The passing decade is spent behind bars by Caspari, called Emmie by his friends. John Litel is playing the unlikely named Emilio Caspari, who disappears for ten years himself at the same time as Baxter's Ordway. But if you can get over this all too young Warner Baxter for the first twenty minutes of this first Crime Doctor movie, then you should have no trouble enjoying him as the more mature Crime Doctor for the remainder of the movie and the series to come. Dialogue makes it clear that Baxter's Ordway is supposed to be embarking on his medical school journey at age 30. Up until now you're going to have to suspend belief some in order to buy Warner Baxter as young Ordway. Carey has it out with him and goads Ordway into declaring that he's going to become a doctor himself because, "If you can't cure me, I'll cure myself." Carey supports him and just like that ten years pass and the amnesia patient reemerges as Robert Ordway, M.D. Despite grilling him with names and places, hoping something will ring a bell, no progress is made and Ordway turns to drink after having given up. Carey takes Ordway under his wing and tries to help him recover his memory. His demeanor changes as he grabs Ordway by the collar and demands to know, "What did you do with that valise?"Īfter his release from the hospital Dr. After throwing Ordway a few friendly questions about his well publicized amnesia difficulties, the man suddenly leans in and calls Ordway by the name of Phil as if he knows him. It gets even more intriguing in the next scene when a helpless looking Ordway is seated on his own and visited by what at first seems to be a randomly curious passerby played by John Litel. With that we've made it through the first five minutes of Crime Doctor. Ordway is frustrated by the question and suddenly declares, "I don't know who I am!" Carey unwraps him revealing Warner Baxter, makes sure his patient can see, and then asks him who he is. As luck would have it today is the day the bandages come off. The man they call Ordway wakes up confused with bandages wrapped over his eyes. After one of the nurses refers to the mystery patient as Ordway she explains to the doctor that they all call him that because he's staying in room named for the highly respected late Dr. Carey (Ray Collins) arrives to check on him. A group of teenagers spot the body, realize the man is alive and take him to the hospital.Ī pair of nurses banter over our unconscious patient until Dr. We see what is later referred to as a claw-like hand, two fingers missing, having a hard time pulling the car door shut as the mysterious black sedan races away. A body is dumped out of the moving vehicle to the roadside where it is left for dead. Robert Ordway.Ī black car races down a road passing a Hoover re-election sign along the way to set our date at 1932. Returning to Crime Doctor, you'll find that this first film packs an early punch in quickly revealing Baxter's path to becoming Dr. Other similarities exist between The Man Who Lived Twice and Crime Doctor, some of which are revealed further into this article. Like Baxter's Crime Doctor Bellamy undertakes a decade of medical study fueled by his general interest in the criminal mind and a desire to better understand his own case and perhaps rediscover his past. Bellamy emerges from this operation as a man with no recollection of his criminal past but a burning desire to figure out who he once was. In The Man Who Lived Twice Ralph Bellamy plays a ruthless criminal who escapes justice by volunteering for an experimental operation at the hands of a respected doctor played by Thurston Hall. While nothing beyond the Columbia banner links the earlier film directly to the Crime Doctor movie series the stories are too similar for it to be a total coincidence. Based on Dunning's entry for Crime Doctor the first film of Columbia's series appears to summarize the first three years of the successful radio program.Īn interesting and completely uncredited potential source of Crime Doctor appears to be Columbia's own 1936 B thriller The Man Who Lived Twice. Very few episodes of the original Crime Doctor radio series appear to be available through Old Time Radio sources leaving me only OTR authority John Dunning's often repeated summary of the series from On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio as final word on the subject. Each stars Warner Baxter as the Crime Doctor of the title.īased on the Crime Doctor radio series, which premiered in 1940 and enjoyed a largely concurrent run with the movie series through 1947, this initial entry to the series, titled simply Crime Doctor, offered the origin story of its title hero rather than what became its more standard murder mystery story. Crime Doctor is the first of a series of ten B mystery movies released by Columbia Pictures between 1943-1949.
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