THE SECRET OF DR. KILDARE (1939)

Surely all the DR. KILDARE movies can’t be quite as bad as this. Third in the M-G-M series of programmers with Lew Ayres as the interning doctor and Lionel Barrymore as his boss/mentor Dr. Gillespie, it’s awful in almost every way. The first Kildare, a one-off @ Paramount with Joel McCrea & Barbara Stanwyck (INTERNES CAN’T MAKE MONEY/’37) was a modest affair, but this shabby thing is phoned in from both sides of the camera. Or is except for the appallingly hammy Mr. Barrymore who you wish were phoning it in. (And such a striking performer when reined in.) The story is driven by many a secret: Gillespie’s cancer diagnosis; a heart condition for Lew Ayres’ visiting father; a neurasthenic heiress with hysterical blindness . . . and more! Plus, a middle-aged black orderly so the wheelchair bound Barrymore has someone to shoot craps with. Of course, most of the period elements, even the politically incorrect ones, will work with a bit of style & swing in the moviemaking. No such luck with Harold S. Bucquet’s flatfooted megging.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *Bucquet stuck mostly to programmers, but eventually got to helm two Katherine Hepburn duds: DRAGON SEED/’44, a ‘Yellowface’ embarrassment, and WITHOUT LOVE/’45, even with Spencer Tracy, the least of her Philip Barry vehicles. Yet somehow, over in England during the war, with much help from John Bryan’s art direction, Bucquet made the perfectly marvelous ADVENTURES OF TARTU/’43, with Robert Donat as a sort of proto-James Bond.