O Nome é Tudo

Once upon a time, old films on the Late, Late Show were the object of derision, antiquities from another era, now merely of interest as something to chuckle at in the wee small hours of the morning. Happily, those days are gone forever, and vintage films now get the respect they so rightly deserve, no matter what their age, and no one more than I supports this more intelligent, enlightened attitude. But there are still quite a few turkeys lurking in the vaults which deserve the raspberry, but still manage to provide an hour's perverse diversion simply because they are so bad. One such is Bedside. In March 1934, Variety noted that "after being exploited for a solid hour as a gambler, drunkard, cheat and fraud, Warren William is unable in the last three minutes to rehabilitate himself in the grace of the spectator...the chief emotion aroused is regret that he gets the girl instead of taking the jail sentence he very richly deserves...the story is beyond saving, nor is it worth salvage...no picture is better than its plot, and this scenario is hopeless." A classic this is not, but therein lies the secret of its charm. Today's viewers can sit back and watch an abundance of such pre-code plot devices as pre-marital sex and drug addiction, with critical brain operations and bringing the dead back to life merely thrown in as side issues, set against a background of slick 1930's sets, one mind-boggling situation following another, the sum total of which would keep one of today's soaps going for at least six months if not a year. You won't believe a word of it, your jaw will frequently drop at the sheer, shocking absurdity of it all, to say nothing of the fact that the players manage to say their lines with total sincerity, without ever once cracking up. So relax and enjoy it. That's what movies like this are for. Watch for it on Turner Classic Movies; it's in their library.

Warren William was often cast in detective series. But he is at his best in dark roles such as this one.

This movie could scarcely be improved on. It is director Robert Florey at his eerie best. William is ideally cast. Jean Muir, whose career was ruined by the Blacklist, is both touching and appropriately strong-willed.

William plays an ambitious young man a year short of his medical degree. A down-and-out doctor comes into the office where he's working. The guy is desperate for some morphine. William strikes a Faustian bargain with him.

"Bedside" is consistently chilling. William is not a bad person. He certainly is not an admirable one, though.

Kathryn Sergava is suitably exotic as the opera diva who ill-advisedly seeks his ministrations. And Donald Meek gives one of his more interesting performances as the physician William hires to work with him.

It's not a horror movie. It's an early version of what came to be called film noir. It also presages the often excellent MGM series of short, cautionary films called"Crime Does Not Pay."

Bob Brown (Warren William) dropped out of medical school a year before graduating. His nursing girlfriend Caroline Grant (Jean Muir) insists that he finishes his degree and even pays for it. Instead, he loses all her money. He lies to her while working as a hospital orderly. He comes back to her pretending to have graduated.

This is not the expected opening premise. It is interesting to paint him in the good while he is pulling off this scam. It seems outrageous until I realized that this is the olden times. One could get away with this or at least, believe that he could get away with it. Nevertheless, it is tough to root for him and his lies.

Back in the 30s whenever you needed a scoundrel portrayed Warren William got first call. Bedside is a perfect Warren William part.

In Bedside Warren William gave up the study of medicine some time for a life of conning and carousing. But in due course he hits on a brilliant idea after encountering a disgraced former doctor in David Landau. Landau sells him his degree and William moves to New York.

What William has is charm in abundance and maybe if he had decided to just have a neighborhood practice somewhere he might have gotten away with it. But with a press agent in Allen Jenkins to promote him, former girlfriend Jean Muir to be his nurse and an associate in Donald Meek who is a superb diagnostician and researcher content to stay in the background William becomes a known society doctor, but it's all one big front.

Bedside is an almost perfect Warren William vehicle, no one else on the screen at the time could have played the con artist doctor with quite the aplomb William brings to this part. I would also recommend David Landau's performance here as well. Dope addiction was a forbidden topic and this film was on the cusp of the code. But Landau's is a tragic and pitiable figure as a morphine addicted physician whose career went to ruin because of it.

Bedside is a real sleeper of a film, an undiscovered gem from Warner Brothers in the 30s. A must for fans of Warren William.

Warren William is an X-ray technician with an affair going on with nurse Jean Muir. He has three years of medical school, so she lends him enough money for the fourth. He promptly loses it in a poker game, but a couple of year later returns with a medical degree. He's bought it for chum change from a legitimate graduate of a medical school who's now a hophead. With real doctor Donald Meek to do the actual work, and publicity man Allen Jenkins to puff it all as William's brilliance, he's soon in demand as a medical genius.

William gives a fine performance as the faker, offering an air of calm assurance, a rapid intelligence to seize any opportunity, and a nervous fear underlying it all to show the character.

Contrast this to the rather stuffy behavior of the established doctors; in the end, they are too fearful of the good name of the profession -- or the perceived scandal of not having exposed the phony earlier or the need for the movie to have a happy ending of some variety -- to police their own profession. Perhaps they need to do some actual publicity of their own to compete with the quacks!