Bedside

Back in the 30s whenever you needed a scoundrel portrayed Warren William got first call. Bedside is a perfect Warren William part.

In Bedside Warren William gave up the study of medicine some time for a life of conning and carousing. But in due course he hits on a brilliant idea after encountering a disgraced former doctor in David Landau. Landau sells him his degree and William moves to New York.

What William has is charm in abundance and maybe if he had decided to just have a neighborhood practice somewhere he might have gotten away with it. But with a press agent in Allen Jenkins to promote him, former girlfriend Jean Muir to be his nurse and an associate in Donald Meek who is a superb diagnostician and researcher content to stay in the background William becomes a known society doctor, but it's all one big front.

Bedside is an almost perfect Warren William vehicle, no one else on the screen at the time could have played the con artist doctor with quite the aplomb William brings to this part. I would also recommend David Landau's performance here as well. Dope addiction was a forbidden topic and this film was on the cusp of the code. But Landau's is a tragic and pitiable figure as a morphine addicted physician whose career went to ruin because of it.

Bedside is a real sleeper of a film, an undiscovered gem from Warner Brothers in the 30s. A must for fans of Warren William.

Warren William is one of TCM's great gifts, to me, anyway. I enjoy him and his movies.

This is a precode. William is Bob, an x-ray technician whose nurse girlfriend (Jean Muir) gives him the money to complete medical school - $1500 - you couldn't get in the door for that today. He manages to gamble it away before he can even get there, but he returns a year later, supposedly a doctor.

Fate steps in when he meets a morphine addict who is an ex-doctor. In exchange for morphine, the addict hands over his medical license. Bob changes his name and starts practicing in New York City, with his erstwhile girlfriend as his nurse. I forget how he explains the name change but she believes him. He brings on a real doctor (Donald Meeks) who actually diagnoses the patients. He's also somewhat of an inventor, having come up with a process that brings the dead back to life.

Bob isn't actually interested in anything like illness - he wants the society crowd where the women want to be charmed.

Trouble follows - the morphine addict keeps darkening his door, and he gets stuck with some real sickness he has to cure.

Short, enjoyable, with William playing the lovable cad to perfection.

Warren William was often cast in detective series. But he is at his best in dark roles such as this one.

This movie could scarcely be improved on. It is director Robert Florey at his eerie best. William is ideally cast. Jean Muir, whose career was ruined by the Blacklist, is both touching and appropriately strong-willed.

William plays an ambitious young man a year short of his medical degree. A down-and-out doctor comes into the office where he's working. The guy is desperate for some morphine. William strikes a Faustian bargain with him.

"Bedside" is consistently chilling. William is not a bad person. He certainly is not an admirable one, though.

Kathryn Sergava is suitably exotic as the opera diva who ill-advisedly seeks his ministrations. And Donald Meek gives one of his more interesting performances as the physician William hires to work with him.

It's not a horror movie. It's an early version of what came to be called film noir. It also presages the often excellent MGM series of short, cautionary films called"Crime Does Not Pay."

This melodrama pulls out all the stops. It features a lovely, self-sacrificing nurse who is used by a ne'er-do-well who deep down *wants* to be a good guy, a "French" danseuse born on 10th Avenue, a Russian opera singer (Kathryn Sergava) who places her life in the hands of said ne'er-do-well, a once-prominent doctor (David Landau) who has hit the skids, a brash publicity agent (Allen Jenkins), a mousy, but competent doctor(Donald Meek) who partners with our hero to make him look good, and a passel of neurotic society lady patients.

Two people flirt with death on the operating table. One person forgets to look both ways before stepping off the curb, with disastrous results. There is on-again, off-again romance. There is even a machine that performs a seemingly medically impossible task! All in all, the plot is beyond belief.

That said, Warren William and Jean Muir make the most of their lead roles. Muir is especially charming, and really saves the film from being a complete waste. Jenkins, Landau, Meek, and Sergava are also fine in support. Too bad the script wasn't a little stronger.

Warren William is a real wastrel who completed 3 years of medical school before quitting. He works as an X-ray technician and dates nurse Jean Muir when he isn't hitting the town and picking up other women. What he is is really charming, so Muir, convinced that his way with patients would make him an excellent doctor, lends him the money to return to medical school.

He loses all her money playing poker on the train. Afraid to admit what happened, he works odd jobs while writing her letters telling her how well he's doing at school. He meets David Landau, a former doctor who's morphine addiction has lead him to ruin. He buys his medical degree and doctors the diploma promising to keep money flowing his way. He moves to New York City and hires real doctor Donald Meek to set up practice with him, essentially tricking him into doing all the work.

Pre-code films are really something. There's not a chance that film with a lead this despicable would be made even a year later. William pulls it off rather convincingly, working the charm while being an enormous cad. The madness by the film's end includes Meek experimenting with raising the dead and William having to admit his fraud when Muir's life is threatened.