Dr. Broadway

I saw this when the late William K. Everson did a whole weekend of Paramount B movies, and it was easily the winner out of the whole batch, slick and atmospheric. The first feature of radio director (and Chaplin assistant director) Anthony Mann, it was a highly promising debut that inexplicably led neither to a Dr. Broadway series nor an immediate studio contract for Mann(not that the string of low-budget Bs Mann did follow it with, including Railroaded, T-Men and He Walked By Night, would necessarily have been better made at bigger studios).

Future soap opera star Macdonald Carey stars as Dr. Broadway, so-called because he serves as all-purpose medico, advisor and crime-solver to the Runyonesque denizens of Broadway. Carey is a little bland in the lead, which may be why a series didn't follow, but J. Carrol Naish is terrific as a sinister criminal who operates a tailor shop as a front-- the scene where he "takes the measure" of Dr. Broadway could have inspired the more obviously sexual double entendre banter in The Big Sleep about what kind of horse Lauren Bacall likes to ride.

Macdonald Carey is Dr. Broadway, an habitue of the th Great White Way. He knows everyone and everyone knows him. After he saves Jean Phillips and gives her a hob as his receptionist, he's got to deliver money to an heiress. But Big Bad Clothier J. Carroll Naish threatens to give Miss Phillips a lead-lined suit and frame Carey into prison stripes unless he coughs up the money.

Mann is renowned as a great stylist, but the first episode of a B series by a first-time director with a new actor in the lead is not the place to look for individual touches. Despite having been an AD for a few years, Mann was not the polished director of top actors that he would be in the Jimmy Stewart westerns, nor the overblown epics of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He seems to be a director more interested in making his bones by getting enough pages of the script on film each shooting day: which is appropriate. Neither do I believe in the modified Runyonesque characters who inhabit his world. they lack individuality.

As for Macdonald Carey, he was the sort of competent actor that the movies brought up and spit out after a few years. Then it was back to making a living in the theater, or in Carey's case, a thirty-year run on DAYS OF OUR LIVES. That's not a sneer. Anyone who can hold a job for that long deserves respect.

This rapid-fire, Runyonesque crime story marks the auspicious directorial debut of Anthony Mann, later to enter movie history for several noirs (especially those made in collaboration with cinematographer John Alton), some superior westerns, and his uncredited work on Spartacus (where he was replaced, according to many to the movie's detriment, by Stanley Kubrick). Even this early, and working from a light-crime formula, Mann shows his innovative style. He cuts the sentiment and slapstick down to the barest minimum, keeps every scene to a point, and favors ellipsis over literalism (photographed by Theodor Sparkuhl, the movie has a rich look, too).

On the ledge of a hotel overhanging Times Square, a `nut sundae' (Jean Phillips, nearing the end of her brief candle of a career) keeps ranting to the crowds and rescue workers gathered below. When physician to the stars and drifters of the Rialto, Dr. Broadway (Macdonald Carey), saves her, it turns out to be a paid publicity stunt on the part of the starving girl, who ends up being Carey's secretary and gal Friday.

The bad news for Carey is that a mobster (Eduardo Ciannelli) he helped put away (by saving his life then informing the police) is looking for him. And finds him, but instead of exacting the expected revenge, asks him to locate his daughter and give her $100-grand. But when Ciannelli is found murdered in Carey's office, suspicion falls on the Doc. And somebody else is after the money....

Mann casts the movie with a big roster of character actors playing police, gangsters and Carey's mob of `colorful' mugs (particularly memorable are Ciannelli and, as his rival, fronting as an affable men's clothier, J. Carrol Naish). It's been suggested that Dr. Broadway may have been the opening salvo of a series of programmers. Since it didn't take off, it may have been owing to the competent but uncharismatic Carey, or to Phillip's too-close-for-comfort impersonation of Ginger Rogers. At any rate, it's a blessing that Mann didn't get bogged down in a string of programmers that wouldn't have allowed him to take the startling turns his career would later take. But it would have been a fun string of programmers.

New York City physician, Dr. Timothy Kane, knows Broadway, the Great White Way and all of its characters thoroughly, as does his receptionist, Connie Madigan (she became his receptionist after he saved her from jumping, not that she was going to jump as it was just a publicity campaign for a new song!)

A man Kane had sent to prison is now dying ( and later gets shot) and asks Kane to locate a daughter and give her his fortune. However, others think they have a claim on it, and are out to ensure their claim, usually by foul means ...

Macdonald Carey lends his likeable presence in this snappy mystery thriller, but Jean Philips steals the scene as Connie Madigan and so does J. Carrol Naish as a suit tailoring hoodlums. It's fast-paced with fast dialogue.