El regreso del Dr. Kildear

Dr. Kildare Goes Home finds Lew Ayres being furloughed from Blair General Hospital in order to help out his ailing country physician father Samuel S. Hinds. With few other practicing physicians in the area Ayres has his hands full.

But in a truly bizarre twist, Ayres also finds three fellow doctors doing other kinds of work because they can't get a practice started. That part of the film is truly dated unless they're people from a third world country in America today. But such is the case in 1940.

What to do, but Ayres hits on the idea of establishing a clinic in his home town of Parkersville with these three. Of course the town's resistant to the idea because they think if medicine is good, it has to be expensive. That notion is certainly not dated. Leading proponent of that idea is Gene Lockhart who always seems to be playing these naysayers against progress when he's not a villain.

Like it does in so many medical dramas today on the small screen, it all comes together. The Dr. Kildare series was the forerunner of all the TV medical dramas from Medic to Marcus Welby including the small screen adaption of Dr. Kildare.

Ayres and Laraine Day as nurse Mary Lamont move ever closer to the wedding day with crusty old Lionel Barrymore as Kildare's mentor Dr. Gillespie giving his blessing. An OK programmer from this series out of MGM.

Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) is being his crotchety helpful self. Dr. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) finishes his internship and becomes a resident under Gillespie. He visits home and finds his father struggling. He tries to help the practice but the patients are leery of his young age. He decides to stay for his underserved community.

It's the sixth Dr. Kildare movie and the fifth with Lew Ayres. It's a good episode and that's what these movies are becoming. In another era, they would be episodes in a TV show. The big takeaway for this one is that he is proposing what is essentially socialized medicine. It just goes to show the political movement over the years. Otherwise, this is a pretty compelling chapter in this continuing story.

A good entry in the Dr. Kildare series, with some aspects surprising me. First was the idea of a clinic to which people subscribe for medical care, paying ten cents a week. I had no inkling the medical insurance concept was around back in 1940. I wondered what the doctors of the era thought about that. Second, was the treatment of one of the black characters in the film, Dr. Marsh, played by Jack Carr. He is intelligent, articulate, and gets praise from Dr. Gillespie for an accurate diagnosis based on very little evidence. This was a very uncharacteristic treatment of blacks in 1940. It's a short scene that has little to do with the main plot, but it made me appreciate the film so much more.

I too enjoyed this entry into the world of neophyte doctor, Dr. Kildare.

It's nice to see his parents once again, as in several of the earlier films, playing such important roles in his life. Both his parents are fine, but his mother is simply adorable.

I was also surprised at Dr. Marsh's depiction. A "colored" man (the terminology of the time) who happens to be an amazing doctor and one who speaks standard English. I would imagine this scene was often cut in the South since it doesn't directly impact the main plot, but it was fascinating to see.

A nice addition to the Dr. Kildare series.

... in that this one tries to tackle the issue of rural medicine and imbalances in patient care due to location versus focusing on an individual case or situation. This was a bit unusual in that so many Americans in 1940 might not live in big cities yet, but they weren't necessarily farmers either by this time.

Dr. Kildare (Lew Ayres) finishes his residency, but the happiness of that moment is short-lived when he finds out his father has been overworking himself to the point of exhaustion trying to take care of his own patients plus the patients in the neighboring town of Parkersville. The paper mill there closed and the doctors left, leaving Dr. Stephen Kildare to fill the void, and it's killing him. So Dr. Kildare - and Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) for that matter - lie to the elder Kildare and tell him Dr. Gillespie is going for a yearlong treatment for his health out west so that James Kildare will be free to help take the load off of his dad.

A possible solution is found in getting some doctors who can't find positions in New York to move to Parkersville and open a clinic in which everybody in the town pays a low fee every week in return for medical care when they need it. But they need the endorsement of a Parkersville town leader to convince the people of the plan's feasibility and he's dubious about the whole thing.

It's odd to see modern problems such as these - unemployment compromising community medical care, doctors not wanting to serve rural and semi-rural areas, and the unaffordability of going into private practice being discussed in a pre WWII film. An odd scene that was the type you usually didn't see pre WWII - Gillespie goes to a poor neighborhood to watch a black doctor operate on a patient using pioneering techniques. This sort of dignified role for an African American, even as short as this scene is, would not be common for another ten years.