Meet Doctor Christian

Jean Hersholt was introduced to the big screen in his most memorable role as Dr. Paul Christian, small town country doctor and jack of all medical trades. He has to be in his small town where another physician is hours away.

In his feature films and on radio where he played Dr. Christian as well, Jean Hersholt represented the idealized image of the country doctor as sure Lionel Barrymore was the noted big city physician. Hersholt certainly has Barrymore beat in the bedside manner department. But both are competent medical professionals.

In this film Hersholt runs afoul of the town's big mover and shaker Paul Harvey despite the fact that Hersholt has been his family physician as well for decades. They clash in the matter of their town of River's End needing a hospital there. Harvey has bigger plans, at least bigger in his mind than a hospital. Some tragedy close to home convinces him that maybe Dr. Christian is right. He also gets a new perspective on how lucky his community is to have Hersholt around.

In real life Jean Hersholt's charitable work was a legend around the film capital and no small wonder that the Motion Picture Academy started a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. That image blends well with the Dr. Christian image conveyed in Meet Dr. Christian and the Dr. Christian films that followed.

I wish all the physicians were as noble and kind as Jean Hersholt was as Dr. Christian.

In the first Dr. Christian movie, River's Edge gets a new mayor by appointment in Paul Harvey. He's a businessman and has a business man's perspective. So he thinks about ways to increase the economic activity of the town. He certainly doesn't think they need a hospital, and clashes with Jean Hersholt about his constant deficits as health commissioner and his idiosyncratic spending methods. Amidst other subplots, it reaches a crisis when he fires Hersholt and proposes to get a new health commissioner.

The Doctor Christian character and the small town he ministers to first appeared on The Vaseline Program on the CBS network in 1937. By the time it ended its run in 1954, it was regularly accepting scripts from the audience; Earl Hammer Jr. And Rod Serling were contenders for scripts early in their careers. Hersholt carried the role into TV a couple of years later. This, the first of the half dozen movies, sets the tone for the series, with practiced performers including Enid Bennett and Maude Eburne, juveniles like Marcia Mae Jones and Jackie Moran, and Hersholt giving a warm performance as te quiet old man who is far more capable than he appears.

I missed the first 15 minutes of this movie, but easily fell into the plot. The story follows a beloved Dr. Christian who runs the health department in a small town. He seeks to build a hospital, but is turned down by the mayor. The mayor decided that a highway would better suit the town than a new hospital. All this is upset when the mayor's little daughter is injured and needs an operation.

The little daughter of the mayor is a stand out character. The part is well cast and very funny. At one point she meddles in her teen brother's love life by trying to give his rival the mumps. When she can't seem to get the rival to lick a mump infested sucker, she licks it herself and kisses him on the lips. Her brother never finds out, and ends up jilting the girl he had been chasing. The movie spends more time on the brother's love life than that of the little girl, but the girl's adventures are much more entertaining.

This movie is worth renting and watching with the whole family. Unlike some old movies, this movie is timeless enough (love for family, meddling little siblings, puppy love) for most ages to enjoy.