Ronald Coleman is Martin Arrowsmith, a young doctor who has a talent for research but gives up that career to practice medicine in a tiny North Dakota town in order to support his new wife, Helen Hayes.
He delivers babies and makes midnight house calls and all that, but he retains his research skills and they lead him to the prestigious McGurk Institute in New York. His mentor is the highly regarded medical researcher, Dr. Gottlieb, played by A. E. Anson.
After some years of hard work and neglecting his wife, Coleman discovers a serum that will "kill all the bugs, exterminate them." When he learns of an outbreak of bubonic plague in the West Indies, Dr. Gottlieb urges him to visit the place with his serum and use the scientific method to determine whether it will work. The scientific method, as described here, involves splitting the population of the island in half, then giving one half the serum and withholding the serum from the other half, making comparison possible.
Coleman, Hayes, and two other medical friends set up shop on a rainy tropical island where the only medicine the good residents know is voodoo. Coleman manages to save the island's population but at tremendous personal cost.
The 1930s, when this appeared, was a time when movies about scientific researchers, particularly in the field of medicine, were being ground out annually. There were biographical films about, oh, I don't know -- just about everybody who was anybody. Pasteur, Koch, Erlich, and Walter Reed come to mind. Often the protagonist was faced with Coleman's dilemma: prove the serum works by being cold blooded or save the victims.
Probably such biographies became so common partly because of the enormous popularity of a book about such men, written in 1926 by Paul de Kruif, "Microbe Hunters." It was a best seller for years. De Kruif was a consultant on the movie and added character sketches, although Sinclair Lewis gets the writing credit. I reread the book recently and the style is so antiquated and pompous that there's a laugh on every page.
At that, I don't know how de Kruif, a microbiologist, could have let slip a couple of obvious boners. At one point, Coleman refers to bubonic plague as a "virus" when it's caused by bacteria. And he must have known that the scientific method requires an experimental group (the people who get the injections) and a control group (those who don't) but that the two groups don't have to be equal in size. You can reduce the control group to one person out of ten, thereby giving the serum to ninety percent of the population, and you can still make satisfactory comparisons between the two.
You'd have a tough time knowing this was directed by John Ford. He doesn't seem to have invested that much of himself in it, but then this was 1931 and he had yet to hit his stride. There are still a few drinking scenes involving booze hidden in a trash can and so forth, and he employs some striking expressionistic effects in the photography.
Ronald Coleman is nobody's idea of an American country doctor, but he looks dashing and does a controlled job of filling the role. Helen Hayes -- she's okay too. She isn't staggeringly beautiful but she has a winning voice and a face that doesn't plumb the depths of ugliness. Don't know why her movie career didn't take off. Maybe she just preferred stage work. Myrna Loy appears briefly as Coleman's sympathetic friend. She's radiantly seductive, is as wealthy as Bill Gates, and nice too. At the end, she offers to be his steady date but, instead of jumping her bones then and there on the street, he throws her away and runs off to Vermont to do research with a toothpick and a ball of string. He's going to live in a cabin in the woods with a male friend of his, where, one assumes, they will live on maple syrup and the fruits of love. And he's supposed to be smart.
He delivers babies and makes midnight house calls and all that, but he retains his research skills and they lead him to the prestigious McGurk Institute in New York. His mentor is the highly regarded medical researcher, Dr. Gottlieb, played by A. E. Anson.
After some years of hard work and neglecting his wife, Coleman discovers a serum that will "kill all the bugs, exterminate them." When he learns of an outbreak of bubonic plague in the West Indies, Dr. Gottlieb urges him to visit the place with his serum and use the scientific method to determine whether it will work. The scientific method, as described here, involves splitting the population of the island in half, then giving one half the serum and withholding the serum from the other half, making comparison possible.
Coleman, Hayes, and two other medical friends set up shop on a rainy tropical island where the only medicine the good residents know is voodoo. Coleman manages to save the island's population but at tremendous personal cost.
The 1930s, when this appeared, was a time when movies about scientific researchers, particularly in the field of medicine, were being ground out annually. There were biographical films about, oh, I don't know -- just about everybody who was anybody. Pasteur, Koch, Erlich, and Walter Reed come to mind. Often the protagonist was faced with Coleman's dilemma: prove the serum works by being cold blooded or save the victims.
Probably such biographies became so common partly because of the enormous popularity of a book about such men, written in 1926 by Paul de Kruif, "Microbe Hunters." It was a best seller for years. De Kruif was a consultant on the movie and added character sketches, although Sinclair Lewis gets the writing credit. I reread the book recently and the style is so antiquated and pompous that there's a laugh on every page.
At that, I don't know how de Kruif, a microbiologist, could have let slip a couple of obvious boners. At one point, Coleman refers to bubonic plague as a "virus" when it's caused by bacteria. And he must have known that the scientific method requires an experimental group (the people who get the injections) and a control group (those who don't) but that the two groups don't have to be equal in size. You can reduce the control group to one person out of ten, thereby giving the serum to ninety percent of the population, and you can still make satisfactory comparisons between the two.
You'd have a tough time knowing this was directed by John Ford. He doesn't seem to have invested that much of himself in it, but then this was 1931 and he had yet to hit his stride. There are still a few drinking scenes involving booze hidden in a trash can and so forth, and he employs some striking expressionistic effects in the photography.
Ronald Coleman is nobody's idea of an American country doctor, but he looks dashing and does a controlled job of filling the role. Helen Hayes -- she's okay too. She isn't staggeringly beautiful but she has a winning voice and a face that doesn't plumb the depths of ugliness. Don't know why her movie career didn't take off. Maybe she just preferred stage work. Myrna Loy appears briefly as Coleman's sympathetic friend. She's radiantly seductive, is as wealthy as Bill Gates, and nice too. At the end, she offers to be his steady date but, instead of jumping her bones then and there on the street, he throws her away and runs off to Vermont to do research with a toothpick and a ball of string. He's going to live in a cabin in the woods with a male friend of his, where, one assumes, they will live on maple syrup and the fruits of love. And he's supposed to be smart.