say the word aids very often if at all. It’s like the topic everyone avoids. Perhaps people back in the old days or at least hollywood wanted to avoid discussions regarding cancer
In the TV movie “Brian’s Song” (1971), “cancer” is used at least a few times, according to these quotes from the movie:
Doesn’t exactly fit the “pre-1970” of the OP’s question, however. And, it’s based on a true story, the details of which may have already been known by many viewers.
IMDB search, movies with keyword “cancer”, ordered by date.
Wasn’t that Richard Conte’s illness in that show?
I know that for at least some people from older generations there was a certain stigma attached to having cancer, a guilt that it was because you’d done something wrong. It amazed me when I encountered this but several I’ve known over the years when they learned they or someone else had cancer said "Don’t tell anybody! Unbelievably there was an embarrassment, a quiet shame.
Wow. Truly fascinating to see just how few times it shows up in US films / TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s.
His symptoms certainly seem more heart-related – perfectly healthy, clutches his chest and drops dead.
One of which is a Mr Magoo cartoon…
In Dark Victory, Bette Davis has a kind of Hollywood-cancer. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I don’t think they use the “c” word, just “brain tumor” – and a particularly wonderful kind, where you have no symptoms for a year, but then you go blind and an hour later you die peacefully and painlessly.
This is a bit later than the OP intended, but “The Shootist” (1976) had a scene where Jimmy Stewart as the doctor tells John Wayne, You have A cancer. The movie was set some time around 1900, I believe. The best they could do: sweet, sweet laudanum.
I’ll bet most of those early keywords come from the plot description instead of quotes from the movie itself. For example, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Big Daddy is diagnosed with terminal cancer (the plot hinges on the doctor not telling him or his wife, due to “professional ethics”) but while the doctor confides to his family that his condition is “malignant and terminal”, the actual word “cancer” is never uttered.
Duke: “Can’t you…cut it out of me?”
JS: “I’d have to gut ya like a fish just to get at it.”
Yup.
You know, this talk about never mentioning the word “cancer” reminds me of one of my favorite bits in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs. Eugene is describing his uncle’s death from (whisper)…cancer. He explains that the adults in his life never say the word out loud–they only whisper it, as if they’re afraid that saying it too loudly will cause God to say, “I heard that! You said the dread disease! Therefore, I smite you down with it!”
When I mentioned the bit to my mother, she told me that in the thirties when this took place, there were nowhere near the medical advances there are today, so basically, if you said “cancer” you said “death”. That could explain why movies were so reluctant to even say the word.
Hmm…I’ve heard the terms Big and Little Casino (coming, of course, from the game Casino) used as euphemisms for STDs, with “big” being the really bad ones (say syphilis or hepatitis–or these days, HIV) and “little” being say chlamydia or gonorrhea. Any chance that’s more likely than cancer?
It’s a Japanese Film, but Kurosawa’s 1952 “Ikiru” is about a man who’s dying of stomach cancer who uses his remaining time to get a park built for local children.
Some examples I found on QuoDB
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Brute Force (1947)
The Big Knife (1955)
Idiot’s Delight (1939)
The Americanization of Emily (1964)