Mary Stevens, M.D.

Lloyd Bacon manages brilliantly to squeeze a whole soap opera with characters you think you've been watching for weeks in just over an hour. It's quite dated in style, storytelling and plot which makes it difficult to watch just as a film without seeing it in a historical context. Nevertheless you've got to stick with it to see how it plays out.

Although this is a pre-Code film, something like Mary Stevens, MD is unlikely to be remade today. Though it deals with an out of wedlock pregnancy which is certainly something the Code banned the following year, Mary Stevens, MD is way too melodramatic for today's taste.

It's a great film for women's roles and their are three good ones here. The title tole is played by Kay Francis as a doctor who operates a pediatric clinic along with her nurse Glenda Farrell. Another physician played by Lyle Talbot is interested in her, but he's slightly married to Thelma Todd.

Although I'm not quite clear about his role, Talbot is also involved in politics, Todd's father is a bigshot political boss and is discouraging any thought of divorce. Thelma even fakes a pregnancy to keep Talbot tied to her.

That comes as bad news for Francis who gets pregnant for real, although you would think a doctor would take precautions. She has the kid and quits her clinic and takes a job as a ship's doctor, the better to keep away from the respectable folks who knew her when. After this the film gets really melodramatic for all concerned.

The cast performs their roles in earnest and Glenda Farrell rivals Joan Blondell in getting all the wisecracking dame roles at Warner Brothers that Blondell couldn't do.

When people say that Mary Stevens, MD is a women's picture that is meant in every sense of the word.

Over the years I seemed to have missed this classic film with a story line that must have shocked the audiences during the 1930's. Kay Francis,(Dr. Mary Stevens),"Divorce",'45 was a single woman who was having an affair with Lyle Talbot,(Dr. Donald A. Andrews),"It Happened in New York",'35, who was married and not very happy at all. Donald tired to get a divorce from his wife, but her father objected for family reasons and she even lied to him about having a baby. Dr. Mary Stevens winds up really having a baby from Dr. Andrews and the plot gets dramatic on a voyage with her new born baby and the threat of Infantile Paralysis. Una O'Connor (Mrs. Arnell Simmons),famous for her screams and high pitched voice in "The Invisible Man", as an inn keepers wife and many other horror films, has a baby girl who catches the infantile paralysis and needs immediate help. If you want to see a good classic film, with great actors playing very immoral lives during those days of living standards, view this film about divorce and babies born out of wedlock. This film is mild compared to 2004 !

... not that Kay Francis was unaccustomed to suffering unjustly during her films, but the guy she falls for - yikes!

Kay plays the titular Mary, going through medical school with a guy she has loved since childhood, Don Andrews (Warner workhorse Lyle Talbot). They open a medical practice together, but Don is more interested in taking the easy way up, and he has affection for Mary but not love, which he has made no secret about. So he marries socialite Lois Cavanaugh, portrayed almost unrecognizably by Thelma Todd, and with that marriage comes a patronage job with the city.

But as Mary works hard at her practice, Don is skimming some then lots off the top from his patronage job and drinking heavily because his marriage with Lois is not working out. Mary takes over for him during an operation because he wanders into the OR blind drunk. When they accidentally meet up at a resort where he is hiding from an indictment - which he tells her all about - and she is recovering from overwork they spend a night together. Now, Don is honestly fooled - his wife lies and says she is having a baby to prevent the divorce he wants so that he can marry Mary. But how can Mary reconcile the fact that Don said the two have been through with one another a long time with her getting pregnant? Being a doctor she must know how these things happen! Plus there is a little matter of him being a drunken embezzler. Like I said before - Yikes! Mary you can do much better! But wait there's more that you'll have to find out about yourself when you watch it.

There are some great touches in this one. Glenda Farrell is more of the second lead than Lyle Talbott is here. He barely gets to act in this one. Glenda, as Mary's nurse and best friend, has a load of precode one liners. And then there is the teenage patient of Mary's who already has ulcers worrying about the state of the economy and banking system during the Depression, and not because he is hungry.

Even though this has lots of heavily trodden precode tropes, Kay Francis and Glenda Farrell make it worthwhile.

"Mary Stevens, M.D." is one of many films about medical professionals produced during the pre-code era. Mary Stevens (Kay Francis) is something of an oddity--a female physician. She has trouble getting clients at first, but specializing in pediatrics and her zealous commitment to medicine gain her a successful practice.

Don Andrews (Lyle Talbot) plays the male doctor she falls in love with. But he marries a woman whose family has connections. In the first third of the film, she loves Don from afar and immerses herself in her practice.

In the second third, Mary reveals her love to Don. He has a plan for divesting himself of his practice and his wife, but complications arise, so Mary sails to Europe, promising to come back when the path to their happiness has been cleared.

I found the last third of the movie creepy in its cruelty. It's an interesting storyline, but not what I consider enjoyable. Nevertheless, Kay Francis is a striking actress. No wonder she became one of the biggest stars of the thirties and a fashion icon. Glenda Farrell, who plays the part of Glenda, her assistant, also has a strong presence reminiscent of a young Ginger Rogers.

But the plot of this film is rather predictable and, therefore, anticlimactic. Francis and Farrell will have plenty of other vehicles better suited to their talents in the coming years.

One novelty is the fact that the script seems afraid to say the word "pregnant" despite its pre-code production.