Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942)

Dr. Gillespie is called in to investigate when a young man suffering from mental problems disappears on a killing spree.

Director:

Harold S. Bucquet

Writers:

Max Brand (characters), Kubec Glasmon (story)

Stars:

Lionel Barrymore, Donna Reed, Philip Dorn

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Lionel Barrymore	...	Dr. Leonard Gillespie
Philip Dorn	...	Dr. John Hunter Gerniede
Donna Reed	...	Marcia Bradburn
Phil Brown	...	Roy Todwell
Nat Pendleton	...	Joe Wayman
Alma Kruger	...	Molly Byrd
Mary Nash	...	Emma Hope
Walter Kingsford	...	Dr. Walter Carew
Nell Craig	...	Nurse 'Nosey' Parker
Ruth Tobey	...	Susan May 'Susie' Prentiss
Jonathan Hale	...	Frank Marshall Todwell
Charles Dingle	...	Dr. Ward O. Kenwood
Marie Blake	...	Sally, Receptionist
Nana Bryant	...	Mrs. Marshall Todwell
Eddie Acuff	...	Clifford Genet

Storyline

Dr. Gillespie is contacted by his old friend Emma Hope, headmistress of a prestigious girls school. She's concerned about Roy Todwell, the young man one of her girls, Marcia Bradburn, has been seeing. Todwell has shown serious bouts of violence over the most minor event and working with a colleague, Dr. Gerniede, Gillespie concludes that the young man is suffering from serious mental illness. He has little success in convincing Todwell's parents of the seriousness of it all - they prefer to take the opinion of their own physician who thinks psychiatry is just a lot of mumbo jumbo - and the young man's condition deteriorates. Todwell soon sets out for New York with only one goal in mind - to kill Dr. Gillespie.

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Plot Keywords:

mental illness | crime wave | nurse | whistle | toy | 

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Taglines:

A NEW Chapter in America's Best-Loved Series!

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

Passed

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

August 1942 (USA)

Also Known As:

Dr. Kildare's Triple X

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

84 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Two cast members in studio records/casting call lists did not appear or were not identifiable in the movie. These were (with their character names): Buddy Messinger (Messenger boy) and George Reed (Conover). In addition, Mitchell Lewis and Robert Emmett Keane were mentioned in news items as cast members, but they also did not appear in the movie.

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Quotes

Dr. Leonard Gillespie: To be successful in love you've got to be a doggone good liar. I mean it, both before and after marriage.

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Connections

Followed by 3 Men in White (1944)

User Reviews

Gillespie Turns Psychiatrist

Calling Dr. Gillespie, the first film made with Lionel Barrymore now in the lead of the medical series that had previously featured Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare takes a really sharp turn into a film noir melodrama as Barrymore becomes the target of a homicidal maniac.

The case comes to Barrymore's attention after a young man who Donna Reed was about to marry flips out and kills her dog. He brings in as a consultant a refugee doctor from Europe Phillip Dorn who is a surgeon, but wants to change his specialty to psychiatry. I guess there were no psychiatrists available.

But between them Dorn and Barrymore come to the conclusion that young Philip Brown is insane and belongs in a hospital. A conclusion that the family physician, stuffy Charles Dingle doesn't agree with.

This film is also unusual because there is a whole interlude where Brown takes center stage and the Blair General regulars completely disappear from the film for a while. Brown flees to Detroit where he proves Barrymore right and Dingle wrong when he commits a couple of murders for reasons that only would make sense to an insane man.

The dynamic of the series shifted with this film and not only because Lew Ayres departed. Ayres was the young protégé to Barrymore and it was a medical father/son dynamic then. Here Lionel Barrymore has a very professional assistant in Dorn and he's not quite the curmudgeon towards him as he was with Ayres.

The rest of the Blair General regulars were there, Walter Kingsford as the head of the hospital, Alma Kruger as head of the nurses, and Nat Pendleton as the loyal if slightly dim ambulance driver. He in the end actually proves most useful. I always liked Nell Craig as the eternally put upon Nurse Parker who Barrymore berates throughout the series. The relationship is obviously based on Monty Woolley and Mary Wickes from The Man Who Came To Dinner.

Phil Brown should come in for praise as well as the charming and psychotic young suitor. A character very much borrowed from Emlyn Williams's Night Must Fall and played on screen by MGM's own Robert Montgomery.

Calling Dr. Gillespie proved the Dr. Kildare series still had life even without Kildare.