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50:169 Doctors in Film
Film Notes
Young Dr. Kildare, 1938
Max Brand was the pseudonym of Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944), a prolific novelist, short-story writer, screen-play author and journalist. Faust wrote under many different pen-names. He first published Young Dr. Kildare in the fiction magazine Argosy in three parts (Dec. 17, 24, 31, 1938).
This film stars Lew Ayres as James Kildare and Lionel Barrymore as the crusty Dr. Gillespie. Barrymore was in a wheelchair at the time filming began, and the director, Harold Bucquet, clearly did not see this as a problem. Dr. Gillespie thus appears to be one of the few movie physicians with a physical disability.
MGM produced a series of Dr. Kildare films. In the late 1950s, "Dr. Kildare" became a popular television series, and continued the idealized image of the honorable, persistant and clever American physician.
Questions for discussion
- Why does James Kildare reject his parents' and his fiance's plans to set up a home-town practice?
- How do interns live? what function do interns serve in the hospital?
- How does Dr. Gillespie teach? how does he practice?
- Narrative-ethicists Carole Warshaw and Suzanne Poirier* have discussed how the typical cases used to illustrate bioethics and bioethical reasoning lack the deeper dimensions of human experience, especially women's experiences that they are reluctant to disclose to medical professionals. How does Dr. Kildare manage to uncover the really important issues that pertain to the young woman's case? How do his methods concern ethical issues in medical practice?
- What are the features of the modern (1938) hospital depicted in the film? What are the common technologies and routines of this preeminent institution?
- What qualities does Dr. Kildare display that make him a culturally powerful physician-hero?
Film Synopsis -- haven't found a good one on-line yet! Volunteer to write one....? |
*As discussed in Tod Chambers, The Fiction of Bioethics
[Cases as Literary Texts] (Routledge, 1999), 173.
| Frankenstein | M*A*S*H |
| Arrowsmith | The Hospital |
| Young Dr. Kildare | |
| No Way Out | Gross Anatomy |
| Magnificent Obsession | The Doctor |
| The Interns | The Patriot |