Dr. Kildare vor Gericht

Don't get me wrong. I love the Dr. Kildare series. But there are problems.

First off, the title. The title indicates that this is a criminal case, not a civil case. The suit is in actuality, Marlow vs. Kildare, et al. If it were "The People",the district attorney would be prosecuting.

Secondly, Lionel Barrymore is as irritating as possible as Dr. Gillespie. Why in the world Dr. Kildare would want to work for him I just can't imagine. But that's not just this movie ... it's every Dr. Kildare film. A lovable yet irascible curmudgeon would be, i.e. Charles Laughton at his worst. But Lionel Barrymore is just ridiculous.

It was fun seeing Red Skelton, but losing Nat Pendleton in this one is disaster. I look forward to Nat Pendleton every bit as much as Lew Ayres and Laraine Day.

But at least Dr. Kildare was not guilty of misdiagnosing as he was in the last two episodes. Now there are really major problems with those two.

Marie Blake gets one good gag per picture. They should have used her more. She misses Nat Pendleton, too.

They never miss an opportunity to use "Nosey Parker", as if Nurse Parker is the origin of the phrase. Sorry, it's not true.

Bonita Granvillie has been maligned unjustly here. Her character really is only doing what anyone in the same circumstances would do. She wasn't out to get Dr. Kildare or Blair General Hospital. She honestly felt that she was the injured party and that she should recover damages if damages were due. I liked her in this part. I even thought her lawyer did a good job for her in the courtroom. I thought Tom Conway's character wasn't much of a courtroom brawler. He let her lawyer walk all over him.

This is supposed to be a medical drama, not a courtroom drama. And, as always, not enough alone time with Lew Ayres and Lariane Day. Also missed Samuel S. Hinds and Emma Dunn for the first time. Oh, well ... this series is winding down. So sad.

I enjoy these movies when they turn up. I never saw the TV series and don't know much about the background of the movie series. They're always entertaining though sometimes shockingly dated and politically incorrect by today's standards. In this one, for example, Lionel Barrymore tells a jury that injured skater Bonita Granville might be a "hopeless cripple" all her life if not operated on again. In another of these movies -- and could this have been acceptable at any point in the past 100 years? Was some of this series tongue-in-cheek? -- Barrymore tells the parents of a disturbed young man, "I'm sorry to tell you that your son is a psycho case." Lew Ayres was a highly appealing actor throughout his career, not least in these movies. Larraine Day has grown on me. Barrymore is a ham but so what? And the supporting casts are always good.

In this one, Red Skelton has a fairly large, supposedly comic, role. He is surely an acquired taste and definitely a taste I never acquired.

Dr. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) and nurse Mary Lamont (Laraine Day) come upon a car crash. Ice skater Frances Marlowe (Bonita Granville) is dangerously hurt and Kildare does roadside surgery. With her leg paralyzed, she ends up taking Kildare to court. Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) is itching to testify.

That nurse is really dumb to suggest that Kildare drank half a bottle of whiskey. The comedic attempts are too broad considering the frustrating subject matter and it is rather frustrating. Court dramas often skew one way to build tension. Kildare's lawyer keeps holding back. Again, it's frustrating. I'm also less than compelled by Gillespie's testimony. It rambles on and on. The movie builds it up a lot and my expectations may be too high. All in all, this is more of a court drama than a medical drama.

The title speaks for itself, Lew Ayres finds himself on the wrong end of a malpractice suit which will happen inevitably to any doctor if he practices long enough in America, this wonderful litigious country of our's. His predicament makes this particular Dr. Kildare film quite relevant for modern times.

It becomes The People vs. Dr. Kildare when Lew Ayres while driving Alma Kruger's car with fiancé Laraine Day gets into an accident. He does some on the spot surgery to ice skater Bonita Granville which saves her, but she is paralyzed in one leg after the operation. So what else can she do but sue the doctor who saved her life and everyone else remotely connected with the incident.

Unfortunately in Alma Kruger's car was half used bottle of liquor which Ayres can't account for, but he knows that he and Day didn't drink that evening. That fact gets leaked to Granville's lawyer Paul Stanton and it's the foundation of his case.

Of course it's the wise counsel of Lionel Barrymore that saves the day and on cross examination by the hospital and Kildare's lawyer Tom Conway an open question allows Barrymore to address the jury in the same manner he did in his Oscar winning performance in A Free Soul. I need not say that Barrymore did not drop dead at the end of his oration.

Red Skelton made the second of two appearances in the Kildare series as medical orderly Vernon Briggs. Skelton was taking the place of ambulance driver Nat Pendleton and his humor is there for comic relief and somewhat shoehorned into the film. An offhanded remark by him though is what gives the plaintiff in the suit ammunition to first start Granville's lawsuit.

An equal amount of time is spent in the courtroom as well as the hospital in The People Vs. Dr. Kildare, one of the better of the Kildare features.

Dr. Kildare faces a whopping $100,000 malpractice suit in "The People vs. Dr. Kildare," also starring Lionel Barrymore, Laraine Day, Alma Kruger, Benita Granville, Tom Conway, and Red Skelton. MGM used this series and the later Dr. Gillespie series as training ground for its young actors - often, seeing them today, they seem to have very important casts that have included people like Donna Reed, Van Johnson, Keye Luke, and Ava Gardner.

When a young ice skater (Granville) is paralyzed in one leg after an emergency roadside operation done by Kildare, he becomes the target of a malpractice suit. Today it would be for $100 million, but back in 1941, $100,000 was a chunk of change that put Kildare's career on the line.

This entry into the series isn't as good as some of the others. It was directed with a sledgehammer - the normally good Granville overacts like crazy, and Barrymore is off the charts with bad temper. Red Skelton is supposed to provide comic relief but doesn't really have the material to do it. And we again have to listen to Nurse Byrd lamenting the man who got away and the lack of fulfillment she has because she never married. Thanks for drumming that into my mother's head in film after film. Also, because of Court TV, the courtroom scenes aren't very credible.

Nevertheless, you can't help liking some of the characters and relationships, and especially Dr. Kildare and Mary. Ayres and Day are delightful in their roles.