Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day

The wedding of Dr. Kildare (Lew Ayres) and Nurse Mary Lamont (Laraine Day) is fast approaching. There's excitement and happiness in the air as everybody prepares for the big day. But an unexpected tragedy leaves Kildare devastated. It's up to Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) to try and help the young doctor recover.

The eighth Dr. Kildare movie is the penultimate one for Lew Ayres, who would be forced out of the series after the next one. You would think that MGM knew far ahead of time that this would be the case, given how Lionel Barrymore dominates the screen time. The big news is that this was the last of the movies Laraine Day appeared in. MGM wanted to move her on to bigger and better things. Whatever the reason behind it, it was a bold choice to go the direction they went. The series had pretty good continuity and the events of this movie would still affect Kildare in the next film. The cast of regulars are all wonderful, going from comedy to tragedy without skipping a beat. Love the little girl who wants to marry Kildare and justifies the age difference because "hillbillies do it." It's probably Ayres' finest hour in the series, dramatically speaking. Red Skelton provides most of the comic relief. At one point in the film Dr. Gillespie relates the story about a composer he once loved. He plays some of her music on the piano. Barrymore wrote this music himself.

This is one of my favorite Kildare movies. The medical case isn't a big deal but the wonderful characters are what sell the story, as usual. Good writing, directing, acting....it's one of the best of the series. By the way, in the scene where Mary is trying on her dress and talking with Jimmy's mother, listen to the funny way the cook pronounces mayonnaise. Little things like that always give me a kick when watching older films.

Sorry, but these Dr. Kildare pictures have about as much resemblance to real life as any childhood fantasy. Gruff DR. GILLESPIE is really given too much footage in this outing and frankly, LIONEL BARRYMORE's grumblings get a bit tiresome after the first half-hour. He's the man who makes Ayres realize that despite his grief, he's still first and foremost a doctor.

LEW AYRES and LARAINE DAY do their usual competent jobs as the romantic leads in the series, with Ayres unable to find the time to attend to all the pressing details of an upcoming marriage. Laraine Day was so sick of her Kildare assignments at MGM, that the writers were assigned to write her out of the series so she could go on with her career in more than this one-dimensional role.

The nice supporting cast always helped make the series at least minimally entertaining. RED SKELTON's participation, however, seems a bit out of place in an extended gag scene with him guarding a whole bunch of suitcases while a possible thief watches silently nearby.

ALMA KRUGER, MARIE BLAKE, SAMUEL S. HINDS, MILES MANDER, FRANK ORTH and others give good support, while NILS ASTHER has the most interesting supporting role as a musical conductor who needs medical attention.

Summing up: A trifle of a B-film, the kind that played the lower half of a double bill in the '40s.

I hadn't seen any Dr. Kildare movies till this one.

The young doctor's tragedy may have been a sad cliche, but the doctor's and nurses rallying around his recovery were nice to see. Good acting from Barrymore as usual. Many of the lines about death and duty were very good, ones to remember.

Dr. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) is marrying nurse Mary Lamont (Laraine Day). Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) is giving the bride away. All the nurses and orderlies are secretly collecting money for the present. Gillespie takes on the case of an orchestra conductor. As everybody prepares for the wedding, tragedy strikes.

There is a big tonal change in this one. Up until that point, I like Red Skelton's comedic turns. After that point, it all strikes me as tone-deaf. The movie needs to respect the change. I couldn't wait for the luggage bit to be over. The movie should be a straight line all the way to the end.

The big day has finally arrived! Dr. Jimmy Kildare is finally marrying Nurse Mary Lamont, and all his friends in the hospital are preparing for the big day. Dr. Gillespie is occupied with helping a well-known orchestra conductor who thinks he's going deaf, but that's not all Gillespie's busy with: he's also trying his best to talk and scheme his way out of going to cancer specialist Dr. Lockburg's sanitarium for a month. Everything's going just beautifully, until an utterly unexpected tragedy strikes the night before the wedding. Now it's up to good old Gillespie to bring Jimmy back to some semblance of reality.

This might be my all-time favorite in the Kildare series so far; I still have one more to go, plus five in the Gillespie series that I have yet to see. But one of the things that make this one so interesting is the musical theme inherent in the plot. Lionel Barrymore composed the music for this one, and plays it on the piano himself too. In real life, Lionel had a high regard for classical music and knew a lot about many famous composers. He composed some music himself, claiming that much of it was actually "stolen from real composers" (the way he states it in his autobiography "We Barrymores", written in 1951), and played the piano as well as the oboe!

So all that serves to contribute to a most interesting and well-above average entry for the Kildare series. I have always referred to Lionel as an acting genius, and it was funny to hear him call himself a genius in this movie, through the character of Gillespie of course.

It's also fascinating to discover a bit more about Dr. Gillespie's background and personal life. He talks about a girl he used to love, and how he ended up losing her...sounding much the same as what Kildare is going through when he tells him. He talks about how another brilliant, famous doctor helped him during that difficult time and convinced him to continue his career instead of giving up, and it also appears that Gillespie comes from a pretty well-to-do background, this being revealed when he asks Kildare to meet him somewhere to talk, and gives him the address for a big, lovely, rambling old house that turns out to be "the old Gillespie Place", his childhood home.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy one of the best films the series had to offer!