The character of wise, kind, and courageous Dr. Kildare was created by "Max Brand", one of many pseudonyms of novelist and screenwriter Frederick Schiller Faust. Wildly prolific (he wrote 30 million (!) published words during his career), Faust wrote the scripts for Kildare movies first and then turned them into novels. This, the third Dr. Kildare movie, follows our heroic MD as he and his wheelchair-bound mentor Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) honor a worried father's request to track down and examine his agitated daughter Nancy (Helen Gilbert) and keep her out of the clutches of a worthless "nature healer" (Grant Mitchell). (Barrymore's wheelchair wasn't a character affectation -- the veteran actor was suffering from arthritis and hip pain.) While fans of the series will enjoy the budding romance between Kildare and his longtime squeeze Nurse Lamont (Laraine Day), any movie buff will enjoy the sparring interplay between real-life friends Ayres and Barrymore. While the pacifist Ayres and the conservative Barrymore could not be more politically opposed, the veteran actor maintained that playing against Ayres was as honest as going up against Spencer Tracy in a scene.

By Violet LeVoit