Only at MGM would Judge Hardy and Mr. Dithers fight to cure yellow fever with the help of Jed Clampett and make it work dramatically. When Sidney Howard's dramatization of the fight to cure yellow fever became a success d'estime on Broadway, MGM snapped up its leading man, James Stewart, and the film rights. It took them four years to come up with a suitable adaptation, cutting a subplot about England's part in finding the cure and building up the part of a pretty nurse (Virginia Bruce) as a love interest for leading man Robert Montgomery (in Stewart's part). But they still stayed true to the original story about pioneering Dr. Walter Reed (Lewis Stone of the Andy Hardy movies) and his efforts to find the cause of a disease that was decimating U.S. forces in Cuba after the Spanish-American War. The top-notch cast includes Buddy Ebsen, Montgomery and Sam Levene (from the original Broadway cast) as soldiers volunteering to be guinea pigs, Jonathan Hale (of the Blondie series) as the military commander and Charles Coburn, in his film debut, as the Cuban doctor whose solution of the problem years earlier had been ignored.

By Frank Miller