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.

Usually Warren William played someone who starts down the easy crooked way deliberately. Here it is more of an accident, almost the stuff of film noir if you look strictly at the plot. Warren plays a X-ray technician, Bob Brown, in love with a beautiful nurse, Caroline Grant (Jean Muir). Bob seems happy with his easy-going although somewhat chaotic existence, but Caroline wants more for him. She talks him into returning to finish his one remaining year of medical school and gives him her life savings - fifteen hundred dollars. Bob, always a victim to his impulses with liquor and gambling, gambles Caroline's money away on the train there. He manages to cover this up by writing fake letters about his progress, but then his year is up and he must return home.

Before Bob has to tell Caroline the truth he runs across a morphine addict who happens to be an ex-doctor. Bob makes a deal with the devil, almost literally, and agrees to supply the addict with morphine if the ex-doctor will let him use his licensing credentials. Bob seems to forget one key point - by definition an addict can never have enough and thus always comes back for more. By the end of this film the real Dr. Martel is popping up everywhere and under the oddest circumstances to the point where the viewer wonders if this guy's appearances are always real or perhaps sometimes an apparition as a metaphor for Bob's conscience finally getting the best of him.

Bob sets up practice in New York City, where nobody knows him, as Dr. J. Herbert Martel. He gets an actual doctor - Donald Meeks as the unsuspecting Dr. George Wiley - to be the actual physician and his partner. Wiley always sees the patients first, and then Bob as Martel just cleans up behind him dispensing charm and useless advice and prescriptions. He's aiming at the society crowd whose only illnesses are boredom and weight problems, but occasionally a real patient with real problems wanders in and catches Bob off guard. With all of Bob's slickness in this operation he has done one really un-slick thing - hired his girlfriend, who knows him so well, as his nurse who thinks Bob is on the level and is an actual licensed physician. This proves to be Bob's undoing.

If you like Warren William as the precode cad, as the guy who knows right from wrong but does the wrong thing anyways, as the hard guy who ultimately has a soft spot for the right woman, you'll love this short little feature film. The best precode touch of the movie is unexpected, and actually comes from Donald Meeks as Dr. Wiley pulling a Dr. Frankenstein and bringing the dead back to life with one of his inventions. Highly recommended

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.

Bedside (1934)

** (out of 4)

Two years after directing MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, Robert Florey was back dealing with another dangerous doctor. Warren William plays a man who could have been a doctor but he was just too lazy to do the actual work and instead used his charm to get whatever he wanted. An agent (Allen Jenkins) one day talks him into becoming a fake doctor and with the help of headlines he could start a major practice but this soon backfires. BEDSIDE has some pretty interesting aspects that will make it worth checking out to film buffs but I just had way too many problems with the story to give it a full recommendation. The biggest problem I had is that there wasn't a single second where I bought the story. I mean, are we really to believe that simple headlines could turn this fake doctor into someone respected the world over? Wouldn't someone eventually catch on and wouldn't someone at some point realize that this guy wasn't doing any actual work? I simply couldn't buy into this story as it was just way too far fetched for its own good. Another problem I had was the final five-minutes, which I thought were quite horrid but I won't give away anything. William has no problem in the lead role as there was never anyone in this period that could play a charming bad guy better. Jean Muir is good as his head nurse and David Landau is memorable as a drug addict. Donald Meek has a nice bit as well. Florey does a good job directing and even gets in some pretty dark moments that will remind folks of his horror pictures. Still, BEDSIDE simply is too far fetched to be completely entertaining but fans of the director and cast will still want to see it.

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.