Captain Newman, M.D.

Captain Newman, M.D.

Theatrical poster
Directed by David Miller
Produced by Robert Arthur
Written by Richard L. Breen
Henry Ephron
Phoebe Ephron
Starring Gregory Peck
Tony Curtis
Angie Dickinson
Robert Duvall
Eddie Albert
Bobby Darin
Music by Russell Garcia
Frank Skinner (composer)
Cinematography Russell Metty
Edited by Alma Macrorie
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release dates
  • December 23, 1963 (1963-12-23)
Running time
 126 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Box office $4.25 million (rentals)[1]

Captain Newman, M.D. is a 1963 American film starring Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, Eddie Albert and Bobby Darin. It was directed by David Miller and filmed on location at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

The film is based on the 1961 novel by Leo Rosten. It was loosely based on the World War II experiences of Rosten's close friend Ralph Greenson, M.D., while Greenson was a captain in the Army Medical Corps supporting the U.S. Army Air Forces and stationed at Yuma Army Airfield in Yuma, Arizona. Greenson is well known for his work on "empathy" and was one of the first in his field to seriously associate posttraumatic stress disorder with wartime experiences. He was a director of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute and was a practicing Freudian. Greenson is perhaps best known for his patients, who included Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Vivien Leigh.

Major filming took place at the U.S. Army's Fort Huachuca complex in southern Arizona, with the co-located Libby Army Airfield used to portray the fictional Colfax Army Air Field.

Plot

In 1944, Captain Josiah Newman (Peck) is head of the neuro-psychiatric Ward 7 at the Colfax Army Air Field military hospital, located in the Arizona desert. As he explains to a visiting VIP who wanders in: "We're short of beds, doctors, orderlies, nurses, everything ... except patients." He will use unconventional tactics to treat his patients and to recruit much needed personnel, as when he hijacks a new and very reluctant orderly, Corporal Jackson Leibowitz (Curtis), a wheeler-dealer from New Jersey. Leibowitz promptly has the entire ward participating in a sing-along of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

Newman also takes great pains to court nurse Lieutenant Francie Corum (Dickinson) on what she thinks is a date... until he asks her to transfer to Ward 7. Their 'date/fight' is cut short by a phone call: Colonel Bliss (Albert) has forced his way into Ward 7 looking for Dr. Newman with a 6-inch knife, because Newman blocked his return to active duty after witnessing Bliss' erratic behavior. After watching Newman's handling of this situation and other patients on the ward, Corum transfers in.

As Newman treats tragically shell-shocked, schizophrenic and catatonic patients, particularly the traumatized Corporal Jim Tompkins, an Eighth Air Force air gunner who symbolizes all of the post-traumatic stress disorder patients on the NP ward, he is hilariously bedeviled by Colfax AAF's "old-school" base commander, Colonel Pyser (Gregory), who ultimately saddles him with a complement of injured Italian POWs because his is the only secure ward in the hospital. In addition, a flock of constantly straying sheep (kept for the medical lab) that find their way to the airfield and a set of wise-ass, feuding orderlies keeps life interesting right up to Christmas 1944.

Cast

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.[2]

Bobby Darin won the French Film Critics Award for best actor at the Cannes Film Festival.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Big Rental Pictures of 1964", Variety, 6 January 1965 p 39. Please note this figure is rentals accruing to distributors not total gross.
  2. ↑ "The 36th Academy Awards (1964) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-08-23.

External links

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