The Country Doctor

The first part of the movie is the most interesting ,the plot sometimes recalling that of AJ Cronin's "the citadel" (which King Vidor transferred to the screen in 1938 with Robert Donat):the main difference is that King's film takes place in Northern Canada and the other one in a mining town in GB .

"The country doctor" is everything the title indicates: the life of a country doctor,devoted to his work,who often gets paid in chickens or in eggs ,who sometimes must cope with his patients' ungratefulness,who tries to urge the city chic people to do something about the plight of the country where "women deliver their children on the kitchen table".

Quints generally did not survive at the time.That the doctor succeeded in saving all of them was a miracle in itself .All the ending of the movie is given over to the first year of these quints ,relagating the nephew's love affair and the city folks' selfishness to a position of secondary importance.

Jean Hersholt tackles the role of a country doctor, a role that would eventually metamorphose into Dr. Christian, a series that would occupy him for the rest of his life in a B movie series, on radio, and even in one episode of a television series, cut short by his untimely death.

Here, directed by Henry King -- a brilliant jack-of-all-trades, but whose métier was the rural comedy-drama, starting with TOL'ABLE David -- and supported by a great cast including John Qualen, Montague Love, Jane Darwell and Slim Summerville, Hersholt is not precisely the star -- there are the usual youngsters involved with falling in love -- because this was intended as a publicity-driven programmer and the Dionne Quintuplets are actually top-billed. But everyone runs things through expertly and Jean Herholt was born to play this role.