Su gran victoria

This played on TCM earlier this week, and since I had never seen this one, was looking forward to it. I love the DK series, and this one (I think) follows DK's wedding day. I found this one overlong and a bit too fragmented. I miss Nat Pendleton's goofy role, and the Frank Orth restaurant character is very briefly seen. "Cookie" doesn't seem like the kind of girl DK would go for, but she at least gets him interested in women again(ha). Marie Blake (Later 'Grandmama on the Addams family), also known as Blossom Rock and Jeanette McDonald's sister, is in unusual fine form, but her character comes across as annoying instead of funny this time.

In "Dr. Kildare's Victory," the young doc (Lew Ayres) is still mourning the loss of Mary as he fights some battles at Blair General.

When a doctor and his fiancée, a nurse, are fired because of protocol violations that breached an agreement with another hospital, Kildare steps in to help them regain their positions. Meanwhile, an attractive patient (Anne Ayars) flirts with him.

Have to say the relationship between Dr. Gillespie and nurse Molly Bird (Alma Kruger) is what gives many of the films in the series extra pizazz. The fight in this one is particularly amusing, as Molly finds all of Gillespie's hiding places for cigarettes and removes them. When he tries to roll his own, she laughs in his face. All quite funny in the hands of the two pros.

Lew Ayres made a very gentle, kind and professional Dr. Kildare, and he played off of Barrymore very well. Of course MGM got rid of Dr. K as soon as Ayres became a conscientious objector in World War II and turned the series over to Gillespie.

Ayres returned from service as a medic and his career took off, better than ever. In 1950-51 he reprised Dr. Kildare on the radio with great success.

Dr. Kildare's Victory marked the last of the films Lew Ayres did as the idealistic young doctor James Kildare, handpicked protégé of Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Gillespie. The series was so popular though that MGM had Barrymore continue in the Gillespie role in several more films with new young assistants in his diagnostic office.

This time Ayres gets himself involved in a hospital turf war as another young doctor and the nurse he was with had the temerity to pick up and treat an injured victim outside the territory of Blair General Hospital. Emerson Hospital whose territory it was just doesn't like other hospitals poaching patients from their turf. So the lawyers get into the act and Dr. Robert Sterling and nurse Jean Rogers get the ax.

That doesn't sit well with Ayres who did the surgery on the victim and saved her life. The victim was débutante Ann Ayars who is in a Paris Hilton type role. Like Paris, Ann has a great knack for working the media which comes in handy later on.

Ayres and Ayars also may be getting something going. As fans of the series know, Dr. Kildare lost his true love nurse Mary Lamont a day before their wedding. They were a great screen team and perfectly matched in this series as Laraine Day who played Lamont shared Ayres's personal and professional vision. That would be hard to recapture.

The Kildare series were B pictures from MGM although from the look of them they would be A products in most other studios. Dr. Kildare's Victory took them out on a relatively high note.

...for her tiresome portrayal of débutante Cynthia 'Cookie' Charles, a patient who has a beer sign fall on her and a piece of the sign embedded in her heart. Once Cookie begins recovering she has the hots for the recent victim of tragedy, Dr. James Kildare, the surgeon who saved her life. However, her moves are so obvious she might as well be sending up flares. It's too bad she didn't buy some popcorn and see the earlier Kildare movies or she would know that slow, steady, and sweet are how you win the heart of James Kildare, not with overt come-ons.

The rest of the film is great. The series has mercifully removed Red Skelton from the role of orderly - Red's a great comic, but this just was not his style. Unfortunately, Nat Pendleton is still absent in the same role. On the light side there's a DT patient that runs through the hospital looking for his pink elephants, some great cigarette rolling by head nurse Molly Byrd, and a comic bit involving Doctor Carew who is mistaken for - both a maniac and a ghost??? The serious side involves an agreement between Blair and another hospital involving a dividing line between their territories as to where emergency cases go. A young couple in love - an intern and a nurse- have their jobs become casualties of the technicalities of this agreement. Dr. Kildare decides to help them out, first because their cause is just, and second because the two of them probably remind him of himself and Mary Lamont in happier times.

Highly recommended as a good entry in the series and unfortunately, the last with Lew Ayres as the suave Dr. K.

An ambulance picks up a debutante lying on the sidewalk in front of a nightclub with a shard of glass in her heart. Unfortunately... the territory the nightclub is in is outside the jurisdiction of Blair General Hospital, and lawsuits soon arrive...

As with the other films in the Kildare series, this excellent entry has several sub-plots that initially seem unconnected, but still seem to play off each other through out the course of the film.

Watch early in the film for the cigarette rolling contest between Dr. gillespie (Lionel Barrymore), and his always adversarial.. but loving watchdog... head nurse.

Overall, this, as with all films in in the series, are well done, and make enjoyable viewing for all.