The Story of Dr Kildare radio show (1950-1951, United States)
Episode time
30 minutes
Language
English
Blair General Hospital, where life begins, where life ends, where life goes on. Doctor James Kildare is a young talented surgeon, who works there together with his mentor, the experienced and sometimes cynical Doctor Leonard Gillespie. Every day they face the complicated cases of their patients, but while Gillespie, after long years of practice, tries to be pragmatic about it, Kildare can’t help going beyond just medical help. He often gets involved in the private lives of his patients to solve their problems where the medicine can’t help them any more.
After a few 1930s movies about Dr Kildare, MGM produced the radio series based on the characters of Kildare and Gillespie, that was broadcast from February 1950 to late 1951. In the radio show, Lionel Barrymore and Lew Ayres repeated the roles they played in the movies, Barrymore as cranky Doctor Gillespie, Ayres as idealistic Doctor Kildare. The show was a mixture of drama and comedy, the patient cases usually involved difficult situations for the medical staff, while the constant battles between Gillespie and Nurse Parker brought the comedy elements.
Despite the popularity of the radio show, in early 1952 MGM decided to kill the project and replace it with a television series. Ayres was approached to play the part of Kildare as he takes over practice from Gillespie, but Ayres felt that it would be inappropriate to make a medical show that would have tobacco companies as the sponsors. The studio refused to choose different sponsors and the project collapsed. At least until the 1960s when another TV series, Dr. Kildare, starring Richard Chamberlain and Raymond Massey, became the successor of The Story of Dr Kildare.
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Creators of The Story of Dr Kildare
screenplay
Cast of The Story of Dr Kildare
as Dr James Kildare
as Dr Leonard Gillespie
as Nurse Parker
as Dr Carew
as Mary Lamont
