Dr. Cook's Garden

1970's "Dr. Cook's Garden" was an ABC-TV Movie of the Week (broadcast Jan. 19, 1971), boasting the unexpected casting of Hollywood icon Bing Crosby in the challenging title role of Dr. Leonard Cook, who takes the same kind of pride in his country town as in his personal garden. As the only physician in the Vermont community of Greenfield, the nearest hospital 30 miles away, he has no qualms about making house calls even in the middle of the night, welcoming home one of his former patients, Jimmy Tennyson (Frank Converse), who once idolized him as a child, now a capable, full fledged doctor in his own right. What Tennyson isn't expecting is Cook's rejection of him as a replacement, tensions rising over the huge amount of poison in his locked cabinet, and the curious terminology between his flowers and his patients (the letter 'R' stands for 'Removal'). The philosophical question of how to save lives by taking them is the centerpiece of this Ira Levin story, first produced as a flop Broadway play in 1967 (closing after only 8 performances), with Burl Ives as the old doctor, Keir Dullea his younger counterpart, James Stewart up for the Ives role in a proposed feature film. What makes it work is the offbeat presence of Crosby, as an actor best remembered as the benevolent priest Father O'Malley in "Going My Way" and "The Bells of St. Mary's," whose facade of compassion comes off as believably genuine, until the threat of exposure brings out his more dangerous, self centered side. By contrast, Frank Converse's one note performance fails to truly resonate as a figure for audience identification, inevitably the loser in his confrontations opposite the redoubtable Bing (the lovely Blythe Danner comes off better in a subordinate role as Cook's dedicated nurse).

Even though we learn the obvious relatively early on, there is still some decent suspense watching it all play out. Crosby is excellent in this dramatic role, and some of the dialogue between he and Converse is thoughtfully written. Much of the finale is haphazard, but the irony wraps it all up neatly.

This is one of many first-rate movies that were made for TV on ABC at the time.

A barely recognizable Bing Crosby (bearded, sans pipe and golfing outfit) portrays Dr. Leonard Cook, a seemingly kindly old small-town physician with a thriving practice in the idyllic town of Greenfield, Connecticut. His young protege Dr.Jim Tennyson (Converse) returns to town for a visit having completed his residency.

Cook, a widower, is the only doctor in town. With no family left he tends to people in Greenfield like they are his kin. After more than forty years as general practitioner he has delivered most of the residents at birth and henceforth taken them on as patients.

As a county selectman (A town councillor) he also puts in time to tend to community improvements. The two responsibilities, and his avid interest in gardening percolate into a warped social engineering project.

Spoiler alert. With full knowledge of medical procedure and the lesser deference that comes from experience and personal confidence Tennyson's eyes are opened to the malfeasance of Dr.Cook - his hero. Taking his personal philosophy a step further, Cook actively causes deaths of patients whose respective expirations serve the greater good as Cook sees it.

Cook, with his gardening hobby tends to view patients in a similar way to how he views plants - some are flowers, some are weeds. The weeds need to be pulled out to protect the flowers.

Good people get very old before passing on. Bad people, whilst they happen to be at their most destructive, have unexpected health problems which prove fatal. Sick people who only have suffering ahead of them are euthanized. But there has never been a suspicious death. As regional health officer Dr.Cook would know if there had. He finds no fault in his own quality of healthcare and isn't going to call in another doctor to conduct an autopsy.

Tennyson, absent from the town for five years, begins to clue in that not everything is as it seems by taking stock of the sheer volume of people who have dropped dead under suspicious circumstances since he left each of which tie in not merely to malpractice by Cook but actual murder.

The other townspeople are blissfully unaware. They don't have Tennyson's education or cynicism. Tennyson has something else they don't have - the objectivity and fresh perspective that comes from an outsider's view.

He, like a lot of townspeople lost somebody close to him - his alcoholic maniac father who used to beat him senseless. The same man conveniently died of a stroke but one week after administering a particularly severe beating in which adolescent Tennyson's arm was broken.

For the most part the now well-documented dark side of Bing Crosby remained concealed beneath his public image until years after his death when his children came forward with shocking stories of brutal abuse by his hand. Very few of his performances betrayed the cruel, sadistic nature of the man. The narrative here touches upon a number of things that Crosby should have been made uncomfortable by.

The premise of this one fascinated me for years after I had been told about it. The person who got me interested in it only mentioned it in passing and was unable to give me the title of the right details for tracking it down mistakenly informing me that it had starred Fred Astaire and that the film had been a theatrical release in 1976 instead of a TV movie with Bing Crosby made in 1971. It took me twenty years to find it.

What this narrative deals with are subjects that weren't really talked about. Euthanasia, medicine in rural areas, the "God Complex" noted in a few cases of various physicians. The shock the viewer has doesn't necessarily come the fact that this nice old man is a mass-murderer though that should be enough. The shock comes with what degree the viewer and those that they are watching the film with begin to see a validity in what he is doing.

Note:

Based on the Ira Levin stage play.

Broadcast as an instalment of ABC Tuesday Night at the Movies.

One of the amazing films of the ABC Tuesday Night at the Movies, Bing Crosby starts out as a Kervorkian style doctor but crosses the line as he begins to make judgments on who in his small town must live or die based on their conduct. Chilling and foretelling.

Dark king Crosby, in a role maybe not so far from what he was in real life; try to read his son's book, where the young man describes his home daily hell, xanks to his father, the great American Icon. So, back to this pretty good TV stuff, the main interest, besides Crosby unusual character, is the way how the young idealistic doctor discovers slowly but surely that his model doctor - Crosby - may be not as sweet and kind as he supposes to be.