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Very well executed

The Worst Film Ever

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Copyright 12 October 1938 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 27 October 1938 (ran one week). U.S. release: 14 October 1938. Australian release: 9 February 1939. 8 reels. 81 minutes.COMMENT: Although exceptions were occasionally made for Blondie, Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes and The Saint, series films were rarely contenders for even a supporting slot on all-important Saturday nights in Britain and Australia. Dr Kildare had a further impediment in that the setting itself had few glamorous associations for Australians - and still less for Britishers - during the dark days and nights of WW2.This one has some curiosity value, being the first of the M-G-M series. It was also the first feature film directed by Harold S. Bucquet, a graduate of the studio's shorts department. Bucquet's background was in scene design, but his directorial (or perhaps his health) problems surfaced in 1942 when Dr Kildare's Victory had to be completed and largely re-shot by W.S. Van Dyke. On the other hand, Bucquet did such sterling work on The Adventures of Tartu in 1943, he was handed two other prestige assignments, Dragon Seed (1944) and Without Love (1945), before his death in 1946 at the comparatively early age of 54.Alas, Young Dr Kildare is also saddled with a weak script. True, it does have a few interesting moments (Kildare peering through the door at his revived patient), but even some of these are ruined by Bucquet's mawkish tendency to over-emphasize. Only Nat Pendleton's gustoish playing of a muscle-bound ambulance driver and Monty Woolley's stuffed-shirt psychiatrist have any real appeal.

This was a fine beginning to the MGM Dr. Kildare series. In fact, it had been years since I had watched any of these films, and I had forgotten just how good they were for B pictures. It's great that TCM occasionally broadcasts them.This particular story features a newly graduated from medical school, Dr. James Kildare. Although he has been chosen to be the assistant of Dr. Gillespie, he has to return to his hometown and his parents...his father is a small town doctor. They expect him to partner with his father in his medical practice. However, he intends to return to Blair General Hospital in the big city. The young doctor deals with attempted suicide, errors by medical staff, and Kildare's attempt to solve the suicidal girl through some detective work. There was something special about Lionel Barrymore, even here at the age of 60, all crippled up with arthritis. Lew Ayres was a fine actor, as well, although I remember him mostly for his television roles in his old age. Naturally, medicine has changed a great deal wince 1938 when this film was made. But this film is a sort of testament to the doctors who struggled to make a difference in the early years of big city hospitals and more modern medicine.

It Might Come as a Surprise to Very Young Fans of TV's "House" or Pay TV's "The Knick" that Medical Dramas with High Personality Doctors were Around and Popular Even in the Thirties. This was a Long Running Series of B-Movies from MGM and this was The Origin Story.Lew Ayers Plays Kildare with a Great Voice and a Sombre Pretty Face and Not Much Else but He is Acceptable and lets Lionel Barrymore's Sarcasms and Put Downs Steal the Show. Nat Pendleton is the Comedic Companion, an Ambulance Driver.Spicing Up Things is a Detective Like Inquiry out of the Hospital and a Psychiatric Case that is Pure Bunkum. Overall Worth a Watch for this is the Initial Entry and if You Like it there are Many More to Follow. Average as These Things Go, but it was a Very Popular Series.Note...Richard Chamberlain brought the Character to TV in the early Sixties and competed with Vince Edwards as Dr. Ben Casey on a rival Network.

Though this is a serviceable drama about a young doctor, the medical details are ludicrous--in the pre-CPR days, Kildare massages the back of a girl thought to be dead, instructing an onlooker to hold a mirror to her mouth to see if she's breathing. Eventually she does--after 15 or 20 minutes--without a suggestion of possible brain damage. Then the troubled girl is put into the hospital, tries to kill herself a second time, is saved by Kildare again, and then promptly diagnosed (apparently without any observation) by the resident psychiatric expert as schizophrenic. "But wait," I'm saying to myself at home, "she hasn't shown any symptoms of schizophrenia"--not even 1938-era understanding of schizophrenia.Fortunately young and earnest Dr. Kildare is able to protest this diagnosis and rapidly discover the real reason she's tried to commit suicide--which he debunks, leading all to a happy conclusion and no further cause for concern. Uh huh, it was all a misunderstanding and everything will be rosy henceforth--the formerly suicidal girl pops out of bed and falls into her fiancé's arms, all smiles.Right.