What is it about?: A young medical intern named Dr. Kildare helps a widowed ex-con to find her missing child and avoid the clutches of an unscrupulous mobster...
The Call Sheet:
Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Lloyd Nolan, Stanley Ridges with
Irving Bacon, Barry Mccollum and Charles Lane
Behind the Camera:
Directed by Alfred Santell. Story by Max Brand (aka Frederick
Schiller Faust). Cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl. Art direction by
Roland Anderson and Hans Dreier.
Snapshot Thoughts:
Aside from it’s archaic spelling of ‘Intern’, Internes Can’t
Take Money is an odd little film. It’s the very first Dr. Kildare movie yet
it stars Barbara Stanwyck and largely side lines Joel McCrea’s
Kildare, with the end result being that it succeeds in fully showcasing neither. The
following year, MGM took over the Dr. Kildare series and recast
it with Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore and in doing so created a very successful and well remembered movie franchise, but this film is an almost noir-ish anomaly.
As it is, it’s an interesting mix of medical drama, gangster film
and melodrama with a stellar ensemble cast. I have no idea why
Barbara Stanwyck took on the film as it seems like such a B picture
for a star of her stature. Despite this, Joel McCrea is everything you
would need from a dashing young doctor: tall, blond, principled and
fearless and he always has good chemistry with Stanwyck. Barbara Stanwyck herself is the epitome of melodramatic
desperation: she spends the majority of the film with her eyes
glistening with fresh tears (they never quite roll down her cheek), forever on the verse of emotional
collapse and fuelled by determined motherly love. However, because the movie splits its time between
their individual plotlines, sadly neither star is well serviced by the
film.
Star Performances:
While the two stars are good in their roles, the movie ultimately
belongs to the supporting cast of character actors playing the
story’s many underworld dwellers. Lloyd Nolan is excellent as ever as
the gangster whose life is saved by Kildare and although he is only
in the last 15 minutes of the film he gives considerable depth and
range to the part, transforming from anger to understanding at Dr.
Kildare’s situation in a brilliant piece of emotional acting. Also
of note are Charles Lane as the world’s grumpiest butler and Irving
Bacon as a eye patch wearing barman, both adding some (off) colour charm to the proceedings. However, Stanley Ridges pretty
much steals the picture, and every scene he’s in as the blackmailing criminal Dan
Innes.
Relaxed, smug and confident, he is a man perfectly at ease with his place in the world. His life is a continuous game of
exerting power over people, from his butler (a friend who lost a card
game to him and was shanghaied into service to pay the debt) to
Stanwyck’s Janet Haley, to whom he dangles the carrot of knowledge about
her missing child. One of the props that Ridges uses to his advantage
is the character’s love of popcorn. The popcorn has many uses in
the movie, mostly as an innuendo laden conversation topic, but the
way he casually takes handfuls, rolls them around in the palm of his hand and
chews slowly just reeks menace and intimidation. He may dress very
dapperly, and his apartment is that of a playboy who likes the finer things in life, but Stanley Ridges
never lets the audience forget how dangerous and callous a thug Innes really is.
Technical
Excellences: Despite the movie being a B picture, it is shot and
dressed like a far more prestigious vehicle. The art direction by
Paramount mainstays Roland Anderson and Hans Dreier are superb, with
the hospital and bar sets being stylish and evocative. The hospital
set in itself is a thing of beauty, with Art Deco designs and
lettering combining with an open plan clinic with large bay windows
displaying stylised matte views of the Manhattan skyline. Later, the
bar set reverses the feeling, giving a turn of the century, dingy, smoky environment where
backroom deals are done and shady mobster hurry back and forth
through the grubbily ornate swing doors. A lot of thought has been
put into the look of the movie and it lifts the production from a run
of the mill melodrama to a brilliantly conceived slice of late
Depression life.
The Sublime: Perhaps
the highlight of the movie occurs when Janet (Barbara Stanwyck)
visits Innes (Stanley Ridges) in his apartment to attempt to come to
some sort of 'arrangement' for information about her missing daughter.
The scene starts with an insight into Innes’ life as he sits in bed
clad in his expensive dressing gown eating breakfast (which looks
suspiciously like popcorn) served by his ill mannered butler Grote (a
brilliantly chosen name for surly Charles Lane). Janet arrives and
the two move through to the living room to talk, all the time the
walls glowing with the dancing shadows of the rain hitting the
windows outside. Innes tries to turn on the charm but Janet nervously ignores
it . In a nice piece of business, when Stanwyck sits down the chair
is quite low and exposes her knee. She subtly and awkwardly pulls her
skirt down as she adjusts her seat while he eyes her wolfishly.
The conversation turns to what she can do for him and as ever, he
brings up the subject of popcorn, saying “I didn’t always like
popcorn. I didn’t like it until I tried it. First it was kind of
hard to take, used to stick in my craw. I guess I hit you about the
same way, don’t I?” He purrs the words in a deliberate way that
leaves no doubt as to what he’s really suggesting, and all the while his eyes seem to be imagining what sort of arrangement Janet and he could come to. Never has
popcorn seemed to threatening.
The Ridiculous: The
30’s must have been a confusing time to live in if you had lost a
child. Stanwyck’s character Janet spends most of the movie trying
to find her lost three year old daughter in orphanages despite not
having seen her since she was a baby. She’s told (quite reasonably)
by a kindly nun that “babies change a good deal in two years. Their
features change”, but despite this Janet feels she only needs to
look into the child’s eyes to know which little moppet is hers.
She’s also good at picking needles out of haystacks I hear. Oh, and
this despite the fact that the orphanage only need the barest of
anecdotal evidence to be convinced that they should give a child to a
woman fresh out of prison, but I digress. Anyway, I don’t have to
spoil it for you for you to guess how it ends, but just to hammer
home every available cliché we are treated to an astonishing final
tableaux of mother and daughter reunited as a heavenly choir sings,
flanked in shadows by the Mother Superior, the good Dr Kildare and a
massive statue of the Virgin Mary that looms up onto the screen out
of nowhere. Praise be! For it is a miracle! Boy, did those Jewish
Hollywood people love their Catholic imagery but I guess it kept the
censors happy.
Is it worth
watching? It’s certainly a by the numbers Barbara Stanwyck
film, and is possibly one of her most forgettable appearances of the
decade but she’s likable and vulnerable and determined as ever and
doesn’t disappoint. If you are a fan of the Dr. Kildare series then Internes Can't Take Money
it has to be watched as a curiosity (in the same way that the first
sound Charlie Chan film Behind That Curtain bears no resemblance
to the long running series that followed it) and an interesting
comparison. If you don’t judge it as a Dr. Kildare film then
there’s a lot to like. The movie looks great, is directed with style and
has a fine cast of well written characters. All in all an
overachieving B movie with an A list cast. Bring your own popcorn.
Random Quote:
“Popcorn’s good for you, you know. Roughage.”
