***SPOILERS*** The bereaved Dr.James Kildare, Lew Ayres, not only overcomes the grief of the tragic death of his soon to be wife or "Bride of the Doctor" Nurse Mary Lamont but also is victorious, thus the movies title, over the "System". The "System" was created by a mindless and unfeeling bureaucracy that feels that following it's rules is far more important then saving lives.
After well known débutante Cynthia "Cookie" Charles, Anne Ayars, is hit by a falling five cent beer marquee sign while attending a swanky nightclub, with a lucky GI who won a date with Cookie in a raffle, Dr.Don Winthrop, Robert Searling, is on the scene and has the seriously injured Cookie sent to Blair Gneral Hospital for emergency surgery. Dr. Kildare operates on Cookie and miraculously saves her life after everyone in the operating room except the doctor's good friend and teacher, as well as boss, Dr. Leonard Gillespie, Lionel Barrymore, gave up on her.
You would think that Dr. Winthrop would be commended for his actions in having Cookie sent to Blair General where she ended up being brought back from the dead but Noooooo! He's kicked out and sent packing for not having Cookie sent to Emerson Hospital in who's jurisdiction the stricken Cookie was at the time of her accident! These restrictive bureaucratic edicts by the Board of Hospitals later has Dr. Winthrop's girlfriend Nurse Annobelle Kirke, Jean Rogers, send a very sick patient away from being treated at Blair to Emerson, since he was stricken in the jurisdiction of Emerson hospital,where he died on arrival!
To make things even more insane then they already are Nurse Kirke is later also given the pink slip for not reporting where Cookie was picked up, in the vicinity of Emerson, in that she was saved, by the handsome and dashing young Doctor Kildare,in Blair General. According to the rules obsessed Board of Hospials Cookie should have been sent to die, since Doctor Kildare doesn't work there and wouldn't be around to save her, in Emerson Hospital! No matter what Nurse Kirke and Dr. Winthdrop do, save or let a patient die, they end up behind the eight ball no matter who's shooting pool!
Even though it's not his problem Dr. Kildare takes it upon himself to take on the hospital bureaucracy almost single-handed which brings Cookie,and her powerful and influential friends, to see that the story of Dr. Kildare saving her life makes the front pages. Embarrassed and looking ridicules the Board of Hospitals rescinds it's edicts about who can send who, as long as it's within the others jurisdiction, to the hospital of what turns out to be of not, in the two cases that we see in the movie, the patients choice.
In the end Dr. Kildare's brave and unselfish actions, that could very well have cost him his job at Blair General,not only saved Dr. Winthrop and Nurse Kirks jobs but lifts the brainless restrictions imposed on all the public hospitals in the city by the equally brainless Board of Hospitals. Dr. Kildare is also able to overcome the grief of his loss of Nurse Mary Lamont in finally realizing that he can't live in the past for the rest of his life. Going on and doing his job as best as he can in saving lives is the best thing that he could do in Mary's memory.
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