While Lew Ayres was not a doctor like Kildare, he studied Red Cross first aid competently enough to later teach lifesaving classes on the MGM backlot. That medical know-how, combined with a religious conviction that "war was the greatest sin", was the reasoning behind requesting conscientious objector status for active WWII duty in favor of an appointment to the Medical Corps. But that choice unfairly marked him as a deserter and coward in the public's eyes and stalled Ayres's career for many years. In this, his last Kildare film, the doctor must resist the charms of a classy dame (Ann Ayars) who decides he's the man for her. One of the few Kildare movies directed not by British expat Harold Bucquet but instead by W.S. Van Dyke, known as "One-Take Woody" because of his economical speed in completing features. The zip and crackle his unlingering technique added to previous triumphs like The Thin Man (1934) can be seen here as well - along with similarly alcoholic gags, like the scene where the doctor administers a tranquilizer to an angry drunk by goading him into repeated toasts from a spiked liquor bottle.

By Violet LeVoit