The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940) User Reviews

Way overly-dramatic...but still quite enjoyable.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 19 February 2010]

This is one of six Dr. Christian films made by RKO starring the fine character actor, Jean Hersholt. In all of the films, Christian is a bit of a crusader, though this one seems to be the most overtly preachy. In many ways, the film is overly dramatic and hard to believe, but the acting and good intentions of the film make it well worth seeing.

The film has to do with "Squatter's Town"--the poor section of town where the sanitation stinks and life is relatively cheap. The rest of the town is rather indifferent to their plight, as they are seen as deserving of their lifestyle. However, instead of just accepting this, Christian decides to try to save some of the folks--including Tom Neal and two kids he's caring for in a condemned shack. He arranges for a nice home for the two little kids and takes Neal into his own home. But he doesn't stop there--as he then crusades for a new housing project to take the place of the squalor. The town, however, isn't particularly concerned and are rather antagonistic to the idea. When an epidemic strikes the poor folks, the townspeople change their minds--and become part of the solution.

The film is very socialist in its stance, though it doesn't just advocate government intervention but a populist approach where people help each other through the goodness of their hearts. It seems a bit over-idealistic, but has a sweet sentiment. Plus, the film manages with all its earnestness to somehow pull it off just fine. A very good B-movie.

By the way, in the film Tom Neal is an incredibly pugnacious and obnoxious person. In real life, he was FAR worse--and his IMDb biography is positively scary. How this Harvard grad destroyed his own career with off-screen violence is a sad story and a case of art imitating life, as he often portrayed thick-headed jerks with a penchant for violence.

By the way, in the drug store scene get a load of the 1940s style pinball machine. If you look carefully, you'll notice something is missing--flippers. They were introduced years later and made the machines a heck of a lot more interesting.

A Movie For Today

[boblipton · 6/10 · 4 November 2021]

Jean Hersholt is concerned about the squatters living in a shanty town just outside the city limits. He persuades the town council to build some decent housing, if he can get the land from Vera Lewis, who wears no make up in this movie. After he gets the land, and Miss Lewis as his fiancee -- not his idea! -- the council changes their minds. The shanty town moves to the empty lot, and just as the authorities send in the police to drive them out, meningitis breaks out and Hersholt orders everyone into quarantine.

I couldn't look at this eighty-year-old movie without thinking about how the more things change, they don't change at all, thanks to a script co-written by Ring Lardner Jr. The movie starts out silly and clunky, and only my insistence on seeing it through made me stick around to the point where it turned very interesting.

The most touching of the Dr. Christian series reminds us of what we should be like.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 10 August 2018]

Practically every city and town has had one at least once during their existence; A Squatter's town, filled with dirty families, starving children and health conditions that are beyond deadly. If there wasn't a squatter's town, there was at least one home where dirt poor families lived practically without light or furniture or any of the basic needs of life. When the courageous Jean Hersholt discovers two children possibly sick and living in squalor with their out of work brother (Tom Neal), he decides he needs to get involved, and goes out of his way to find Neal a job. With the help of housekeeper Maude Eburne, the two children are placed in the large home of prickly spinster Vera Lewis, Eburne's old rival, who has always had a crush on the single Dr. Christian and has hopes of marrying him some day. But the troubles of the squatter village makes the town's wealthier folks uncomfortable as Hersholt strives to get funds to build a home for them on long vacant property owned by Lewis which results in him feeling forced to become engaged to her just so he can end this health crisis. It is through pleading with the townspeople's sometimes cold and selfish hearts that he hopes to open them to seeing the problems of the world through the eyes of others not as fortunate as them, so this health crisis (which results in a strain of spinal meningitis cases) can be brought to an end.

Yes, this is perhaps one of the most sentimental of the series, and thus very dramatic in places. But there are also some very funny scenes, one downright knee slapping as the two prankster kids unleash a stuffed bird, flying it like a boomerang in Lewis's living room, then replacing the bird with Lewis's fat cat which hysterically ends up in the bird's bowl. Animal activists might not be happy with that scene, but it is indeed quite funny. As prickly as she seems on the outside, Lewis is actually quite warmhearted, giving the veteran actress a great role to play out of the dozens of minor roles she had played for years, most memorably the nosy neighbor of Claude Rains and his four daughters. It's also the best entry in the series for veteran actress Maude Eburne, a character actress who always stole any scene she was in with her pickled voice and home spun demeanor. There's quite a lesson to be learned here, one humanity seems to have forgotten about, but still quite timely in the wake of camps like the squatters village popping up all over, particularly on the United States border where children were separated from their parents. When an old movie which is dated in many ways becomes current simply through one major aspect of its plot, it becomes irrelevant and dated no longer, and one of the best examples of that is "The Courageous Dr. Christian".

A big sacrifice

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 22 April 2015]

The second film of the Dr. Christian series has Jean Hersholt working on slum clearance in his small Minnesota town. It's hard to fathom in this day and age, but right up to World War II there were these ramshackle villages in just about every community made up of the migrant, the poor, and the dispossessed. In such a community Dr. Christian finds Tom Neal caring for his younger siblings. These ramshackle Hoovervilles so dubbed for the former president were breeding grounds for disease and pestilence.

Disease does come in the form of spinal meningitis and the last third of the film is The Courageous Dr. Christian both fighting the disease and the stubbornness of the town council which fails to see its social responsibility.

Hersholt wants a housing project and he's got the spot for it, some vacant land owned by rich widow Vera Lewis. But Vera while taking in Neal's siblings also has ideas about matrimony with the good doctor. That's maybe too big a sacrifice for Jean Hersholt to make.

There's also a bit of romantic rivalry between Neal and the Dr. Christian regulars, nurse Dorothy Lovett and druggist Robert Baldwin.

All in all a good entry in the Dr. Christian series.

Okay, but I wish I had seen the earlier films in the series

[dbborroughs · 6/10 · 6 December 2009]

This was the first of the Dr Christian series that I ever saw and its an okay film. The good doctor tries to stop a epidemic in a poor part of town and gets mixed up with the lives of some of his patients. On its own terms its not bad, but nothing special. Part of the problem is that the film really requires that you've seen the other films in the series. Its clear that there is a great deal of back story and things happen that assume you know what went before (one characters worst enemy for example). I didn't know and there were a couple of times I was a bit at sea. I liked the film but I understand why these films aren't in any sort of rotation on television, simply they don't play as well as other film series. Worth a look if you want to try one or have seen others in the series, but nothing you'll miss if you don't.