Doctor Bull

I've seen this before, but having watched it after becoming more familiar with the Rogers oeuvre, I became aware of just what a radical departure it was from the Rogers formula in previous and subsequent films. He usually plays one of two characterizations: the wise and beloved father-figure putting up with his flighty family, or the wise and beloved fool-osopher putting up with silly townsfolk.

But as Dr. Bull, Rogers shows a real dark side, not the least of which comes out when he inadvertently causes a typhoid epidemic by failing to inspect the water runoff from a construction camp upstream from the town. Rogers is the town's health officer and when the townspeople justifiably accuse him of dereliction of duty, his response is, "Who has time to run around inspecting water!". When attacked by the townsfolk for his role in this catastrophe, Bull lashes back at them with real venom, telling them they are unworthy of the medical services he's provided over a lifetime. So much for never meeting a man he didn't like.

Bull quells the epidemic (cheerfully testing a veterinary vaccine meant for cows on an adult, then administering it to children), but finally decides to make good on his threat and leaves town for good.

It's a great pre-code film which manages to work in references from the recently lifted Prohibition to pre-marital sex (Andy Devine forced into a shotgun marriage). IMO this is Rogers' best performance by far and shows that he really could act when paired with a great director.

Doctor Bull (1933)

** (out of 4)

John Ford film about a kind country doctor (Will Rogers) who gets the town talking when he starts a relationship with a widow (Vera Allen). Soon enough the doctor is fighting rumors and suspicion more than illness. I was really shocked to see how old fashioned this film was in two ways. On the positive side is that director Ford makes an authentic looking picture as we believe the settings very well. However, on the down side, this film looks as if it were made in 1915. Early sound movies always featured problems but this one was made in 1933 so the technology was high enough to where there's no excuse for the technical quality of the film. The camera-work is shaky at best and even the soundtrack is pretty poor. The entire look of the film really makes it annoying to watch and the screenplay doesn't do too much with the characters. Rogers is good in his role but I was really left bored with the supporting cast. Andy Devine steals the show as a man who always has something bothering him.

Recalling the middle section of Ford's earlier Arrowsmith, Doctor Bull is the story of a small town doctor and his life amidst the sicknesses, hypochondriacs, and general hustle and bustle of the small community. It's a light affair that mostly relies on the central performance by Will Rogers for its entertainment value with a late stage sense of plot that doesn't engage as much as it probably should.

The titular Doctor (Rogers) never seems to get a moment to himself. Subject to gossip by the local busybody Mrs. Banning (Louise Dresser) because of his frequent evening visits to the widow Janet Cardmaker (Vera Allen), Doctor Bull spends his days treating anyone who comes to him. He treats the local soda jerk Larry (Andy Devine) who is constantly complaining about pains in his sides. When Doc tells him that pain on the side he's complaining means that it's impossible that Larry has a burst appendix, Larry insists that he must have two.

There are successes in his treatments, like a boy coming out of a fever after an all-night observation and tending by Doc, and failures, like a woman dying because no one was able to find Doc (he had collapsed onto Janet's couch and fallen asleep as she read). The efforts of the people to find Doc go through the local switchboard operated by May (Marian Nixon) who is privy to most of the town's gossip and never takes it too hard that Doc never seems to be home. May has a husband at home, Joe (Howard Lally) who is bedridden and lame that Doc comes to visit, leading to late nights scouring through medical textbooks to find some kind of potential cure.

That's really the bulk of the film. Carried by Rogers in his affable, easy going style, he's understanding, funny, and even sardonic with the constant requests that tire him out endlessly day after day and season after season. He treats everyone with a mixture of familiarity, respect, and condescension that Rogers pulls off rather easily. You really get the sense that he's a nice, capable doctor who's struggling to keep his head above water with the amount of patients he has to deal with. It's probably most amusing when he helps the adult daughter of a wealthy family, destined to marry a Senator's son, elope with her poorer college German lover because he got her pregnant (pre-Code!) and feigns ignorance when confronted on it.

Late in the film we get the move's plot when Doc discovers a typhoid outbreak forming in the community. He goes into action, inoculating the children of the town against typhoid. When he comes to the conclusion that the outbreak most likely originated at a camp built near the source of the town's water supply, a camp he was supposed to inspect as a health official to the town but never found the time, the town is enraged and calls a meeting to get him removed from office. Doc takes the meeting badly, accurately calling out the town for monopolizing his time so that he can't do everything he probably should, and he's ready to quit.

Now, John Ford knew how to put together an ending, but the ending to Doctor Bull is a disappointment. Doc takes some information from a farmer about a serum Doc had made to help the farmer's lame cows, adapts it for human use, and gives it to the lame Joe, quickly fixing his lameness. This event is what suddenly gets him back in the town's good graces. It doesn't seem to fit, to be honest. It feels random.

The movie's not bad, but just wanes away. If the first two-thirds were funnier, the loose structure would have been less of a concern, but it's just an easy going bit of amusement until a finale that probably goes too far into melodrama for the film's own good. Will Rogers does his best, being affable and charming through his challenges, but for all his charisma, the film around him is just too waifishly thin.

John Ford's first collaboration with Will Rogers introduces itself with the words, "Doctor Bull brings his neighbors into the world and postpones their departure as long as possible. He prescribes common sense and accepts his small rewords gratefully. His patients call him Doc." This opening makes "Doctor Bull" sound like it's going to be a wholesome and folksy tale - but don't expect the film to be the sweet story of a kindly doctor. The New England set town of "New Winton" turns out to be a 1930s "Peyton Place"…

Strait-laced citizens gossip about neighborly Mr. Rogers (as George "Doc" Bull) spending his evenings with lonely widow Vera Allen (as Janet Cardmaker). Telephone receptionist Marian Nixon (as May) fears husband Howard Lally (as Joe Tupping) may never walk again, after an accident leaves him paralyzed...

Matriarch Louise Dresser and the town's wealthy "Banning" family fret about the sudden marriage of pretty daughter Rochelle Hudson (as Virginia), apparently left pregnant after her boozy weekend with a football player. And, as if that wasn't enough drama, the entire town is threatened with typhoid fever. Since this is not supposed to be a serial, all the stories are tied up by the film's end. And, Mr. Ford makes sure you leave the theater laughing, as squeaky "soda shop" clerk Andy Devine reveals a secret...

****** Doctor Bull (9/22/33) John Ford ~ Will Rogers, Vera Allen, Rochelle Hudson, Louise Dresser

John Ford certainly loved the medical profession. Go through his film list and wherever you see a doctor character it will inevitably it will be a noble if perhaps flawed character. His most famous doctor was Josiah Boone in Stagecoach where Thomas Mitchell won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. But in Doctor Bull, the first of the three films Ford did with Will Rogers, Rogers is in the title role of George Bull, small New England town physician who has taken care of his town for two going on three generations.

Not that some of the town appreciates his toil. He's angered the powerful Banning family headed by Berton Churchill who has not only poisoned the town water, but poisoned the town against Doctor Bull. His gossipy sisters have filled the town with speculation about the doctor's relationship with Vera Allen a widow. Not like they're not adults, but you have to wonder about the lives that people lead when they're main concern is what everyone else is doing.

The film has some parallels to the Bing Crosby/Barry Fitzgerald film Welcome Stranger when for a brief moment it's thought the town has an epidemic. Some of the vested interests in Fitzgerald's New England town want to remove him as well.

Some of the best comic moments are provided by Rogers and Andy Devine who plays a soda jerk in the local pharmacy and is a constant main in the butt to Rogers because of his imagined ills. Devine is the hypochondriac's hypochondriac.

Rogers is always working 24/7 for his people and using a method that was tried successfully with animals affects a cure from a disease that has left Howard Lally bedridden for months. What happens there gives Rogers the last laugh on his ungrateful town.

The observations on the human condition of Will Rogers are timeless. Medicine does not look the same today as it did for Doctor Bull. But the truths are eternal.