The Healer

In the grand tradition of "aw shucks, small towns are better than the big, bad city" films, The Healer stars Ralph Bellamy as a do-gooder doctor who gets seduced by promises of bigger and better. He's a small country doctor who works at a clinic with hot springs that helps crippled children learn to walk again. His devoted aide, Karen Morley, is in love with him, but he can't tell. Instead, when he comes to the wealthy Judith Allen's rescue, his head gets turned by her finesse. She fills his head with ideas of a larger practice and more people he could help, but really, she just wants him to become a rich, city doctor she can be proud to wear on her arm. Meanwhile, the kids and Karen feel neglected and miss their old doctor and friend.

Mickey Rooney is the most prominently featured child at the clinic, and while it is Ralph Bellamy's movie, Mickey steals the movie when he's forced to use his legs in an emergency. I won't tell you what the emergency is, but he gives a great performance, especially since he was only a teenager at the time. This is a pretty forgotten movie, and if you're looking for a medical drama about helping kids with polio, this isn't it. You'll want to see Sister Kenny for that. But if you're just looking for young Mickey Rooney without his usual frenetic girl-crazy antics, you might want to look for this one.

Ralph Bellamy is a country doctor who runs a clinic in the woods, centering around a warm spring called 'The Pool' where he helps crippled children, particularly Mickey Rooney, with hydrotherapy. When a society woman staying at a nearby lodge is injured, he takes care of her and she falls in love with him. When her father, grouchy Robert McWade, talks about his dyspepsia, he recommends simple food, hard work and throwing away his cigars. It works and they decide to set up a sanitorium. However, the rich, hard-drinking loafers make Bellamy feel useless.

It's the next to last movie directed by veteran Reginald Barker, who started out by directing William S. Hart vehicles in the mid-teens. Therefore it should be no surprise that it has all the elements of a social satire, combined with a melodramatic forest fire at the end; there's some nice stock footage in that sequence. Although the net effect is what you'd expect of a B picture from Monogram in this period, the actors (who include Judith Allen, Karen Morley and J. Farrel McDonald in a nice turn) keep this one watchable to the end.

Ralph Bellamy, the HEALER, runs a health camp for handicapped children (much like Warm Springs). Will he have "hopeless cripple" Mickey Rooney riding a bicycle, or will he be distracted by the two women fighting for his love?

Although this is reasonably slick and well produced for poverty row stalwart Monogram Pictures, this is a fairly bland piece of work, featuring wooden acting by the supporting cast, and a relatively tension-free plot which can be predicted with reasonable accuracy from moment one. (The only surprise is that some of the conflicts you would expect don't arise, because Ralph is so darn nice, and everyone in the movie is really awfully good-hearted.)

All in all -- not bad. If you like the golden age of Disney live action pictures, you might like this.

I think the only way to see this film is to watch the DVD from Alpha Video. Unfortunately, the print is rather blurry and there is a slight hiss to it as well.

The setting is something very unfamiliar to folks today--a sanitarium for Polio victims. Thank God that doctors found vaccines to battle this horrible disease, as today it's been pretty much eliminated in the developed world. It's hard to imagine thousands and thousands of paralyzed people--unable to walk and in severe cases, unable to breath without an iron lung.

Dr. Holden (Ralph Bellamy) is the nice guy who runs the sanitarium. He is very selfless and a decent all-around guy. One day, a spoiled rich lady (Ms. Bradshaw) is badly hurt and the operation Dr. Holden performs saves her life. Soon, she falls for him and vows to build him a huge and beautiful new clinic for her society friends. However, soon Holden becomes frustrated with a bunch of rich hypochondriacs and the like and decides to return to his sanitarium in the mountains. But this is jeopardized when a wildfire breaks out. Can the doctor manage to save the day. And what about the cute crippled kid, Jimmy? What will he do when he's trapped with one of the nurses and the fire is sure to engulf them! For all these questions and many more, try watching this old fashioned melodrama.

While this films is a bit formulaic and has a few clichés, it does manage to be entertaining. Don't expect a great film but a decent B-movie that manages to pack a lot into just a bit more than one hour. And by the way, when Mickey Rooney made this film, he was 14 years-old and had already made more than 90 film appearances!! That's just nuts!