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.

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.

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.

I have to recommend this film highly on daytime soap opera terms, as if you watch the series in sequence, there is a serial like element to the film. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) is the son of a small town Connecticut doctor (Samuel S. Hinds) who assumes he will join him as a partner upon graduating from medical school. But the young Dr. Kildare (hense the title) has already been selected to join the group of interns at New York's Blair Hospital under the watch of two stern taskmasters, chief physician Dr. P. Walter Carew (Walter Kingsford) and the elderly Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore), a grumbling and sarcastic medic who has continued his career in spite of bad legs. Now confined to a wheelchair, Dr. Gillespie rolls around, barking at nurses and interns, with only Nurse Molly Byrd (Nell Craig) able to stand up to him. In this film, Molly is a minor character, but once Alma Kruger took over the part in the second film, the character became someone to be reckoned with. Imagine a voice-over, as on soap operas, saying, "The role of Molly Byrd is now being played by.....", as it would have when Lewis Stone took over the role of Judge Hardy from Barrymore in the "Andy Hardy" series.As young Dr. Kildare begins to learn not only his job but the ways of the city he works in as well, he matures greatly, and eventually it is apparent he will have the respect of Dr. Gillespie. Jo Ann Sayers makes her first of two appearances as Ayres' small town love interest, who will fade away once Laraine Day's nurse is introduced in the next film. The presence of Nat Pendleton as the Ambulance assistant and Marie Blake as the Emergency Room receptionist add for all sorts of hilarity. Blake's wisecracking nurse would become famous in the later films for such quotes as "I may work in a hospital, but I don't know anything about medicine. My brother works on a chicken farm, but still can't lay an egg", or "My brother works at the zoo with the monkeys, but can't hang by his tail." My favorite line of hers in the series though was, "They are blaming the hospital for us treating a patient for appendicitis and dying of consumption. When our patients are treated for appendicitis, they die of appendicitis!" (The quote may not be right on, but you get the idea....) As for Gillespie, Barrymore will steal every single scene he is in. As Ayres discovers, Gillespie may seem like a mean old grump, but he has his own agenda, which includes Kildare in every detail. Barrymore in this series is a treasure. Kildare's parents (Samuel S. Hinds and Emma Dunn) are his own Ma and Pa Hardy, typical of Louis B. Mayer's homage to the American parents, and will make appearances in several of the films. The big medical crisis in this film involves a young suicidal socialite whom Ayres must find a reason to bring to her to continue to have the will to live. How he does it is quite interesting and is a nice set up for what the rest of the series (even the later ones without Dr. Kildare) would have to live up to.