What’s one of the most memorable throwaway lines from Lionel Barrymore, after playing a doctor in this film? “I'd rather play a doctor than pay him!”
If that sums up understandable public cynicism about seemingly mercenary medical professionals, this film gently offers a counter narrative. Not all doctors are selfish and avaricious. And, they needn’t be, if caring doctors pass on the secret of good bedside manner to their successors and peers.
After his wife dies in childbirth, Dr. Eli Watt (Barrymore) moves his city practice to the town of his birth. Humbly, he embraces their barter system, accepting eggs, or potatoes, or similar goods in exchange for his hard-won expertise, never smarting at how this falls short of the earnings he’s used to. Unable to save Mr. McGinnis’s wife in childbirth, Watt raises their baby Letty as his own (Dorothy Jordan plays the grown woman), helped by his bossy but benign housekeeper Sarah (May Robson).
Watt’s son, Jimmy (Buster Phelps plays the child, Joel McCrea, the adult) becomes a doctor, too. But he also becomes two things his father isn’t: a surgeon, and a self-absorbed one, at that. Jimmy’s fiancée, Joan (Frances Dee) finds that he has little time for his family or the community that cared for him. Watt wonders if he’s taught his son that there’s more to healthcare than profiting off others’ measles and mumps. Then, those whom Jimmy esteems in the city’s celebrated circles of science and medicine show him who and what matters, and why.
The film draws on a short story by Minnesota-born writer Katharine Haviland-Taylor. Her aging protagonist, hidden away in his little town for 19 years, feels he’s a failure because he hasn’t kept pace with the rush of experiments, discoveries, and advancements that his son has been a part of in the city. But as Joan implies in the film, what makes someone successful is their ability to stay humane and caring even amid loss, suffering, and death.
Director John Robertson’s moving montage captures Watt and Sarah caring not just for little Letty and Jimmy, but for everyone barging in to demand healthcare.
Dee married McCrea just weeks after the film release. Their onscreen chemistry, however brief, wasn’t just for the cameras; they stayed married until McCrea’s death nearly 60 years later.
Jimmy Watt (Joel McCrea) and Joan Stockton (Frances Dee), in “One Man’s Journey.” RKO Radio Pictures
Barrymore lends credibility to a saintly (and scarcely believable) Watt. He’s no back-slapping, laugh-out-loud doc, conning patients into thinking they’re not sick. He doesn’t pretend to know all the answers. But, he shows empathy, patience, and respect. He puts what little he does know into practice through his warm voice, comforting touch, and reassuring smile. It turns out these small kindnesses have a big impact.
The Placebo Effect
Since the late 20th century, a growing body of psychosocial and neurobiological research has shown two outcomes for patients that have less and less to do with drugs or devices: A placebo effect, where a patient’s positivity improves health outcomes, and a nocebo effect, where negativity worsens these outcomes. Scientists are now recognizing the impact of the bedside manner of a doctor or nurse, or of a caring family, in shaping these outcomes.
Nearly a century ago, the endearing “old country plug” Watt admitted that he didn’t know too much about “doctoring,” or the brain, or the mind. But he did know something of the heart. He wasn’t talking of a blood-pumping organ of muscle and tissue. Instead, he was saying that how a person feels, or is made to feel, has a disproportionate impact on whether that person becomes or stays sick.
Dr. Eli Watt (Lionel Barrymore) and Sarah (May Robson), in “One Man’s Journey.” RKO Radio Pictures
As the ambitious Jimmy rushes between meetings, he tells a troubled Joan that he’s going all out to become famous, and figures she’d understand. It’s why she complains to her future father-in-law that it’s Jimmy who doesn’t understand: “He’s all career. Like a machine. It’s awfully hard loving someone like that.”
When Watt leads the town’s recovery from a devastating epidemic, and Letty walks into his clinic armed with flowers, wanting to do her bit, he tells her that flowers can’t cure smallpox. She smilingly agrees, but “a little brightness never hurt, did it?” A grinning Watt nods, “That’s the best argument yet.”
When Letty’s bed-ridden and Jimmy and his esteemed medical specialist peers fail to revive her, he snaps, “I hate to lose this case.” Wisely, Watt reminds him that “it isn’t just a case, Jim. It’s Letty.”
Medicine may well be a science, but healthcare is very much an art.
Lobby card for “One Man’s Journey.” RKO Radio Pictures
You can watch “One Man’s Journey” on DVD.
‘One Man’s Journey’
Director: John Robertson
Starring: Lionel Barrymore, Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Dorothy Jordan
Not Rated
Running Time: 1 hour, 12 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 8, 1933
Rated: 4 stars out of 5
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Rudolph Lambert Fernandez
Author
Rudolph Lambert Fernandez is an independent writer who writes on pop culture.
