Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett, and Myrna Loy. It was adapted from Sinclair Lewis's 1925 novel Arrowsmith by Sidney Howard, departing substantially from the book regarding Arrowsmith's womanizing and other key plot elements. The pre-Code film received four Oscar nominations, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Writing, Adaptation (Howard), Best Cinematography (Ray June), and Best Art Direction (Richard Day). Plot An idealistic young medical student, Martin Arrowsmith, introduces himself assertively to Dr. Max Gottlieb, a noted bacteriologist. Though Gottlieb deems Arrowsmith not yet ready to study with him, he is impressed by the young man's determination and honest self-appraisal, and encourages him to take the standard course of study first. When Arrowsmith graduates, Gottlieb offers him a position as his research assistant, but the young man reluctantly turns him down, having fallen in love with a nurse, Leora. He would be unable to support her on a research assistant's meager salary. He marries, and the couple sets off for Leora's rural home town in South Dakota. Unhappy with the vicissitudes of his medical practice there, he is drawn by a former client across the boundary into veterinary medicine when the man's cows are dying - even faster when given injections by the local state health official. Determined to find a cure of his own, he carries out scientific research in his kitchen, eventually developing a successful serum. Reinvigorated, he decides to abandon his practice and join Gottlieb as a research scientist at the renowned and extremely well-funded McGurk Institute in New York. Meanwhile, Leora miscarries and cannot have any more children, so she devotes herself to her husband's career. After two fallow years at McGurk, Arrowsmith stumbles onto an antibiotic serum that he does not understand (and is unsure how he produced), yet has demonstrated the ability to kill at least one type of germ. He shortly is able to replicate it, and in order to study its efficacy on other microbes is sent to the West Indies, where a virulent outbreak of bubonic plague has arisen. He is coincidentally teamed with a popular Swedish lecturer on "Heroes of Health" he once met while still in South Dakota, Dr. Gustav Sondelius, who is extremely enthusiastic over both the team and the serum's prospects to help cure the disease.