Internes Can't Take Money (1937)

Director:

Alfred Santell

Writers:

Max Brand (story) and
Rian James (writer)

Release Date:

16 April 1937 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Tagline:

He risked his life to save a rat... And what did he get for it?

Plot:

In his first film, young Dr. Kildare helps a female ex-con find her child.

Plot Keywords:

Hospital | Beautiful Woman | First Of Series | Doctor

Cast

Barbara Stanwyck	...	Janet Haley
Joel McCrea	...	James Kildare
Lloyd Nolan	...	Hanlon
Stanley Ridges	...	Dan Innes
Lee Bowman	...	Jim Weeks
Barry Macollum	...	Stooly Martin
Irving Bacon	...	Jeff McGuire
Steve Pendleton	...	Dr. Jones (as Gaylord Pendleton)
Pierre Watkin	...	Dr. Henry J. Fearson
Charles Lane	...	Grote
James Bush	...	Haines
Nick Lukats	...	Interne
Anthony Nace	...	Dr. Riley
Fay Holden	...	Mother Teresa
Frank Bruno	...	Eddie

Also Known As:

You Can't Take Money (UK)

Runtime:

78 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Quotes:

Bookie: Maybe it's the cops.
"Chief" Hanlon: Cops don't knock, they break in.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Not as a Stranger (1955)

B plot + A production = Dr. Kildare with atmosphere

An exceptionally flavorful rendering of the Depression atmosphere: a world of the poor laboring in sweatshop jobs, petty hoods hanging out in smoky bars, backroom bookie joints, pushcart vendors and bus terminals and orphanages. While the plot is no more ambitious than the typical B movie of the time, the high production values, name cast, and imaginative direction from Alfred Santell all boost the quality.

At the center of the plot, Barbara Stanwyck spends much of the film in desperation mode, exhausted from searching for her lost child, beaten down by two years in jail, forced to hire stool pigeons, forced to stay alert.

Joel McCrea makes the ideal American hero for the 30's: not only a doctor, but tall, blond, honest, sincere, manly, and progressive. At one point, he has to perform an operation on a bar room table, improvising with violin strings, an ice pick, and a bottle of rum! But this is not MGM's Dr. Kildare. He has no warm relationship with a kindly old mentor; instead, the chief doctor is an authority figure upholding the rules, dismissing Lee Bowman for unauthorized experimentation. The script also pumps up sympathy for interns as underpaid workers who get only $10 a month.

As a gangster, the always fascinating Stanley Ridges conveys the calm of a man secure in his power, whose eye movements size up his adversaries and whose silences reveal more menace than mere words. Watch the sexual innuendo he finds in his "I didn't always like popcorn" speech.

Santell uses extreme close-ups and moves the camera often, aided by gleaming lighting from Theodore Sparkuhl, plus some knock-out sets, including a sparkling white Art Deco clinic and an elaborately detailed New York Irish bar. Watch how economically Santell works to show the awakening of mutual attraction between Stanwyck and McCrea in their first scene together. Also lifting the picture out of its formula origins is the headlong pace Santell maintains to the climax, an urgency lost in the blander MGM series.