YOUNG DR. KILDARE (1938)
CALLING DR. KILDARE (1939)

These are the first two films in the long Dr. Kildare series made by MGM, based on a character created by Western writer Max Brand. (There was an earlier film from Paramount with Joel McCrea, but the MGM series starts from scratch.) I remember my mother watching the Kildare TV show of the 60's (with Richard Chamberlain), but I don't think I ever saw an entire episode, so the characters, their backgrounds, and their interactions were all new to me. Both films feel more like mysteries or police stories dressed up with hospital trappings. I guess that makes some sense, since it's not very exciting just watching doctors diagnose and cure patients. In both movies, Kildare (Lew Ayers) is an intern who has a rough time of it at a big city hospital, largely due to his cranky, wheelchair-bound mentor, Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore). Kildare gets into some trouble and Gillespie, who is usually part of the reason for the trouble, helps get him out. In the first one, the problem is a young woman who has tried to commit suicide; her family wants her declared insane but Kildare thinks she's sane and investigates to find out what her trouble is. Monty Woolley has a small role as the psychiatrist with whom Kildare disagrees. In CALLING, the problem is a gunshot victim Kildare tends to without informing the police. He gets wrapped up in the lives of the victim, a young man, and his sister (Lana Turner).

Lew Ayers is fine, as is Laraine Day who debuts in the second film as the character whom I assume winds up in later films as Kildare's love interest. I usually like Barrymore, but I found him irritating here, partly due to his overdone schtick as an irascible but ultimately good-hearted fogey, and partly to the way the character was written. Samuel S. Hinds, whom I know as George Bailey's father in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, is good as Kildare's father. Emma Dunn is the mother, and though she's OK, I kept thinking that Sara Allgood would have been better, if she could have done a Midwest American accent. The handsome Phillip Terry (one of Joan Crawford's husbands in real life) is a fellow intern. The backstory, set up in YOUNG, is that Ayres returns to his Midwest small town for a visit after graduating from medical school; his father, also a doctor, assumes that his son will go into practice with him, but Ayers opts for a internship at a New York hospital. There is also a small town girlfriend (Lynne Carver) who apparently drops out of the series after CALLING. These were both worth watching, but I think my curiosity about the series has been slaked and I don't need to see any more. [TCM]