Le Secret du docteur Kildare

Dr. Kildare (Lew Ayres) assists wheelchair-bound dying Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) in a fight to cure pneumonia. Wall Street tycoon Paul Messenger wants his daughter Nancy checked as she presents personality issues. With Gillespie sidelined due to exhaustion, Kildare poses as a family friend to investigate Nancy.

I don't know anything about this series or these characters to my detriment. This is preceded by two movies in the series and two more stories before MGM. I missed the connection between student and mentor. I get the idea from the movie but not the feeling. Lionel is a lion. Lew Ayres pales in comparison. If it's done today, this would be TV show material. This is fine for pre-TV to have a movie series such as this.

Lionel Barrymore ("Dr. Gillespie") and Lew Ayres ("Dr. Kildare") are teacher and pupil in this competent medical drama. The former is working himself too hard trying to get to the root causes - and therefore to develop a treatment for - pneumonia. The latter is working with the daughter of one of America's wealthiest men (Lionel Atwill) who seems to be suffering from a sort of psychological illness derived from some incident from her past. Barrymore is great as the curmudgeonly, wheelchair-bound physician and he has some fun set-piece skirmishes with head nurse "Molly" (Alma Kruger); otherwise it is only really remarkable as an obvious precursor to not only the "Dr. Kildare" television series' but to episodic medical programming in general.

The very watchable Dr. Kildare series is a refreshing and smart reality check for the matinee crowd, then as now, and has wisely been noted by others as a precursor to the modern medical TV dramas. But the one thing that spoils these otherwise well balanced (drama/wit/intellect) and well paced stories is the Conover character played by George Reed in this forced black stereotype "Amos and Andy" patronizing manner, instead of in the normal, everyday, regular guy way of talking, like the rest of the cast. Even the "Irish" bartender bit got over played racially in the series. You have to tell yourself this is the product of the times, but were all movie directors 'that' insensitive in the 1930's? Oh well, it is what it is, but it could have been much, much better without the negative racial portrayals.

Dr. Gillespie's health worsens and the work on a project with Dr. Kildare is taking its toll. In order to get him to take a rest, Dr. Kildare persuades the hospital to assign him to look after an heiress who believes she is dying.

Fourth of the ten films in the series and the third in which Lew Ayres plays Dr. Kildare. Quite entertaining but fans of the series will know what to expect and, as usual, Lionel Barrymore steals the show as Dr. Gillespie. Helen Gilbert plays the heiress.

It's hard to imagine this series without Lionel Barrymore as the cantankerous old wheelchair-ridden Dr. Gillespie, who is perfect counterpoint to the good actor, but rather bland Lew Ayres, playing Dr. Kildare. Without Barrymore, or the likes of him, the series would surely have flopped. The three plots going at once is typical of the series, and handled well by the director Harold S. Bucquet. The film, however, is badly named, because I couldn't tell for sure what Kildare's secret was. The audience is in on several of his deceptions: his quitting Gillespie to force him to rest; his not telling Helen Gilbert he was a doctor; and finally his lying to her about the treatment he was going to give her. Still, the film is fun to watch, especially if you've seen others films in the series and get to know how the various hospital characters interact.