Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Michael_Elliott Arrowsmith (1931) *** (out of 4) John Ford's adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel about a young doctor (Ronald Coleman) who constantly fears that he's not as good as everyone says. The doctor keeps struggling with his duties to his profession as well as his duties to his wife (Helen Hayes). I wasn't expecting too much out of this film but was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it even with all of its flaws. Ford's direction is fairly weak as he never really brings any flair to the material but this is made up with some terrific performances. Coleman steals the film and really delivers all the goods as he's able to show the frustrations of a doctor trying to do the right thing for everyone. Hayes is also very good in her supporting role as is the supporting cast, which includes Richard Bennett, A.E. Anson and Myrna Loy.

hcoursen *May contain spoilers* This one does not age well. It is partly a matter of Lewis's character, who is a cliché of the 1920s -- an idealistic doctor. By 1931 the cliché may still have been current, but it is not in 2006. Another major problem with the film is that it is "written." This is particularly true of Helen Hayes' role, which she delivers as if on stage. But it is also a problem for Colman, as when he delivers a soliloquy outlining his naive creed. The script is stilted, not "natural," and we get a sense of the problems films encountered in moving to sound. Many of those early sound films had too much talk. But this one is just not believable. The doctors working against the plague do not immunize themselves. Arrowsmith does not inoculate his wife! Instead, he leaves multiple vials of plague virus on the coffee table. The camera keeps telling us, ad nauseum, what is going to happen with that toxic stuff. And Myrna Loy turns up at the end only to be sent on her way. Why? For a good condensation of a long book, see George Stevens' "A Place in the Sun," which begins with Montgomery Clift hitchhiking toward his doom. We infer the past just from his face.

whpratt1 Ronald Colman,(Dr. Martin Arrowsmith),"A Tale of Two Cities" '35, is a young doctor who starts out in life and desires to progress into the laboratory and look under a microscope all day long. However, he no long completes medical school and meets up with Helen Hayes,(Leora Arrowsmith) and on the first date, asks her to marry him. Martin and Leora are madly in love with each other but it is difficult for Martin to establish himself as a doctor, so they move to South Dakota. Myrna Loy,(Joyce Lanyon),"The Mask of Fu Manchu",'32 plays a sexy gal who has eyes for Martin and could lead to some problems. In 1931 this was a big hit film because of Helen Hayes, a great theatrical actress and Ronald Colman the thrill of most ladies during this period of time. Myrna Loy was young and pretty and getting great attention from Hollywood and the general audiences. There was plenty of smoking through out this film and it clearly shows how the world has finally changed about its view on smoking.

bkoganbing The fact that an idealistic medical doctor was the protagonist in Arrowsmith is the reason why John Ford must have been attracted to this story and agreed to film it for Sam Goldwyn.Allegedly it was not a happy collaboration. Two very individualistic men wanted to have their imprimatur on the film. They never worked together on a finished product again, though Ford did start filming The Adventures of Marco Polo for Goldwyn and quit.I read the novel way back in the day when I was in high school and we only get the second half of it. There's a great deal in the book before Ronald Colman as Martin Arrowsmith goes to work for the Research Foundation and A.E. Anson as Max Gottlieb. You miss quite a lot of the character development of Arrowsmith.Of course the plot mostly centers on Colman and his other mentor, Richard Bennett going to a Caribbean Island where there has been an outbreak of plague. Along for the trip is Helen Hayes who is Colman's wife Leora. Colman is there to test a new serum and he's under orders as a researcher to only administer the real stuff to half his patient and a placebo to the others as a control group. This is where the racism of the time kicks in as these human guinea pigs are black, probably the descendants of runaway slaves. There is a black doctor named Marchand in the cast played by Oliver Brooks and it is a rarity among black performers at the time in that the role was hardly servile at all. Brooks seems to go along with the controlled experiment, but he becomes one of many in the cast to meet a tragic end. With some of what came out about the Tuskegee experiments later on Arrowsmith may have been quite on target without knowing it. A harrowing thought.Colman and Hayes are an attractive pair of leads. Myrna Loy has a much abbreviated role in the film as a New York socialite that Colman meets down in the islands. In the book he has an affair with her and marries her later on. You won't see that here.Arrowsmith is a good film though I wish more of Lewis's story got into the final product. But it probably would have run for three hours and films just didn't do that back then.