WELCOME STRANGER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 429, 12 September 1947, Page 24

WELCOME STRANGER

(Paramount)

HIS is virtually a_ ‘remake of Going My Way, or at any rate a very obvious imitation achieved by the simple process of costarring Bing Crosby. and

Barry Fitzgerald as brother-doctors instead of as brother-priests and by substituting stethoscopes for crucifixes, It (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) succeeds better than such attempts to cash in on an early success usually door deserve to. Barry Fitzgerald is Dr. McRory, a crusty but much-loved old Irish G.P. in a small American town, who spends most of the picture trying to take a welldeserved vacation. On the train returning from Boston, where he has gone to engage a locum, he runs foul of a brash but well-meaning young man (Bing Crosby) who, of course, turns out to be Dr. Pearson, chosen to hold the fort while the old man goes on holiday. From _ this imauspicious introduction, they wrangle their way through the first half the picture, until the young fellow ~@¥sinuates himself into the old boy’s good \ sees by successfully removing his burst appendix (Good touch: Dr. McRory, mistrusting his colleague’s skill, insists on being given only a local anaesthetic and then, by means of a mirror, carries on like a baak-seat driver throughout the operation). After this, though still argumentative, fhe two are as warmly friendly as they ee previously antagonistic, and the script-writer and the director are conse- _ quently hard put to it to spin the story out.to feature length, They do what they can to supplement the interest by making Bing sing one or two songs, and by introducing Joan Caulfield as a pretty schoolmistress im order that Dr. Pearson may fall in love, Dr. McRory may play Cupid, and there may be jealous dirtywork on the part of the jilted townchemist. They also, probably unintentionally, provide one or two rather unflattering sidelights on American medical practice (no Social Security there: fees are a worry to doctors as well as’ to patients!), as well as on social conduct (for example the sleigh-ride, an unblushing pretext for public love-making). But everything, of course, really depends on the stars. By exerting their personalities to the full and using all the tricks of their repertoire-including the brogue of Barry Fitzgerald, who can "make extracts from the Medical Journa] sound as if they had been written by Sean O’Casey"-these two actors manage to ‘ turn Welcome Stranger into an agréeably amusing, if undistinguished, movie.