Bedside

Warren William is an X-ray technician with an affair going on with nurse Jean Muir. He has three years of medical school, so she lends him enough money for the fourth. He promptly loses it in a poker game, but a couple of year later returns with a medical degree. He's bought it for chum change from a legitimate graduate of a medical school who's now a hophead. With real doctor Donald Meek to do the actual work, and publicity man Allen Jenkins to puff it all as William's brilliance, he's soon in demand as a medical genius.

William gives a fine performance as the faker, offering an air of calm assurance, a rapid intelligence to seize any opportunity, and a nervous fear underlying it all to show the character.

Contrast this to the rather stuffy behavior of the established doctors; in the end, they are too fearful of the good name of the profession -- or the perceived scandal of not having exposed the phony earlier or the need for the movie to have a happy ending of some variety -- to police their own profession. Perhaps they need to do some actual publicity of their own to compete with the quacks!

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

William Warren plays Louis, a mostly-sympathetic scoundrel. He is a womanizer and gambler who has some medical school but lacks the discipline necessary to finish. David Landau shines in a supporting role: a washed up, morphine-addicted doctor who sells Louis his medical license for cash and a lifetime supply of morphine fixes. (The bio on Landau says "wooden." He doesn't seem so here.) Louis' ego and greed propel him to increasing medical risks. You know that sooner or later his ineptitude will result in death. The only question is "Whose?"

This movie was made when physician advertising was considered highly unethical. But Louis cleverly bends the rules! It was also made when the dangers of radiation exposure were unknown; notice that none of the characters in the X-ray room wear any protection.

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.

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.