Calling Dr. Gillespie

Did doctors really say such thing 60 years ago? Lionel Barrymore utters this line to the naive parents of poor Donna Reed's indeed very troubled suitor.

The first thing he does is kill a dog. This is glossed over by the characters but I can't imagine such a thing happening in a movie today. Certainly not after the famous National Lampoon cover.

This man is played very subtly and frighteningly by Phil Brown -- surely a greatly overlooked actor. Indeed, as his travels carry him farther from Reed and Barrymore, he becomes a killer. And the movie looks, for much of its duration, like a film noir.

It's very suspenseful. And with its hospital setting, it made me think of a movie decades later -- more slick, stylish, surely more expensive: "Dressed To Kill." The comic touches pretty much disqualify it is as a noir: Barrymore flirts with adoring female students; Nat Pendleton faints a couple times. And its being part of the Dr. Kildaire series, even sans Lew Ayres, sort of pulls it from the category too. But it's an interesting sidelight to the noir genre.

PHILIP DORN steps in for LEW AYRES who had been the chief doctor at Blair General Hospital in a series of Dr. Kildare movies. Here Dorn is the new doctor assisting Dr. Gillepsie in a search for a serial killer who is committing crimes within the confines of the hospital posing as a doctor.

Definitely one of the better in MGM's series of B-movies with LIONEL BARRYMORE doing his gruff stuff as the blustery Dr. Gillespie and ably supported by the usual staff members at the hospital. The last half-hour moves swiftly toward a predictable but interesting climax. Comic relief is supplied by Nat Pendleton as a husky assistant prone to fainting spells.

DONNA REED does nicely as the girlfriend of the killer and if you look closely you'll spot AVA GARDNER getting some exposure in an early role. Sensitive looking Phil Brown makes an interesting homicidal maniac and in some scenes bears a startling resemblance to--of all people--Lew Ayres.

Summing up: Nice little B-melodrama from Metro.

This highly interesting little film almost fits into all three categories, but still doesn't fully meet the requirements for any of them! Though to be honest, this first Kildare movie--without Kildare--seems to be more of a crime/thriller than any of the earlier films in the series; that is, it focuses more on the crime aspect.

Our favorite over-the-top curmudgeon on wheels investigates the case of a, by all appearances, nice, well-mannered young man who just happens to have the nasty habit of turning psycho at the drop of a hat...and ends up becoming the killer's target.

The whole cast does a nice job, though as I stated earlier, the serious plot is sometimes undermined by the comedic undertone.

This is the first film in the series after MGM kicked Lew Ayers out for being a conscientious objector during the war, and that's when the "Dr. Kildare" series became the "Dr. Gillespie" series. This first one is pretty good, and very suspenseful; the script also contains a classic Gillespie line: "I'm sorry to tell you, you're son's a mental case."

This was the first of the Dr. Kildare films to omit Lew Ayres from the cast due to Mr. Ayres declaring himself a conscientious objector at the beginning of WWII. He served with distinction in the medical corps in WWII. Mr. Ayres wasn't opposed to dying for his country, he just didn't want to kill for any reason. Since hysteria can often be the close companion to patriotism in times of national trial, MGM didn't want the negative publicity so Lew Ayres was out. Philip Dorn, here playing psychiatrist Dr. John Hunter Gerniede, seems to be filling in the part of the younger doctor that would have normally been played by Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare.

Normally these abrupt cast changes in movie franchises lead to inferior films, at least for the first couple of post-transition entries, but here the outcome is quite satisfying and interesting. Dr. Gillespie is brought in to examine a wealthy young man, Roy Todwell, after he abruptly becomes violent after hearing a train whistle - any train whistle. After the violent act he says he remembers nothing. His first violent act is to kill a dog with a rock when his fiancée (Donna Reed as Marcia) refuses to elope with him. Later he smashes up a store. Roy is hospitalized for observation, but soon escapes, believing that Dr. Gillespie wants to commit him to a madhouse, thus he wants to kill Dr. Gillespie and sends him frequent postcards telling him so. Thus the police and Drs Gerneide and Gillespie are trying to locate and capture Roy before his acts rather than his threats turn homicidal.

This is a very good entry in the series with lots of suspense and elements of noir. The actor who plays Roy is particularly effective. He has almost a "howdy-doody" kind of physical presence, barely masculine and hardly menacing yet he has a very cold deliberate stare and facial expression as he goes about wreaking havoc. Nat Pendleton continues in his role as orderly Joe Wayman who has been tasked with guarding Dr. Gillespie without letting Dr. Gillespie know what's going on. In the case of Joe trying to be subtle, comical complications ensue. The case of Roy Todwell carries over into the next entry in the series as well, "Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case", also worth seeing even without the suave Dr. K.

Calling Dr. Gillespie, the first film made with Lionel Barrymore now in the lead of the medical series that had previously featured Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare takes a really sharp turn into a film noir melodrama as Barrymore becomes the target of a homicidal maniac.

The case comes to Barrymore's attention after a young man who Donna Reed was about to marry flips out and kills her dog. He brings in as a consultant a refugee doctor from Europe Phillip Dorn who is a surgeon, but wants to change his specialty to psychiatry. I guess there were no psychiatrists available.

But between them Dorn and Barrymore come to the conclusion that young Philip Brown is insane and belongs in a hospital. A conclusion that the family physician, stuffy Charles Dingle doesn't agree with.

This film is also unusual because there is a whole interlude where Brown takes center stage and the Blair General regulars completely disappear from the film for a while. Brown flees to Detroit where he proves Barrymore right and Dingle wrong when he commits a couple of murders for reasons that only would make sense to an insane man.

The dynamic of the series shifted with this film and not only because Lew Ayres departed. Ayres was the young protégé to Barrymore and it was a medical father/son dynamic then. Here Lionel Barrymore has a very professional assistant in Dorn and he's not quite the curmudgeon towards him as he was with Ayres.

The rest of the Blair General regulars were there, Walter Kingsford as the head of the hospital, Alma Kruger as head of the nurses, and Nat Pendleton as the loyal if slightly dim ambulance driver. He in the end actually proves most useful. I always liked Nell Craig as the eternally put upon Nurse Parker who Barrymore berates throughout the series. The relationship is obviously based on Monty Woolley and Mary Wickes from The Man Who Came To Dinner.

Phil Brown should come in for praise as well as the charming and psychotic young suitor. A character very much borrowed from Emlyn Williams's Night Must Fall and played on screen by MGM's own Robert Montgomery.

Calling Dr. Gillespie proved the Dr. Kildare series still had life even without Kildare.