- Crime Doctor (film)
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Crime Doctor Directed by Michael Gordon Produced by Ralph Cohn Written by C. Graham Baker
Louis Lantz
Max Marcin (radio series Crime Doctor)
Jerome Odlum (adaptation)Starring Warner Baxter
Margaret Lindsay
John LitelDistributed by Columbia Pictures Release date(s) June 22, 1943 Running time 66 minutes Country United States Language English Crime Doctor (1943) is a crime film starring Warner Baxter as a man with amnesia determined to remember his past. The film, released by Columbia Pictures, was based on the Crime Doctor radio program and was followed by nine sequels:
- Crime Doctor's Strangest Case (1943)
- Shadows in the Night (1944)
- The Crime Doctor's Courage (1945)
- Crime Doctor's Warning (1945)
- Just Before Dawn (1946)
- Crime Doctor's Man Hunt (1946)
- The Millerson Case (1947)
- Crime Doctor's Gamble (1947)
- The Crime Doctor's Diary (1949)
Plot
During the Great Depression, a man (Warner Baxter) is thrown out of a speeding car. When he comes to in a hospital, he finds he has amnesia. However, he is visited by a man who doesn't believe he cannot remember who he is. He calls the patient Phil and demands to know what happened to a valise, but runs away when Phil buzzes for help. When he recovers, he takes the name Robert Ordway, after a hospital benefactor.
Ordway's doctor, John Carey (Ray Collins, who portrayed Ordway on the radio show), wants to continue treating him after he is released and offers him a room in his house. All attempts to discover his identity fail, so Ordway decides to learn all he can about his condition. After ten years, he has become a successful psychiatrist, in partnership with Carey. Ordway begins treating prison inmates. He is so successful, he is named head of the state parole board.
While on a date in a nightclub with social worker Grace Fielding (Margaret Lindsay), he is recognized by two men from his past, Joe Dylan (Harold Huber) and Nick Ferris (Don Costello). They and a third man, Emilio Caspari (John Litel), are unsure if he is their partner in crime, so they get a prisoner, his girlfriend Pearl Adams (an uncredited Dorothy Tree), to apply for parole. At her hearing, she calls Ordway Dr. Morgan. He badgers her until she finally reveals that he is indeed Phil Morgan, the mastermind of a $200,000 payroll robbery, from which the money was never recovered.
In an attempt to remember, he contacts the three men and reenacts the events of the day he lost his memory. Tempers flare and the men fight; during the struggle, Ordway is struck on the head and remembers his past. He also ends up with the gun. He calls the police and has the gang arrested.
Then he insists on being tried for the robbery. The jury finds him guilty, but recommends clemency. The judge sentences him to the minimum term of ten years, but suspends the sentence.
External links
- Crime Doctor at the TCM Movie Database
- Crime Doctor at the Internet Movie Database
Categories:- American films
- English-language films
- 1940s crime films
- 1943 films
- Black-and-white films
- Films directed by Michael Gordon
- Crime film stubs
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