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.

Lew Ayres is "Young Dr. Kildare" in this 1938 film that began the popular "Dr. Kildare" series. Later, "Dr. Kildare" would become a TV series and launch Richard Chamberlain.Here we meet Dr. K and his parents (Samuel S. Hinds and Emma Dunn). Kildare's father is a country doctor, and James decides against partnering with him. He wants to intern at Blair General Hospital. As the film unfolds, he wonders if this was the wisest choice.Kildare spends most of the movie in trouble up to his eyeballs, first with the attempted suicide of a society woman that he interferes in, and secondly with Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore), who's a real bear. Gillespie becomes a lot mellower as the years go on, but in this initial episode, watch out! Kildare spends most of the film on the verge of being suspended, and he just got there.Though sometimes the series did approach correct medical treatment and terms, "Young Dr. Kildare" misses that boat with its suicide case. I guess no one had ever heard of anyone being emotionally disturbed - this poor young woman was almost institutionalized because the head psychiatrist in the hospital thinks she's a schizophrenic. Kildare challenges his notion and runs all over town trying to find out why she attempted suicide. The reason is pure 1930s Hollywood.One reason these films are fun is that MGM used them as a training ground for some of its young stars - Van Johnson, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Margaret O'Brien, to name a few. In this film, Monty Wooley - not young, but still in the small part phase of his career - makes an appearance.The "Dr. Kildare" series continued into the late 1940s, in 1942 becoming the "Dr. Gillespie" series with the same cast minus Lew Ayres, persona non grata at MGM for being a conscientious objector during World War II. Ayres did serve as a medic and chaplain on the front lines, but his principles garnered a lot of publicity and were not popular with the public, so the studio got rid of him. After World War II, he received an Oscar nomination for his role in "Johnny Belinda" and he worked until 1994, two years before his death. In 1950-51, he was Dr. Kildare on the radio. He nearly became a television Dr. K, but the network refused to honor his request for no cigarette sponsorship. When you have the courage to stand by your beliefs, as Ayres did, you soon find yourself out of a job.

(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!