Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942)

Director:

Harold S. Bucquet

Writers:

Max Brand (characters)
Kubec Glasmon (story)

Release Date:

August 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Plot:

Dr. Gillespie is called in to investigate when a young man suffering from mental problems disappears on a killing spree. |

Plot Keywords:

Nurse | Amnesia | Hospital | Medical | Mental Illness

Cast

Lionel Barrymore	...	Dr. Leonard Gillespie
Philip Dorn	...	Dr. John Hunter Gerniede
Donna Reed	...	Marcia Bradburn
Phil Brown	...	Roy Todwell
Nat Pendleton	...	Joe Wayman
Alma Kruger	...	Molly Byrd
Mary Nash	...	Emma Hope
Walter Kingsford	...	Dr. Walter Carew
Nell Craig	...	Nurse 'Nosey' Parker
Ruth Tobey	...	Susan May 'Susie' Prentiss
Jonathan Hale	...	Frank Marshall Todwell
Charles Dingle	...	Dr. Ward O. Kenwood
Marie Blake	...	Sally, receptionist
Nana Bryant	...	Mrs. Marshall Todwell
Eddie Acuff	...	Clifford Genet

Also Known As:

Dr. Kildare's Triple X (USA) (original script title)
Marked in Scarlet (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #8257) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review)

Company:

Loew's

Trivia:

Two cast members in studio records/casting call lists did not appear or were not identifiable in the movie. These were (with their character names): Buddy Messinger (Messenger boy) and George Reed (Conover). In addition, Mitchell Lewis and Robert Emmett Keane were mentioned in news items as cast members, but they also did not appear in the movie.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Hot Cross Bunny (1948)

"I'm sorry to tell you: Your son's a mental case"

Did doctors really say such thing 60 years ago? Lionel Barrymore utters this line to the naive parents of poor Donna Reed's indeed very troubled suitor.

The first thing he does is kill a dog. This is glossed over by the characters but I can't imagine such a thing happening in a movie today. Certainly not after the famous National Lampoon cover.

This man is played very subtly and frighteningly by Phil Brown -- surely a greatly overlooked actor. Indeed, as his travels carry him farther from Reed and Barrymore, he becomes a killer. And the movie looks, for much of its duration, like a film noir.

It's very suspenseful. And with its hospital setting, it made me think of a movie decades later -- more slick, stylish, surely more expensive: "Dressed To Kill." The comic touches pretty much disqualify it is as a noir: Barrymore flirts with adoring female students; Nat Pendleton faints a couple times. And its being part of the Dr. Kildaire series, even sans Lew Ayres, sort of pulls it from the category too. But it's an interesting sidelight to the noir genre.