Dr. Kildare Collection

Fresh out of medical school, young Dr. James Kildare decides to take a position at a large New York hospital instead of joining his father's country practice. In New York he meets the famous Dr. Leonard Gillespie who becomes his mentor. Kildare finds himself in serious trouble after he saves a suicidal woman who turns out to be an heiress with a powerful family.

Dr. James Kildare has just completed his internship at Blair General Hospital and is assigned to work with his mentor, Dr. Leonard Gillespie. But fearing for the health of his father, Dr. Stephen Kildare, he returns to his parents home to help him with his excessive workload. Dr. Kildaire Sr. is servicing a wide area ever since the doctors in neighboring towns moved elsewhere. Noting that three doctors at Blair General are doing menial jobs because they can't start their own practices, Kildare conceives the idea of building a clinic in Parkersville to be serviced by the three doctors and financed by the townsfolk paying ten cents a week to subscribe to the service. But influential men in Parkersville provide serious opposition to the plan.

Dr. Gillespie tries to teach Jimmy Kildare a lesson by tossing him into a street clinic. Only Kildare gets called to take a bullet out of a suspected murderer, and when the cops collar him for it, he has to try and prove his patient's innocence, especially for his sister Rosalie's sake.

Dr. Gillespie's cancer has gotten worse, and to force him to take a rest instead of pursuing a sulfa-drug/pneumonia study, Kildare refuses to assist Gillespie, and instead accepts a case of hysterical blindness. She's also the daughter of a millionaire who could help the hospital.

Kildare saves the life of an ice skater who was in an auto accident. But even though her broken leg has knit, she can't walk, and she tries to sue Kildare for malpractice, and Kildare's entire career and reputation now rests on making a proper diagnosis in the courtroom.

Dr. Jimmy Kildare and Nurse Mary Lamont are all sent to get married and her brother Doug Lamont has come to New York. When Jimmy meets him he notices strange behavior on his part such as sudden inattention or acting as if he was hearing sounds that are non-existent. The doctor starts to diagnose him and comes to the conclusion that he probably has epilepsy, a hereditary disease that could conceivably affect Mary as well, even though she has never shown any symptoms. Dr. Kildare is worried about this part of medicine and how you tell someone that they have a disease that they can do nothing about. It's left to Dr. Leonard Gillespie to come up with a solution and ensure that Jimmy and Mary can still get married.

It is a week before Dr. Kildare's wedding to pretty Nurse Mary Lamont. The hospital is a-buzz with preparation for the big day. Good old Dr. Gillespie, despite fatigue, has agreed to help a prominent orchestra conductor regain his hearing. But soon tragedy strikes . . . will the hospital ever be the same?

Dr. Jimmy Kildare is back at work at Blair General hospital, though several people admit that he is not himself since suffering his loss. He's taken a liking to a young intern, Don Winthrop, and tries to help him out when he transports an accident victim, socialite Cynthia "Cookie" Charles, to Blair General from outside the hospital's agreed territory. When the other hospital complains, Winthrop is fired. Soon after, his girlfriend, Nurse Anabelle Kirke, is also let go when she too misapplies hospital policy. Kildare pleads their case with the hospital Board but with little luck. He then gets the well-connected Cookie, who has a thing for him, to help to sort it out

Young Dr. Kildare is still being trained at General Hospital by old, crusty Dr. Gillespie. This time, he tries to rehabilitate Gregory Lane, a brain surgeon depressed over losing too many patients (and incidentally Kildare's romantic rival for nurse Mary Lamont). Lane's losing streak takes a new turn when one of his patients survives...but seems to be insane. Or is the man's strange obsession with Friday the clue to a mystery? To find out, Kildare must take a terrible risk.

Dr. Gillespie's health is failing, and the hospital is urging him to get a new assistant that he doesn't want. So, he poses a stumper in class to discourage all the bright young students. Unfortunately, he gets three smart-alecky youngsters who all know the answer: Randall Adams (clean-cut American type), Lee Wong How (from Brooklyn), and Dennis LIndsey (Aussie). In typical Gillespie fashion, he sets about showing them there's more to doctoring than book-learning, and assigns each intern to an impossible case of diagnosis, saying that whoever gets it right will become his new assistant.

After Roy, a homicidal maniac was put away for murder, Gillespie tried to get him committed to an insane asylum instead. Now his ex-fiancée wants to marry a soldier, and she goes to Gillespie for advice about Roy. Meanwhile, Red's pursued by a pretty socialite, Lee encourages a double-amputee to live, Gillespie and the boys fight to save little Margaret from an epidemic in the children's ward, and Roy breaks out of prison...with a gun.

Gillespie has to finally choose his official assistant, or Red and Lee are going to kill themselves in competition. So, it's another diagnosis competition. Lee's assignment is a small girl who falls ill whenever she eats candy. Red has to cure a girl's mother of a debilitating case of arthritis. But when Red needs Lee's help, will either one live with Gillespie's choice?

Red's still being chased by his rich society girlfriend, and while he's dodging her proposals of marriage, he takes the time to cure a nightclub singer of her inability to eat ("neuro-psychological self-starvation"), and to operate on the emergency switchboard operator, who's alarmed everybody by suddenly collapsing.

Dr. Leonard Gillespie, for several reasons and not all medically related, asks a young surgeon, Dr. Tommy Coalt, to go to a small town and replace a local doctor while he is on vacation. There, Coalt is asked to sign commitment papers on a young lady, Cynthia Grace who is allegedly insane. Coalt thinks there is something amiss and begins his own investigation.

Dr. Gillespie is contacted by his old friend Emma Hope, headmistress of a prestigious girls school. She's concerned about Roy Todwell, the young man one of her girls, Marcia Bradburn, has been seeing. Todwell has shown serious bouts of violence over the most minor event and working with a colleague, Dr. Gerniede, Gillespie concludes that the young man is suffering from serious mental illness. He has little success in convincing Todwell's parents of the seriousness of it all - they prefer to take the opinion of their own physician who thinks psychiatry is just a lot of mumbo jumbo - and the young man's condition deteriorates. Todwell soon sets out for New York with only one goal in mind - to kill Dr. Gillespie.

In a fantastically art-deco hospital, young Dr. Kildare treats and falls for impoverished Janet Healy, widow of a bank robber, who's been in prison and can't find her baby. Later she helps Kildare sew up gangster Hanlon in a tavern back room. Kildare pursues Janet and enlists Hanlon to help her; the gangster's solution, not surprisingly, is violent.