Doctor Bull *** (1933, Will Rogers, Marian Nixon, Vera Allen) – Classic Movie Review 10,185

Director John Ford’s 1933 black and white drama Doctor Bull is a good showcase for Will Rogers, with special interest as a Ford film, in the first of a trio of their collaborations.

Rogers plays Doc Bull, a Connecticut small-town physician combating the triple whammy of his doctoring ignorance, local prejudices (against his affair with the widow Janet Cardmaker) and an appalling typhoid epidemic.

Plenty of country air, homespun characters, Rogers’s warmth and the nice support cast are all guided along by Ford’s expertise.

Rogers extemporised a lot of his dialogue, though he still got on well with the difficult Ford. ‘A hell of a good picture,’ said Ford.

The screenplay by Paul Green and Jane Storm is adapted from James Gould Cozzens’s book The Last Adam.

Also in the cast are Marian Nixon, Vera Allen as Janet Cardmaker, Berton Churchill, Louise Dresser, Andy Devine, Ralph Morgan, Rochelle Hudson, Robert Parrish, Tempe Piggott, Elizabeth Patterson, Nora Cecil, Charles Middleton and Francis Ford.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,185

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