**SPOILERS** Picking up where the far better "Calling Dr. Gillespie" left off pretty but not too tightly wrapped together-up stairs- Marcia Brandburn, Donna Reed,is not quite sure whom to marry. Poor Marcia can't make up her mind between her two suiters the cutest and cuddliest sergeant in the US Army Sgt.Patrick J. Orisin, Michael Duane, or mad dog psycho killer and, what I assume, still fiancée Roy Todwell, John Carvan. If the film "Dr. Gillsepie's Criminal Case" stuck to that story-line It may well have been far better then it ended up being. Instead we have about a half dozen sub-plots that make the film almost impossible to follow.
Old man Gillespie is back played by the cuddly-far more then even Sgt. Orisin-and lovable Lionel Barrymore with his two new intern, but not yet doctors, assistants Red Adams & Lee Wong How, Van Johnson & Keye Luke. Both Red & Lee have a lot more pressing things to deal with here then in their previous film "Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant". That movie just had the two young interns mostly deal with mundane and boring medical problems :Like life and death in the hospital's operating and emergency rooms.
In this movie the hard working-working 14 hours shifts at the hospital-Chinese/American Lee Wong How spends all his free time in Brooklyn Collage learning a new and foreign language: Chinese! As for the handsome but a bit on the shy side Randall "Red" Adams he's trying to get very friendly and romantically involved with the utterly gorgeous and loaded, with cash not booze, Blair Hospital groupie, she's got this thing about young men in white suits, socialite Ruth Edly played by 1940's blond bombshell Marilyn Maxwell. Lee should't have any problem, with help from his relatives, mastering the Chinese language. But on the other hand Red finds it very difficult, if not impossible, in getting close to Ruth! Every time the two are about to "do it"-kiss not hanky-panky-they end up getting interrupted with Red being called on a medical emergency!
As for Mister "G"-Dr Lenny Gillespie-himself he has his hands full not only with a ward full of children suffering from a deadly disease but him being kidnapped by "Mad Dog" Todwell whom he came to help at the state penitentiary. Doctor "G" want's to have the mentally and criminally deranged Todwell transferred to a mental institution that can cure him of his murderous abnormalities. In him being the all wise and all knowing man of medicine, as well as psychology, that he is Dr. Gillespie feels that a stay at the institution may well cure Todwell of his dangerous hangups,like whistles blowing in his ears, which a stay behind bars, with all those fellow convicts, won't!
Not leaving out WWII-this is 1943- that's raging all over the globe the film has the added attraction of having a survivor, who lost both his legs, of the attack on Pearl Harbor US Navy man Alvin F. Peterson,William Lundigan. Peterson who feels that his life as a man is over with people having to opened doors and get up off seats, in the subway and buses, for him is miraculously brought back to feeling that he's whole again. In what is surly the most, if only, touching scene in the movie Peterson ends up dancing with the hard as nails-like a US Marine drill Sergent- Blair Hospital head nurse Molly Byrd, Alma Kruger! Not the, as we an Paterson would have hoped, knock you off your feet blond bombshell Ruth Edly!
Old man Gillespie is back played by the cuddly-far more then even Sgt. Orisin-and lovable Lionel Barrymore with his two new intern, but not yet doctors, assistants Red Adams & Lee Wong How, Van Johnson & Keye Luke. Both Red & Lee have a lot more pressing things to deal with here then in their previous film "Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant". That movie just had the two young interns mostly deal with mundane and boring medical problems :Like life and death in the hospital's operating and emergency rooms.
In this movie the hard working-working 14 hours shifts at the hospital-Chinese/American Lee Wong How spends all his free time in Brooklyn Collage learning a new and foreign language: Chinese! As for the handsome but a bit on the shy side Randall "Red" Adams he's trying to get very friendly and romantically involved with the utterly gorgeous and loaded, with cash not booze, Blair Hospital groupie, she's got this thing about young men in white suits, socialite Ruth Edly played by 1940's blond bombshell Marilyn Maxwell. Lee should't have any problem, with help from his relatives, mastering the Chinese language. But on the other hand Red finds it very difficult, if not impossible, in getting close to Ruth! Every time the two are about to "do it"-kiss not hanky-panky-they end up getting interrupted with Red being called on a medical emergency!
As for Mister "G"-Dr Lenny Gillespie-himself he has his hands full not only with a ward full of children suffering from a deadly disease but him being kidnapped by "Mad Dog" Todwell whom he came to help at the state penitentiary. Doctor "G" want's to have the mentally and criminally deranged Todwell transferred to a mental institution that can cure him of his murderous abnormalities. In him being the all wise and all knowing man of medicine, as well as psychology, that he is Dr. Gillespie feels that a stay at the institution may well cure Todwell of his dangerous hangups,like whistles blowing in his ears, which a stay behind bars, with all those fellow convicts, won't!
Not leaving out WWII-this is 1943- that's raging all over the globe the film has the added attraction of having a survivor, who lost both his legs, of the attack on Pearl Harbor US Navy man Alvin F. Peterson,William Lundigan. Peterson who feels that his life as a man is over with people having to opened doors and get up off seats, in the subway and buses, for him is miraculously brought back to feeling that he's whole again. In what is surly the most, if only, touching scene in the movie Peterson ends up dancing with the hard as nails-like a US Marine drill Sergent- Blair Hospital head nurse Molly Byrd, Alma Kruger! Not the, as we an Paterson would have hoped, knock you off your feet blond bombshell Ruth Edly!