Young Dr. Kildare (1938)

Dr. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) is fresh out of medical school and expected to take over his father's small town practice. But Kildare decides instead to go to New York and work as an intern at Blair General Hospital. There he catches the interest of crotchety old Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) and gets into trouble trying to prove a suicidal heiress isn't crazy.The first in MGM's wonderful Dr. Kildare series. Paramount had released a Kildare movie the year prior to this with a different cast but that's unconnected to this series. This movie, like the rest that followed, is a classy medical drama with terrific actors and good writing. Lew Ayres was perfectly cast as the compassionate and idealistic Kildare. As would be the case in most of the series, Lionel Barrymore steals the show as the grumpy but wise Dr. Gillespie, who was so integral to the series' success that when Ayres got the boot during WW2, they handed the series over to Barrymore's Gillespie. Many of the regulars who would make up the fine supporting cast in the series appear here -- Joe the ambulance attendant (Nat Pendleton), Sally the hospital receptionist (Marie Blake), bar owner Mike Ryan (Frank Orth), and hospital administrator Dr. Carew (Walter Kingsford). Samuel S. Hinds and Emma Dunn play Kildare's parents. Nurse Lamont and Molly Byrd don't show up until the next film, though Byrd is mentioned by name in one scene. Solid performances by everybody.It's a great movie that spawned many sequels and a (much) later TV series. Definitely something you will want to see if you're into medical dramas. Overlook the reviewers who nitpick the dated medical knowledge. That's such a ridiculous thing to complain about I can't even wrap my head around it. It's such a shame they didn't have time machines in 1938 so they could make movies that had 21st century knowledge and technology in them. Oh, well, if they had then we wouldn't be able to snark at those old primitives. God knows what a tragedy that would be! Sarcasm aside, I find the "flaws" with the medical stuff part of the appeal of the film. It gives us insight into the way such things were understood back then. That's always been a part of why I love older films -- they provide a window into the past.

Although Max Brand's character of Dr. James Kildare first appeared over at Paramount's Interns Can't Take Money with Joel McCrea, the first of the classic Dr. Kildare movies was Young Dr. Kildare with Lew Ayres as the idealistic young intern. The series was done over at MGM and that most expensive of all studios gave a polished touch to even a series of B pictures.Young Dr. Kildare sets the series up with Lew Ayres newly graduated from medical school deciding to intern at Blair General Hospital in New York instead of starting practice over in the small Connecticut town with his parents Samuel S. Hinds and Emma Dunn. While there he comes to the attention of renowned doctor Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Leonard Gillespie who spends the whole film putting him through some paces as he decides whether this young man can cut it as his new assistant.Although Ayres's main challenge with purportedly mentally ill rich girl Jo Ann Sayers is not terribly convincing in its simplistic approach to her psychiatric problems which resulted in a suicide attempt the sincere playing of Ayres, Barrymore, and the rest cover a multitude of script holes. Walter Kingsford also makes his debut in the series as the officious hospital president Dr. Carew. Although a pattern is set with the Carew character here who realizes he's just a bureaucrat with an MD and he defers to Barrymore on medical questions.The Kildare series got a decent if not outstanding debut with Young Dr. Kildare.

The fact that they made so many Dr. Kildare films in the 30s and 40s is more a testament to the acting of Lew Ayers and Lionel Barrymore than to the quality of the writing for this film. In so many ways, it seems like just another B-movie but somehow it managed to generate enough interest to create a series of films.Interestingly, not all of the Kildare films featured Lew Ayers in the lead, as after 1942, the series continued with Lionel Barrymore and other young doctors. Sadly, this is apparently because the public grew to hate Ayers because of his status as a conscientious objector during WWII. However, this is really unfair as when drafted, Ayers DID serve with distinction on the front lines--as a corpsman and chaplain's aid where he risked his life but was unwilling to kill. This abhorrence of violence stemmed from his role in the greatest anti-war film of all-time, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Fortunately for Ayers, a few years after the war, his public image changed and he gained acceptance--though his career never replicated the heights of his Dr. Kildare years.Now the fact that Barrymore made fifteen films in the series is very interesting, as his character was diagnosed with terminal cancer in this first film! According to the brilliant Kildare's opinion, Barrymore (as 'Dr. Gillespie') SHOULD have died within the year! Perhaps Kildare came up with some miracle cure in some subsequent film to explain this discrepancy.This is the first film in the series. Because of that, much of the film is spent establishing who the character is, creating a back story and installing him in his new job as an intern at a big New York hospital. I liked this part of the film a lot and liked the characters.However, oddly, the actual "big cases" they created for this first film were really limp. The first was a small one that made absolutely no sense--none. While assigned to ambulance duty, a patient dies and the guy turns out to be an important politician. Kildare is accused of incompetence but the guy died because the ambulance assistant (Nat Pendleton) ignored Kildare's instructions. Why Kildare hid this from the investigating board is not only inexplicable but highly unprofessional. The second is a case involving an attempted suicide by a rich heiress. Despite having a prominent psychiatrist assigned to the case (Monty Woolley in a very tiny role), Kildare insists he knows more than ANYONE at the hospital and is insubordinate. Then, when he's suspended, he goes into action like a Charlie Chan-type character. None of this made any sense, either, and Kildare came off as a know-it-all. Not an auspicious beginning to the series! Still, despite the film's many deficiencies, it is watchable. In many ways, the relationship between Gillespie and Kildare is reminiscent of the TV series "The Paper Chase".By the way, the receptionist in the film is played by a young Blossom Rock--the same actress who played 'Grandmama' on "The Addams Family" TV show. Interestingly, she was Jeanette MacDonald's less famous sister.

(There are Spoilers) Just graduating from medical school young Doctor James or Jimmy Kildare, Lew Ayres, comes back to his roots in the little sleepy town of Dartford Connecticut to open up a practice with his old man Dr. Stephen Kildare, Samuel H. Hinds.It doesn't take long for Jimmy to leave Dartford and his parents Mr. & Mrs. Kildare, played by Emma Dunn, as well as his long suffering girlfriend Alice (Lynn Carver), who's been waiting for him all this time, for the big city's, NYC, Balir General Hospital. Dr. Kildare want's to make his mark as a diagnostician and the best place is Blair where the world renowned Dr. Leonard , or Lenny, Gillespie, Lionel Barymore, is in charge not only of the diagnosis but the surgery department as well.Things don't go as well as Jimmy expected in him being chewed out by Dr. Gillespie the first day he started his residency at Blair in front of all his fellow interns. In no time at all Dr. Kildare makes a name for himself in being able to diagnose on the spot illnesses and cure them with almost miraculous medical powers. This makes the grumpy Dr. Gillespie take notice of the young Doctor Jimmy Kildare even though he acts like he's not at all that impressed with Jimmy's almost unearthly healing skills.Dr. Kildare being the morally-minded person that he is get's himself in hot water later in the movie by after first rescuing heiress Barbara Chanler, Jo Ann Sayers, he refuses to reveal the reason for her attempted suicide. Barbara breaking up with her fiancée Jack Hamilton, Truman Bradley,over him not taking her to the Blue Sawn nightclub ended up with horse owner Albert Foster, Leonard Penn, who got her juiced, inebriated, and left her almost dead drunk in one of the clubs private gambling rooms. Staggering out semi conscious into the street Barbara ended up in this Bowery flophouse where she tried to kill herself by turning on the gas oven in her room without lighting it. It seems that Barbara even though the movie doesn't spell it out, it leaves it to the viewers imagination, felt that Foster took advantage of her while she was drunk. The shock of her fiancée Jack finding out that she's isn't a virgin on their wedding night was just too much for Barbara to take and thus decided, in what later turned out to be for the wrong reason, to take her own life.Being a doctor Jimmy Kildare knew that Barbara, after examining her, was not at all the "damaged goods" that she thought she was. It was Dr. Jimmy Kildare's sweet and caring, as well as private, doctor patient relationship that put Barbara off from killing herself again. This in the end cured Barbara of the fears she had in what Foster did, which in fact he didn't, to her. In keeping the truth about Barbara from his superior the administrator of Blair General Dr. P Walter Carew, Walter Kingsford, almost got Jimmy kicked out of the place.It turned that Dr. Lenny Gillespie came to the young and besieged, on all sides, Dr. Kildare's rescue by offering the startled young man a chance to be his assistant which he, at first thinking that the old guy was going to chew him out, snapped up without a moments hesitation. The future now looked bright for Young Doctor Kildare but at the same time looked very ominous for old man Gillespie in that he's suffering for a bad case of melanoma, skin cancer, and he knew his days were numbered. It's in the short time that he had left Dr. Gillespie planned to teach his young potage, Jimmy Kildare, all he knows about medicine before the final curtain comes down on him.P.S Amazingly the movie had Dr. Kildare examine Dr. Gillespie on his condition, melanoma, and he predicted that Ol'Lenny still had some ten years of life left in his gas-tank. Gillespie putting Dr. Kildare down on how ridicules his prognosis is it in fact turned out to be right on target! Old and feisty Dr.Gillespie would out last young Doctor Kildare, or actor Lew Ayres who played him, in the Doctor Kildare series by some five years! That's exactly tens years since Dr. Kildare diagnosed the old man telling him that he'll overcome his cancerous condition. In fact after the Doctor Kildare movies came to an end in 1947 Dr. Gillespie, with his portage Dr. Kildare no longer around, was still very much alive and as healthy as he was when the series first started back in 1938!