"Alias the Doctor" is a very good B-movie starring Richard Barthelmess from 1932. Five years later, Warner Brothers remade the film as "Once a Doctor", though a few very significant changes were made to the story. Both are well worth seeing.
Steven Brace (Donald Woods) is a brilliant young doctor who is expected to one day be a great surgeon. His adoptive father is a well respected doctor and he wants not only Steven to be a doctor but his son, Jerry (Gordon Oliver). But there's a problem.... Jerry is a real spineless jerk as well as an alcoholic.
One night, Jerry is on duty at the hospital but instead of staying and doing his job, he sneaks off with a woman. He gets drunk and ends up having an accident on the way back to work. He manages to sneak back to the hospital, where he meets Steven and convinces Steven to try to help him out of a jam. It seems the woman is dying and Steven goes to try to save her. However, she dies and soon Steven is in trouble with the hospital. While he was gone, a patient has died and Jerry was SUPPOSED to take care of them while Steven was attending to the injured girl. Instead, he just got even drunker.
But when there's an investigation, Jerry lies about everything...blaming Jerry. The hospital believes Jerry...and Steven's career appears to be over....as well as his relationship with his adoptive father. What's next?
In a few ways, this film is better than the original story. In "Alias the Doctor", the alcoholic brother was more of a weakling than an evil man. Making him evil and weak in "Once a Doctor" makes for a better story...as in the original story the good son takes the rap and that really didn't make a lot of sense. Here, the good son TRIES to tell the truth but isn't believed. Like the original, both are tough to believe at times, but "Once a Doctor" manages to be a bit easier to believe and corrects a huge problem in the first film.
Steven Brace (Donald Woods) is a brilliant young doctor who is expected to one day be a great surgeon. His adoptive father is a well respected doctor and he wants not only Steven to be a doctor but his son, Jerry (Gordon Oliver). But there's a problem.... Jerry is a real spineless jerk as well as an alcoholic.
One night, Jerry is on duty at the hospital but instead of staying and doing his job, he sneaks off with a woman. He gets drunk and ends up having an accident on the way back to work. He manages to sneak back to the hospital, where he meets Steven and convinces Steven to try to help him out of a jam. It seems the woman is dying and Steven goes to try to save her. However, she dies and soon Steven is in trouble with the hospital. While he was gone, a patient has died and Jerry was SUPPOSED to take care of them while Steven was attending to the injured girl. Instead, he just got even drunker.
But when there's an investigation, Jerry lies about everything...blaming Jerry. The hospital believes Jerry...and Steven's career appears to be over....as well as his relationship with his adoptive father. What's next?
In a few ways, this film is better than the original story. In "Alias the Doctor", the alcoholic brother was more of a weakling than an evil man. Making him evil and weak in "Once a Doctor" makes for a better story...as in the original story the good son takes the rap and that really didn't make a lot of sense. Here, the good son TRIES to tell the truth but isn't believed. Like the original, both are tough to believe at times, but "Once a Doctor" manages to be a bit easier to believe and corrects a huge problem in the first film.