Internes Can't Take Money

"Internes Can't Take Money" is the first Dr. Kildare movie and unlike the long string of Dr. Kildare/Dr. Gillespie movies from MGM, this Paramount film has an entirely different cast, style and, in some cases, characters. It's really odd when you've seen the MGM films...and I think it's best to see the movie without trying to compare it to the later series.

While Joel MacCrea plays Dr. Kildare, in this case he's NOT a doctor right out of medical school but a full-fledged doctor at the hospital. And, there also is no cranky/avuncular Dr. Gillespie as his mentor.

While Kildare is a major character, the story seem to revolve more around Janet (Barbara Stanwyck)...a woman just out of prison whose baby was stolen from her by her rat of a husband. The husband is now dead and she has no idea where to find the girl. So, she spends much of the film looking in vain for the kid...and nice Dr. Kildare eventually helps her with this task...along with some significant help from a mobster (Lloyd Nolan)!

The style of this film is nothing like the later Kildare films and it's less a hospital movie and more a crime film. As such, it's enjoyable and well acted...though the story is, at times, a bit hard to believe. Still, it is worth seeing.

The acting and plot were strong here, and a very enjoyable movie. There is great chemistry with Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck per norm does great, dramatic work here.

The show stealer is Stanley Ridges. His creep who will help Stanwyck find her child -- only if she sleeps with him long-term and becomes his moll -- is chilling. It's one of the best performances I've ever see of a subtle, sinister gangster who alludes to dastardly deeds, without ever directly saying it. He doesn't ask her to sleep with him, he just munches popcorn, and offers her some. When she declines he says "At some point you should like popcorn." He is direct, firm and sleezy in a must-see performance.

The other scene stealer is Lloyd Nolan. A phenomenal what you would typically like a from a gangster, but with more depth. Great pauses, thoughtfulness and facial expressions in his conversations with McCrea. He's your ideal tough gangster but also has a bit of compassion. Just a bit.

MCrea is always a joy to watch - stable, sure performance.

Internes Can't Take Money is a clear title about the dilemma, and points to the moral quandary to come. But a more compelling title can be found, which that alone, would have made this a more sophisticated movie and higher up in the ranks.

The first appearance of young James Kildare, MD was in this Paramount feature that starred Joel McCrea as the young Intern at Blair General Hospital. Come to think of it, I don't recall if the name of the hospital is given in the film.

Nor will you find any of the other regulars from the Kildare/Gillespie series from MGM. When Paramount saw no possibilities in a series of films, they didn't do film series with the exception of Hopalong Cassidy, MGM picked it up.

Lew Ayres who was Kildare over at MGM was a bright idealistic getting his minting over at Blair General Hospital under the tutelage of gruff but kindly Lionel Barrymore. McCrea is a more stern type of Kildare, the most straight arrow of straight arrows. In fact Joel McCrea was quoted as saying he never felt comfortable being anything other than the straight arrow hero. But he was good in those parts.

His patients include Barbara Stanwyck, a woman from the wrong side of the tracks who will do anything to get back the child she lost custody of and Lloyd Nolan who he patches up after a brawl in the bar they both frequent. Both of their stories intertwine and you see the film to learn how.

In what was essentially a B programmer Paramount gave a lot of good production values to this film. I guess it was befitting the stars McCrea and Stanwyck who were definitely on their way up.

I do sort of miss the Blair General Hospital regulars, but McCrea does right by the character of James Kildare, MD.

An exceptionally flavorful rendering of the Depression atmosphere: a world of the poor laboring in sweatshop jobs, petty hoods hanging out in smoky bars, backroom bookie joints, pushcart vendors and bus terminals and orphanages. While the plot is no more ambitious than the typical B movie of the time, the high production values, name cast, and imaginative direction from Alfred Santell all boost the quality.

At the center of the plot, Barbara Stanwyck spends much of the film in desperation mode, exhausted from searching for her lost child, beaten down by two years in jail, forced to hire stool pigeons, forced to stay alert.

Joel McCrea makes the ideal American hero for the 30's: not only a doctor, but tall, blond, honest, sincere, manly, and progressive. At one point, he has to perform an operation on a bar room table, improvising with violin strings, an ice pick, and a bottle of rum! But this is not MGM's Dr. Kildare. He has no warm relationship with a kindly old mentor; instead, the chief doctor is an authority figure upholding the rules, dismissing Lee Bowman for unauthorized experimentation. The script also pumps up sympathy for interns as underpaid workers who get only $10 a month.

As a gangster, the always fascinating Stanley Ridges conveys the calm of a man secure in his power, whose eye movements size up his adversaries and whose silences reveal more menace than mere words. Watch the sexual innuendo he finds in his "I didn't always like popcorn" speech.

Santell uses extreme close-ups and moves the camera often, aided by gleaming lighting from Theodore Sparkuhl, plus some knock-out sets, including a sparkling white Art Deco clinic and an elaborately detailed New York Irish bar. Watch how economically Santell works to show the awakening of mutual attraction between Stanwyck and McCrea in their first scene together. Also lifting the picture out of its formula origins is the headlong pace Santell maintains to the climax, an urgency lost in the blander MGM series.

Probably not, but it has a certain cachet to it that is reminiscent of the genre that was yet to come. Good folk and gangsters, an unsuspecting someone caught in a web of dishonesty and murder, and all with the shadows and photographic effects normally associated with film noir. It is also an early Dr. Kildare film with Joel McCrea as the good doctor.

Nutshell: Kildare comes across Barbara Stanwyck, who is destitute and desperate. She is looking for her lost child and she is broke and just released from prison, apparently framed for aiding and abetting her husband. Kildare tries to help, with the aid of a gangster (Lloyd Nolan) on whom he has done emergency surgery (in the back of a barroom!) and who now feels he owes Kildare a favor.

The cast is excellent, headed by Stanwyck who never gives a bad performance. McCrea is his usual understated self and Stanley Ridges is very effective as a seedy, slimy villain. This is a very underrated film and was shown at Capitolfest, Rome, NY, 8/19.

******** 8/10 - Website no longer prints my star rating.