Doctors Don't Tell

"Doctors Don't Tell" is a B-movie from Republic Studios, an outfit that specialized in making Bs....and the occasional A-picture.

When the story begins, three friends all have completed their training and are now doctors. However, they find the going tough and when they try to open a practice together, they can't find any patients. One decides to instead take a job working for the Medical Examiner's office. The other, his brother, makes a horrible decision and ends up working for some underworld thugs. Now this brother has plenty of patients...and plenty of problems! What's next? See the film.

The story, while familiar, is well told and interesting. My only quibble with the tale is the third doctor, played by Grady Sutton. He seems to be there just for comic relief and ends up dragging the story down at times because the story SEEMS realistic in most other ways. Eliminating this minor character would have improved the story a bit and it could have earned a 7.

John Beal, Edward Norris, and Grady Sutton get their medical licenses and open up a practice in the slums. Amiable gangster Douglas Fowley bankrolls their practice, since there aren't any patients to do so. After Beal peels away to work for the Medical Examiner's office, Fowley's generosity becomes more practical, as Norris digs out bullets from dumb, psychotic henchman Ward Bond... and Bond shoots the pharmacist who shot him.

It's an all right medical/crime drama, with a nightclub act in which the songwriters come up with as many rhymes for 'bologna' as they can think of, and Florence Rice is there for the first two to fight over -- Sutton is there for some mild comic relief, afraid of anything to do with medicine.

It's a loan-out for director Jacques Tourneur, or perhaps he had already left Metro; certainly Republic is two steps down, even from the MGM shorts department. He would begin to move up again a couple of years later, working in Val Lewton's unit at RKO.