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.
