The Doctor and the Girl

Glenn Ford is a young doctor from a well-connected family in "The Doctor and the Girl," a 1949 film also starring Janet Leigh, Charles Coburn, Gloria de Haven, Bruce Bennett, and Nancy Davis, our former first lady.

Ford plays Dr. Michael Corday, an up and coming doctor who comes to do a rotation in a hospital and brings a lot of his well-known doctor/father's attitudes with him. The senior Dr. Corday (Coburn) has fixed attitudes about family and medicine and runs his home with an iron fist. The first night that Michael returns home from his medical training, his sister Fabienne (de Haven) announces that she's moving to Greenwich Village. In those days it was absolutely unheard of for an unmarried woman to move out of the parental home, so her father's not happy.

Michael isn't liked at the hospital. He's snobby, brusque, and too clinical, interested in his work but not people. Then he runs into a woman he processed in the outpatient ward, Evelyn (Leigh), who is waiting for lung surgery, and he realizes how cold he was to her. He works to make it up to her, and they wind up falling in love, and over his father's strenuous objections, he marries her and gives up the important residency he was promised. He and Evelyn move to her Third Avenue apartment, and Michael sets up practice. Meanwhile, the only child that hasn't disappointed the senior Corday is Mariette (Davis), who is marrying a doctor (when her dad sets the date) and is living at home. Corday Sr. soon learns the effect of his rigidity.

I really liked this film. It was an absorbing family drama, maybe on the soapy side, but there's nothing wrong with that when the characters are well depicted. Glenn Ford is very sincere and likable in his role and gets to show a little more dramatic range than usual; the pretty Leigh is lovely as Evelyn, frail but with an inner toughness. The rest of the cast is solid. Bruce Bennett plays the ENT doctor Michael has to deal with on his rotation. Bennett was in countless films, an Olympic champion in 1928, and died 5 years ago at the age of 100.

Very good movie, well worth seeing.