Crime Doctor (1943)

A man's body is hurled from a car speeding down a country road late at night. It is discovered by some local residents and they take the wounded man, Phil Morgan (Warner Baxter), to a nearby hospital. When the latter regains consciousness, it develops that the presumed-accident caused him to lose all knowledge of his identity and not a clue can be found among his personal effects. Meanwhile, the attending nurses have nick-named him Ordway, and the name sticks. On leaving the hospital Ordway goes to live with Doctor Carey (Ray Collins) and the doctor helps him build a new life. He studies medicine and ten years later he has become a highly respected and successful psychiatrist. He is particularly skillful in the rehabilitation of criminals. In his work, he meets Grace Fielding (Margaret Lindsay, an attractive social worker, and falls in love with her. Eventually, by virtue of his outstanding work among criminals, Doctor Ordway is made head of the state parole board. A prisoner, Pearl Adams (Dorothy Tree), applies for a parole. It is refused and, in a fury, she reveals Dr. Ordway's former identity as Phil Morgan, clever criminal master-mind who worked with a gang including Pearl. Morgan was the one who put the money from a $200, 000 payroll robbery. Later, when the gang met in Morgan's hotel room, the valise was empty. Unknow to Morgan, the gang-leader,Emeillo Caspair, had switched suitcases on Morgan. Accussing Morgan of double-crossing them the gang had taken him for a one-way ride and thought they had killed him. Ordway resigns as head of the parole board. Through Pearl he meets with the gang members at the same hotel room, still thinking he has the stolen money, and asks them to reconstruct the events of the robbery that night. The reconstruction reveals the true culprit but in a struggle he is hit on the head and that causes him to regain his memory. He turns himself and the gang over to the police. A trial is held and on the record of his new life, Dr. Ordway is exonerated.