ThiefHott Too much of everything

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

bkoganbing For reasons I don't understand Captain Newman MD has always been singled out for criticism, most particularly directed at Gregory Peck saying he's too stiff for comedy. I don't agree on a number of levels and this is one of my favorite films with him.First and foremost Peck's role is not one of comedy. What he does in the film is serve as Tony Curtis's straight man. Now his role is a comic one and very funny indeed.Peck runs the psychiatric ward in an Army Air Corps Hospital out in the Arizona desert during World War II. There's no way a man like Peck would be in the command of George S. Patton who just didn't believe in Peck's whole profession. And in Patton like fashion if someone isn't shipped back to command in twelve weeks, Peck hears about it.Captain Newman, MD is a serious film about such people and they are at the heart of the story with Peck trying his best to fix the broken minds and psyches in our Armed Forces. Three of his cases are the drunken, guitar playing corporal Bobby Darin, the catatonic flier Robert Duvall, and Eddie Albert the colonel who has gone psychotic. Peck has a mixed record of success with these three and with others in his ward.Bobby Darin got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, it's a fine performance but he lost that year to Melvyn Douglas for Hud. But personally I feel that Eddie Albert stole Captain Newman, MD from the rest of the cast. It's a tossup between this role and Attack for the best performances of Albert's carer.Robert Duvall always credited Peck with giving him a good start to his long career with key roles in To Kill A Mockingbird and Captain Newman, MD. Funny thing is that Duvall has little dialog here and none in To Kill A Mockingbird. Far from the well spoken attorney who was consigliere to The Godfather. He's matched in his performance by his wife played by Bethel Leslie who is apparently much influenced by Grace Kelly in her performance. She's his prim and proper wife who tries to stir his interest in an attempt at an unusual kind of shock therapy.Aiding Peck in his treatment of his patients are nurses Angie Dickinson and Jane Withers and orderlies Tony Curtis and Larry Storch. In his memoirs Tony Curtis says that he got along very well with Gregory Peck who he says was one of the best class acts in Hollywood. He didn't get along all that well with director David Miller who wanted Curtis to be more ethnic in his interpretation of Corporal Jackson Leibowitz. Curtis won out and I think he was right in this case. A friend of Tony Curtis's since childhood is Larry Storch and because of that Storch appears in a few films with Curtis. As Peck was Tony's straight man, Storch becomes his comic foil in a couple of scenes and they work well together.Captain Newman, MD is a classic film, both entertaining and thought provoking, about the treatment of mental breakdowns among our military. As we certainly now are a country at war, Captain Newman, MD has a relevancy today that is timely. Absolutely do not miss it when it is broadcast.

jhansman Gregory Peck is probably best know for playing strong, benevolent types like Atticus Finch, and in many ways, the title role in this film does not take him far from that. What makes this film memorable is not Peck so much as it is his outstanding supporting cast. Bobby Darin, best known as a singer, show acting chops here few thought he possessed. Tony Curtis is strong and fits his role perfectly,Angie Dickinson as a nurse with brains and beauty, and Eddie Albert as you've never seen him. His performance alone merits watching this movie, but enjoy the story and the entire cast in a film that gives those who missed it a glimpse into what Hollywood was putting out in the 60s.

Mari When this movie came out, the idea of military men needing psychiatric help was a shocking idea. The "average" American knew little about the subject.Mr. Peck offers his usual stoic, honorable role as the title character. he brings compassion and discipline to the role. The break out star of the movie was Bobby Darin. His shattering and convincing breakdown was superb, acting at it's finest. Angie Dickinson is of course there to provide the male with something luscious to look at and she does her job beautifully. Teasing and flirting with her patients yet never letting things go too far.An excellent movie, one that is well worth watching again.

inspectors71 If anything positive can be said for 1963's Captain Newman, MD, it's that it is a compassionate film. It is not a coherent one, nor is it ever sure if it's a WWII drama or a stale service-comedy.CNMD boasts a lot of very familiar faces doing and saying ridiculous things: Gregory Peck is not a man for light comedy (and when he's falling-down drunk, you'll want him to just go to bed and sleep it off, not laugh at him as he pratfalls about with Angie Dickinson). Dickinson is embarrassing as Peck's sort of love interest; she's given little to do but look good and look concerned (which erupts into very controlled weeping when the news from the front gets bad). Tony Curtis wears the outfit of street-wise non-com who keeps telling Peck how easy psychiatry is, dog-robbing the top of a Christmas tree, and herding sheep. Robert Duvall reprises his Boo Radley role from To Kill a Mockingbird, Bobby Darin chews, smacks, and gulps the scenery as a B-17 gunner whose got a bad case of survivor's guilt, and Eddie Albert manages to be the only actor who exceeds the bare minimum of acting expectations here. His Army Air Force colonel is suffering from sending too many youngsters to their deaths, and watching him break up and shatter is the only saving grace in this shoddy mess.Yet, the movie is a compassionate one. It's very madness-of-war and stick-it-to-the-man in its treatment of combat-related mental illness. CNMD is full of 11th grade psychology (so that the audience will get it; God help the trained professional who watches this), cutesy characters, and tedious situation drama and comedy. It reminded me of the first three or four years of M*A*S*H on TV (before Alan Alda decided to inject the series with an overdose of deep). Everyone is running about, trying their best to get the message out to you that WAR IS HELL, but it's nuttier still, and the only way to win it is to be cutesy and compassionate.I like my war-movies-with-a-message a bit more sure of themselves. Just watch Tom Hanks pull himself together three quarters of the way through Saving Private Ryan or the movie M*A*S*H wherein Bobby Troupe keeps confronting the idiocies inherent in soldiering by simply hanging his hands over the steering wheel of a jeep and muttering, "Goddamned army!" Leave the head-shrinking to the professionals.