I Tivo'd a bunch of Dr. Kildare movies recently, the ones with Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore as the young idealistic Kildare and his grumpy brilliant advisor Gillespie. Both men are intelligent and instinctively wise diagnosticians who steer themselves with a stern moral compass, motivated by decency and compassion. They make an almost perfect two sides of a proverbial coin, visually and textually, one smooth and gentle, the other gruff and sarcastic. And they're both quintessential type-A workaholics who live in the hospital because going back and forth to other residences would waste so much time.

The Kildare films hold up surprisingly well to our oh-so-sophisticated modern standards, needing only a dash of suspended disbelief for outdated morals and social expectations. The language is not at all archaic although some of the stock characters are different than current ones. But when Gillespie burst out with a short speech about knowing a time will come when health care will be as basic to people's rights as are food and shelter (sound familiar?!), I realized they are mainly dated by literal timing, not by sensitivities.

Kildare's parents are fonts of extraordinarily modern wisdom. They are also gracious and far less concerned about their son's prestige and financial success than that he determine and do the right thing. Their advice generally is that he rely on his inner instincts because he will know what the right thing is to do.

I especially enjoy his mother's self-assurance and her cheerfully-given advice to her son. She always knows what's going on with him and always has something forthright to say to him. When he is smitten by a young and adorable Lana Turner - a bad-girl-with-heart-of-gold love interest before the Larraine Day character took front and center in Kildare' heart for the duration of the series - his unusual mother advises him to plunge in and marry her right away because "if it isn't going to work then you find out quickly and haven't wasted much time but if it is going to work then you have that much more time together." How about that?

Ayres' eyes always twinkled and he often seemed faintly bemused. He easily and comfortably inhabited every character he played and seemed totally involved with the people and circumstances around him, as did Lionel Barrymore. Both Barrymore and he were such good actors that it was hard to realize at times that they weren't actually the people we see on film. And Ayres is awfully nice from an eye candy point of view, to boot, and so at ease with himself.

My mother introduced me to Ayres' Dr. Kildare when I was young and impressionable. We would swoon together as he smiled and cajoled his way through things. As a result, in some ways it is he I check gorgeous and sexy against. Could be worse frames of reference, right?

The Dr. Kildare series began in 1938 and continued for about five years and ten films. In addition to them, Ayres made over 150 films including All Quiet on the Western Front which won the 1930 Best Oscar, Donovan's Brain which is one of my favorite campy fun scifis, Johnny Belinda which won the 1948 Golden Globe best film and co-starred Jane Wyman who won the Best Actress Oscar and Holiday which is one of my favorite of the risqué and wild late-thirties films as Ayres plays Kate Hepburn's ne'er-do-well brother and Gary Grant's ultimate benefactor to Hepburn's Philadelphia-Story-esque lead.

In Johnny Belinda, by the way, Aryes was nominated as Best Actor (losing to Lawrence Olivier for Hamlet - the same year that Barbara Bel Geddes lost Best Supporting Actress to Claire Trevor for Key Largo, which is another subject for another day). Hollywood lore has it that Wyman fell madly in love with Ayres during the filming of Johnny Belinda and left her husband (some fellow named Ronald Reagan) to be with Ayres, but they never married.

Ayres appeared and starred in films and television during the fifties and sixties and a bit in the seventies but never earned the fame and adulation one would think he deserved - although he does have two stars on the Walk of Fame. He was a matinee idol who was determined to do some good. He refused to fight in WWII and eventually garnering conscientious objector status and performed medical relief work. Today he wouldn't be at particularly unusual to combine good looks with fame with social action, but fifty-plus years ago his concerns and his determination to do something about them were ridiculed and hurt his career.

I've often heard/read that he was invited to play Dr. Kildare on television, not surprisingly, but he said he wouldn't do it unless there was no cigarette sponsorship and the network refused, so he declined to play the good doctor (lucky for Richard Chamberlain). He was an active follower of Eastern spirituality and wrote, directed and produced Altars of the World in the late seventies; it won several awards including a Golden Globe but got little viewership because distributors thought it was too odd for a movie star to proselytize spirituality. Considering Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Gwyneth Paltrow, etc., as well as the ban on cigarette advertising on tv, it's safe to say that individuality, social awareness and tolerance have improved a lot in the last half-century.

Anyway, this is my tribute. Brought on by, and thanks to, Tivo and memory. I hope at least one person who never saw any of his films will now watch and enjoy.

Labels: actors, people of note