| Captain Newman, M.D. | |
| Director: | David Miller |
| Producer: | Robert Arthur |
| Starring: | Gregory Peck Tony Curtis Angie Dickinson Eddie Albert James Gregory Bethel Leslie Robert Duvall Dick Sargent Larry Storch Bobby Darin |
| Music: | Frank Skinner |
| Cinematography: | Russell Metty |
| Editing: | Alma Macrorie |
| Studio: | Brentwood Productions Reynard Productions |
| Distributor: | Universal Pictures |
| Runtime: | 126 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $4.25 million (rentals)[1] |
Captain Newman, M.D. is a 1963 American comedy drama film directed by David Miller and starring Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, Eddie Albert and Bobby Darin. The film was co-produced by Peck's Brentwood Productions and Curtis' Reynard Productions.[2]
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 (years before that terminology was developed) 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.
The story was used as a 1972 television pilot of the same title produced by Danny Thomas Productions starring Jim Hutton in the title role and Joan Van Ark as Lt Corum.[3]
In 1944, Captain Josiah Newman is head of the neuro-psychiatric Ward 7 at the Colfax Army Air Field (AAF) 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, 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 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 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.
Newman treats shell-shocked, schizophrenic and catatonic patients, facing a special challenge from the traumatized Corporal Jim Tompkins, an Eighth Air Force air gunner whose mind has been shattered by his war experiences. Newman is bedeviled by Colfax AAF's "old-school" base commander, Colonel Pyser, 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 feuding orderlies keeps life interesting right up to Christmas 1944.
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.[4]
An attempt was made to turn the film into a TV sitcom by Thomas-Crenna Productions, the company of Danny Thomas and Richard Crenna. A pilot was shot in 1972, written by Frank Tarloff. It aired on ABC on August 19, 1972 as part of its unsold pilot anthology, ABC Comedy Showcase.[5] The Los Angeles Times said "it was easy to see why it was never sold."[6]