ada the leading man is my tpye

StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

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

bkoganbing One of the wilder premises involving a movie series was in the Crime Doctor films that starred Warner Baxter. We are asked to believe that Baxter was once gentleman crook Phil Morgan who held out the loot from his gang and who slugged him and threw him from a moving car and left him for dead. He didn't die, but has a case of amnesia. In any event ten years go by and in those ten years we are asked to believe that Baxter has acquired the eduction and training to become criminal psychologist Robert Ordway a most respected gent. The Crime Doctor character came from radio and I assume that radio provided a lot of background so that the Ordway character became more believable. Given the fact that the movie-going public had been used to the Crime Doctor radio program the whole premise was easier to swallow in 1943 than it is today.Baxter who is now a successful criminal psychologist and engaged to Margaret Lindsay is visited by old gang member John Litel who wants to know where the stashed loot is. He's not buying the amnesia story. He assembles the rest of the gang and the film is a battle of wits between Baxter and the rest. Need I tell you who wins?Future Crime Doctor films gradually left out the part that Baxter was a convict and as a result they have not become as dated and are more believable than the first film. Some are actually pretty good with the simple premise that Baxter with his psychological training is a pretty good criminologist, better in many cases than those who carry a badge. In fact Jeff Goldblum's character on Law and Order: Criminal Intent who does carry a badge can trace his origins back to Warner Baxter's Robert Ordway. A good screen character with too much unbelievable baggage.

calvinnme ... as well as the Great Depression as a two front war with everything at stake yields bigger fish to fry. This is what this first film in the Crime Doctor crime/mystery series represents in the person of Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter).The movie opens with a car speeding along the road with a sign referring to the presidential campaign of 1932. The car slows down and an unconscious man is dumped from the vehicle that then speeds off again. Next we see the man without an identity recovering in the hospital with no memory of who he was before. The nurses dub the mystery man Robert Ordway after the wing of the hospital in which he is staying. Kindly Dr. John Carey (Ray Collins) works with Ordway after he is discharged to help him recover his memory, but no association -not even going through the phone book name by name - yields results. A check of his fingerprints with police records also turns up nothing. Of course, all that proves is that Ordway was clever enough to never be arrested, not that he wasn't a criminal. With all of the time he's spent with the good doctor, Ordway has developed an interest in medicine, and with he and Dr. Carey agreeing that the unmasking of his identity is something that he should no longer hope to have solved in the near future, he decides to study medicine himself and specialize in psychiatry.So Ordway starts out as a freshman in college in his early 30's, with his studies requiring the next ten years of his life. The world changes a great deal in the next ten years - Prohibition ends, the Depression eases, and World War II begins. In all this time Ordway is no closer to recovering his identity. As he begins to practice medicine, he spends a great deal of time working with convicts at the prison. He's drawn here because he wants to do some good but also because he hopes that someone there will recognize him and help him reclaim his memory. In the back of his mind he's got to know that nobody gets dumped as he did from a speeding automobile in 1932 without the high probability that he was somehow mixed up in crime.There's a complicating factor too. Ordway has become involved with an attractive young woman who works with female ex-cons - Grace Fielding (Margaret Lindsay). At this point, Ordway doesn't even know if he has a wife out there somewhere, so he can't make plans with Grace until he knows his true marital status. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.This first in the series was probably never intended to be anything other than just one film, so this movie wraps up in a self-contained kind of way that will leave you wondering what ever happened to this or that character if you watch the whole series. It was a big hit, so Columbia released a whole series featuring the Dr. Robert Ordway character, always starring Warner Baxter, over the next seven years. The rest of the series focuses not so much on Ordway's life as it does on some mystery Ordway has wandered into and how he solves it, but in this first film the mystery is Ordway himself. Who is he really? And if he recovers his memory and the news is bad - will remembering alone make him a criminal all over again? Does a man need a clean slate of a mind to really have a clean slate? Interesting material done in the quick spartan way required by poverty row Columbia's budget, but done well all the same.

jpickerel This film is much better than what one might expect, given the studio that made it and the other films of this type put out at the time. Warner Baxter was a good actor, the supporting cast is able, and the writing is taut, uncomplicated and well-done. Direction, lighting and photography are professional. In short, there are few, if any, faults, and the film is well worth a watch. Leon Ames makes an early appearance in a somewhat far fetched sequence involving the rehabilitation of a hardened, bitter convict, but this is a minor, minor flaw in an otherwise very well constructed film. As another reviewer wrote, there are, thankfully, no dumb cops or simple minded assistants, just a well thought out plot and good acting.

Nojaa I recently saw all of the Crime Doctor movies on Turner Classic Movies. I'd sure like to see these made available on DVD, but it doesn't seem that they're available on ANY medium yet. I rather enjoyed all of the movies of the "Crime Doctor" series. I have a particular affinity for detective stories and crime dramas from that time period, in both the movie and radio formats. I consider them to be at least the same caliber as the "Thin Man" series, although "Crime Doctor" tended to be more cerebral, while Nick Charles was rather more flamboyant and party-hardy, and I suspect that Asta was smarter than he was!If the Crime Doctor is made available on DVD, perhaps they might at least be released on CD as an audio series. Perhaps I might even be able to find some of the original issues from Detective Comics.