Dr. Kildare's Victory

Dr. Kildare's Victory marked the last of the films Lew Ayres did as the idealistic young doctor James Kildare, handpicked protégé of Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Gillespie. The series was so popular though that MGM had Barrymore continue in the Gillespie role in several more films with new young assistants in his diagnostic office.

This time Ayres gets himself involved in a hospital turf war as another young doctor and the nurse he was with had the temerity to pick up and treat an injured victim outside the territory of Blair General Hospital. Emerson Hospital whose territory it was just doesn't like other hospitals poaching patients from their turf. So the lawyers get into the act and Dr. Robert Sterling and nurse Jean Rogers get the ax.

That doesn't sit well with Ayres who did the surgery on the victim and saved her life. The victim was débutante Ann Ayars who is in a Paris Hilton type role. Like Paris, Ann has a great knack for working the media which comes in handy later on.

Ayres and Ayars also may be getting something going. As fans of the series know, Dr. Kildare lost his true love nurse Mary Lamont a day before their wedding. They were a great screen team and perfectly matched in this series as Laraine Day who played Lamont shared Ayres's personal and professional vision. That would be hard to recapture.

The Kildare series were B pictures from MGM although from the look of them they would be A products in most other studios. Dr. Kildare's Victory took them out on a relatively high note.