Dr. Bull

Will Rogers stars in this little slice of Americana. He's the town's only doctor and a bit of a ladies' man. He's also the source of most of the local old maids' gossip. Which gives Will a great chance to use his special brand of humor to skewer the foibles of the human creature.

John Ford provides good atmosphere. This would be the first of 3 pictures he would make with Will. Rochelle Hudson shows why she was one of the prettiest actresses of the early '30's and Andy Devine is hilarious as a hypochondriac who is the bane of Doctor Bull's existence.

Recalling the middle section of Ford's earlier Arrowsmith, Doctor Bull is the story of a small town doctor and his life amidst the sicknesses, hypochondriacs, and general hustle and bustle of the small community. It's a light affair that mostly relies on the central performance by Will Rogers for its entertainment value with a late stage sense of plot that doesn't engage as much as it probably should.

The titular Doctor (Rogers) never seems to get a moment to himself. Subject to gossip by the local busybody Mrs. Banning (Louise Dresser) because of his frequent evening visits to the widow Janet Cardmaker (Vera Allen), Doctor Bull spends his days treating anyone who comes to him. He treats the local soda jerk Larry (Andy Devine) who is constantly complaining about pains in his sides. When Doc tells him that pain on the side he's complaining means that it's impossible that Larry has a burst appendix, Larry insists that he must have two.

There are successes in his treatments, like a boy coming out of a fever after an all-night observation and tending by Doc, and failures, like a woman dying because no one was able to find Doc (he had collapsed onto Janet's couch and fallen asleep as she read). The efforts of the people to find Doc go through the local switchboard operated by May (Marian Nixon) who is privy to most of the town's gossip and never takes it too hard that Doc never seems to be home. May has a husband at home, Joe (Howard Lally) who is bedridden and lame that Doc comes to visit, leading to late nights scouring through medical textbooks to find some kind of potential cure.

That's really the bulk of the film. Carried by Rogers in his affable, easy going style, he's understanding, funny, and even sardonic with the constant requests that tire him out endlessly day after day and season after season. He treats everyone with a mixture of familiarity, respect, and condescension that Rogers pulls off rather easily. You really get the sense that he's a nice, capable doctor who's struggling to keep his head above water with the amount of patients he has to deal with. It's probably most amusing when he helps the adult daughter of a wealthy family, destined to marry a Senator's son, elope with her poorer college German lover because he got her pregnant (pre-Code!) and feigns ignorance when confronted on it.

Late in the film we get the move's plot when Doc discovers a typhoid outbreak forming in the community. He goes into action, inoculating the children of the town against typhoid. When he comes to the conclusion that the outbreak most likely originated at a camp built near the source of the town's water supply, a camp he was supposed to inspect as a health official to the town but never found the time, the town is enraged and calls a meeting to get him removed from office. Doc takes the meeting badly, accurately calling out the town for monopolizing his time so that he can't do everything he probably should, and he's ready to quit.

Now, John Ford knew how to put together an ending, but the ending to Doctor Bull is a disappointment. Doc takes some information from a farmer about a serum Doc had made to help the farmer's lame cows, adapts it for human use, and gives it to the lame Joe, quickly fixing his lameness. This event is what suddenly gets him back in the town's good graces. It doesn't seem to fit, to be honest. It feels random.

The movie's not bad, but just wanes away. If the first two-thirds were funnier, the loose structure would have been less of a concern, but it's just an easy going bit of amusement until a finale that probably goes too far into melodrama for the film's own good. Will Rogers does his best, being affable and charming through his challenges, but for all his charisma, the film around him is just too waifishly thin.

"Doctor Bull" is Ford's first of three collaborations with Will Rogers. Much like their later pictures, it combines humor and drama with greater emphasis on dialogue and performance rather than narrative. Mr. Ford admired Rogers' folksy charm and found in him a figure whose moral wisdom perfectly matched with his own. In these leisurely and unpretentious pictures, Rogers is successfully a healer and reconciler, but, like most of Ford's subsequent protagonists, he is also a melancholy and lonely figure.

Though it is nowhere near the charm, subtlety and enduring greatness of "Judge Priest"(1934) & "Steamboat 'Round the Bend"(1935), "Doctor Bull" is nonetheless worth seeing for Mr. Rogers' loving portrayal of a small-town Connecticut doctor combating typhus and narrow-mindedness.

It is interesting to note that in the same year Rogers starred in another whiff of Americana - Henry King's lovely and often underrated "State Fair."

The best remembered stars of the early 1930s may be such beautiful and provocative sirens as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, but at the time they were slightly outdone at the box office and the reliable Quigley poll by more down-to-earth and homely figures, chief among them Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler and of course Will Rogers. Audiences warmed to his air of honesty and decency in what was a time of great economic strife and social confusion. Will was a busy man in 1933, and while his biggest hit of the year was the sublime State Fair, he also made a number of lesser pictures which nonetheless had all the merits of his gentle personality.

Doctor Bull is a neat little tale of a small town medic up against closed-minded gossipmongers on the one hand and ravaging businessmen on the other. Director John Ford depicts the scenes with a characteristically passive hand. His camera is mostly to one side of the action, and there are few close-ups. He carefully follows movement and changes the angle occasionally to stop scenes getting stale, but barring one or two key moments (such as the shot from behind the table of a drunk Rochelle Hudson), the technique is so subtle we are allowed to forget the camera even exists. Fox studios, where this was produced, were among the last studios to start using incidental music in their movies, and even for the era Doctor Bull is starkly quiet. The overall feeling is one of tranquillity and unhurried simplicity.

Such a feeling also radiates from Rogers himself. His is a calm and methodical performance, and yet one that expresses a great deal. Rogers is the kind of man who can command a lot of attention and respect by doing very little, and therein lies a lot of his appeal. He was chiefly thought a comedy actor, but most of the comedy in Doctor Bull lies in quirky supporting players (as it often did in John Ford pictures). However, Rogers still shows a knack for delivering a line for comedic effect, usually with characteristic nonchalance. When one of his young patients is "rescued" from vaccination by his father, Rogers calls out "Hope your arm don't hurt ya tomorrow", without even looking up from his business. A sly little comment, made with just enough of a knowing hint to come across as a private joke with audience.

Such a light little movie as Doctor Bull was never going to win awards or move audiences to floods of tears or gales of laughter, but it has a nice, inoffensive quality to it that is very relaxing. It uses the era's "pre-code" liberalism, not to shock or titillate, but to deal sensitively (albeit covertly) about the issue of pregnancy outside marriage. And thanks to its aura of friendliness which is never forced but simply unfolds before us, embodied in the warm and trustworthy Mr Rogers, one cannot help but feel uplifted by it.

John Ford's first collaboration with Will Rogers introduces itself with the words, "Doctor Bull brings his neighbors into the world and postpones their departure as long as possible. He prescribes common sense and accepts his small rewords gratefully. His patients call him Doc." This opening makes "Doctor Bull" sound like it's going to be a wholesome and folksy tale - but don't expect the film to be the sweet story of a kindly doctor. The New England set town of "New Winton" turns out to be a 1930s "Peyton Place"…

Strait-laced citizens gossip about neighborly Mr. Rogers (as George "Doc" Bull) spending his evenings with lonely widow Vera Allen (as Janet Cardmaker). Telephone receptionist Marian Nixon (as May) fears husband Howard Lally (as Joe Tupping) may never walk again, after an accident leaves him paralyzed...

Matriarch Louise Dresser and the town's wealthy "Banning" family fret about the sudden marriage of pretty daughter Rochelle Hudson (as Virginia), apparently left pregnant after her boozy weekend with a football player. And, as if that wasn't enough drama, the entire town is threatened with typhoid fever. Since this is not supposed to be a serial, all the stories are tied up by the film's end. And, Mr. Ford makes sure you leave the theater laughing, as squeaky "soda shop" clerk Andy Devine reveals a secret...

****** Doctor Bull (9/22/33) John Ford ~ Will Rogers, Vera Allen, Rochelle Hudson, Louise Dresser