Lionel Barrymore got to play a nice guy for a change in this sentimental drama. In an unusually subdued performance, Barrymore plays a widowed family doctor starting a new life with his young son in a small town. The locals are leery of the outsider and the few cases that come his way are paid for with potatoes and eggs. When one of his patients dies in childbirth, the angry husband wants nothing to do with his infant daughter, so the kind doctor takes her in. Soon feisty May Robson comes aboard as a volunteer housekeeper. The story fast-forwards twenty years to find the son (Joel McCrea) a hotshot Type-A doctor with little time for his beautiful and long-suffering fiancée Frances Dee. At the end of course, everyone realizes how fortunate they really are. It was nice to see the luminescent Miss Dee on the big screen only two days before she died at age 94. Screened at Cinefest in Syracuse New York, March 2004.
Review of One Man's Journey
