For National Doctors Day: Several Classic Comedy Doctors

Happy National Doctors Day! In keeping with our usual modus operandi, we observe this celebratory day less by honoring the actual medical heroes themselves than their representation in vaudeville, classic comedy, and beyond.

There are many classic doctor comedies, yet fewer than you might think. One could be forgiven for assuming that every comedian had their “doctor bit”, but that’s not so. As always I have my own theories as to why. I think overall society reveres the profession; doctors are “life saving saints” so it’s tough to make them funny. Also, many comical characters are presented as idiotic and foolish, so it stretches plausibility. Thus comedy about them tends to be of three types: 1) parody of the medical genre itself; 2) Satirical comedy about quacks; and 3) gentle character humor. Here are some particular ones we thought of. We’ll undoubtedly add over time. As always, follow the links to learn much more about the selected subjects. And much of the earlier stuff is available to watch on Youtube. I’ve stopped linking to there, but you have a brain and fingers; you know very well how to go to that site and find videos.

Smith and Dale’s “Dr. Kronkheit and His Only Living Patient” sketch is the vaudeville doctor sketch to end all vaudeville doctor sketches. The comedy team premiered it vaudeville in the 1920s; it was later immortalized on film, and they trotted it out repeatedly on The Ed Sullivan Show for decades. It was also paid loving tribute by Neil Simon in his Broadway play and movie The Sunshine Boys.

Fatty Arbuckle’sOh Doctor (1917) has some medical business, but mostly capers around betwixt the race track and business with stolen jewels. Young Buster Keaton plays his son, and there’s also Al St John, Alice Lake, and Alice Mann.

Goodnight Nurse (1918), another Arbuckle comedy, is much more what we think of as a doctor comedy, with Arbuckle as an alcoholism patient, and Keaton as a traditional comedy doctor of the sawbones variety. It has a little in common with Chaplin’s The Cure(1917), which we don’t include here because Charlie isn’t the doc in that one; it’s strictly a drunk turn.

Harold Lloyd had played a doctor in his earlier High and Dizzy (1920), though that short was less about his profession than one of his “guy trapped on the outside of a skyscraper” thrill comedies. However, his feature Dr. Jack (1922) puts the medical profession front and center. Harold plays a young G.P. with a heart so soft he send most of his patients away with sensible advice rather than cater to their delusions of illness. It’s one of his cuter, more earnest comedies, and far from his funniest.

Doctor Bull (1933) is the first installment in an unjustly forgotten trilogy of Will Rogers comedies directed by John Ford (Ford’s comedy high water mark, for what it’s worth. A related post here). In Doctor Bull Will plays a simple country doctor who must confront bigotry and silliness in his small town, on top of disease. With a cast that includes Andy Devine, Patsy O’Byrne, Louise Dresser, Ralph Morgan, Marian Nixon, Rochelle Hudson, et al.

Men in Black (1934) is justly one of the most beloved of all the comedy shorts starring the Three Stooges, by virtue of the surreal, fast paced vaudeville humor, reminiscent of the Marx Brothers and Burns and Allen. The title is a parody of course of stage and screen hit Men in White, which virtually launched the medical drama as a genre, though the movie itself has very little to do with it. There is a wonderful, ritualistic repetition to the comedy here as well: the boys’ repeated declaration “For Duty and Humanity!”, the P.A. system continually paging “Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!” and the shattering of the window in their supervisor’s door. I’d hesitate to ever say “If there is only ONE Three Stooges short to watch, this is it” because this one is somewhat atypical — it doesn’t represent their usual comedy formula, which is ordinary more about physical slapstick. On the other hand, if you never intend to investigate them at all, I’d recommend this one, strictly for the laughs it delivers. The photo above also depicts cast members Bud Jamison and (in drag) Little Billy Rhodes. The cast also includes such classic comedy stalwarts as Dell Henderson,Ruth Hiatt, Billy Gilbert, and Hank Mann.

The Marx Brothers went there, albeit by a circuitous route. In A Day at the Races (1937) Groucho plays a veterinarian who is hired to run a sanitarium. Chico is some sort of factotum, Harpo a stable boy. And somehow, in one of the film’s highlights, the three are compelled to conduct an “examination” before a panel of medical authorities. The bit is full of funny gags, and would very nearly work on its own as a stand-alone sketch in the “Dr. Kronkheit” vein. If only the rest of the movie was this good!

The Disorderly Orderly (1964), written and directed by Frank Tashlin, is one of Jerry Lewis’s funniest solo movies, full stop. That’s right! I said it! Jerry plays an aspiring doctor with the distinct handicap of having some condition that causes him to acquire the symptoms of his patients. While he struggles to overcome it, he works at the titular job description.

Carry On Doctor (1967) — one of a series of popular British Carry On comedies that burlesqued nearly every screen genre and field of endeavor. It was followed by a sequel Carry On Again, Doctor two years later.

Monty Python did more medically themed sketches, bits and songs than I have the time or space to enumerate here. I will observe that with their dead serious faces and Cambridge and Oxford manners, they are more than convincing as English doctors, which of course sells their absurdist premises.

Both the original movie M*A*S*H (1970) and the tv sitcom version (1972-83) do double duty as medical comedy and military comedy, and embrace satire as well as drama. It was groundbreaking in exploring things that had been taboo on screen in the past. Do wisecracks go with squirting blood? Well, NOTHING goes with squirting blood — that’s the point!

“”If you were mad about MASH,” reads the poster above, “you’ll be delirious about The Hospital!”. The folks who had to market this film have all my sympathy. It’s one of my favorite movies, but I reckon it’s for almost no one else. This black comedy satire about the morass of America’s healthcare system is in the grim comic vein of Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux. It’s tone is basically, “This world sucks — chuckle with me as I set it on fire!” Written by PaddyChayefsky, almost as a kind of dress rehearsal for Network, it’s directed by Arthur Hiller and stars George C. Scott, who believe it or not, is pretty perfect, because he carries over satirical associations from Dr. Strangelove. The plot concerns a series of seemingly accidental deaths caused by the hospital’s own bureaucracy. His love interest is Diana Rigg, which I guess is okay since in Petulia it had been Julie Christie and in real life it was Trish Van Devere. What did these hot chicks SEE in that psycho old sot?

Having already championed the Three Stooges and Jerry Lewis here, I’m hardly about to be above Hee Haw. I grew up on the show, but I’ve learned to appreciate it more as I grow older and can identify the traditional sources the show draws from. Hee Haw star and head writer Archie Campbell made these doctor sketches one of his most popular bits on the show, mixing elements of Dr Kronkeit type business with more rural medicine show type humor. The sexy Nurse Goodbody was portrayed by Gunilla Hutton of Petticoat Junction.

An unjustly forgotten sitcom from the MTM-iverse,Doc (1975) starred Barnard Hughes as a loveable old GP surrounded by crazies (not unlike the formula of the concurrent Bob Newhart Show). Eagle eyes like mine make the connection that Hughes played an insane doctor in The Hospital (above) — hard to unsee when he wears a white lab jacket. With a cast that included Elizabeth Wilson,Mary Wickes, Professor Irwin Corey, Herbie Faye, David Ogden Stiers, and Audra Lindley.

House Calls, both the 1978 film and the 1979-82 sitcom, are more like character comedies, or comedies of manners. I did a special post untangling them and the similar Trapper John M.D. here.

Young Doctors in Love (1982) was Garry Marshall’s lukewarm soap opera parody featuring Michael McKean, Michael Richards, Taylor Negron,Tito Vandis, Dabney Coleman,Patrick Mcnee, Pamela Reed, and many others. With cast like that (and in the era of ZAZ and Mel Brooks) I wanted it to be much, much, much funnier than it was.

St Elsewhere (1982-88) was a dramedy of course, but with an unprecedentedly high component of comedy, based on the model of its cop show predecessor Hill Street Blues. The cast included comedians Howie Mandel and Ed BegleyJr,David Birney from the sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie, and the highly comical William Daniels from Captain Nice, The Graduate, and 1776, with Ed Flanders playing straight man. Aspects of its successful formula were borrowed on later shows such as ER and Grey’s Anatomy.

The surreal, zany and slapsticky Scrubs (2001-2010) succeeded where Young Doctors in Love failed, I believe — an extremely funny medically themed show. It gave us Zach Braff! As the flights of fancy came from the main character’s imagination, it allowed for legit storylines at the same time. Highly entertaining, at least in the first few seasons.

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Chagrined that I “missed something” that you think ought to be included on this list? Fuck off and write your own blogpost! And I mean that in the most loving sense possible. Dr. Trav’s prescription for health and happiness (mine!) on this National Doctor’s Day.

And for more on vaudeville, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,and for more on classic comedy read  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And please keep an eye out forVaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming out from Bear Manor Media this November!