Shout Factory | 1969 | 1380 mins. | Not Rated
Despite signing a contract with MGM at the dawn of the thirties, Robert Young was delegated to B-movies. His big break came when he said “yes” to a radio show. Father Knows Best became a hit on the air waves, running from 1949-1954. Young was the only member of the radio cast to be retained when Father Knows Best made the move to television in October of 1954. The series enjoyed a six-year run, with Young becoming one of America’s favorite television fathers, and picking up four Emmy nominations and two wins along the way.
Not to many television stars have had success in two very different shows. Mary Tyler Moore did it with The Dick Van Dyke Show, and later, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but she is one of only a few truly successful examples. Another is Robert Young, himself. He parlayed his much loved father figure image into another popular TV series—Marcus Welby, M.D.—once more he would dispense kindly advice, this time mixed with medicine. Marcus Welby, M.D.” premiered in 1969 and ran until 1976, become another one of Robert Young’s beloved characters.
Titled “A Matter of Humanities” the two-hour pilot for Marcus Welby, M.D. represents one of the best starts for a television series in recent memory. When we first see Welby, he’s on the bench at a high school football game and viewers are set up to watch him leap into action when a receiver smacks into the goal post and appears seriously hurt. Predictably, Welby rushes out there with his doctor’s bag–he’s old school, and even makes house calls—when suddenly his heart fails him, and the next thing we know he’s being rushed to the hospital. That hard-hitting opening sequence parallels the wake-up call that Welby gets. He’s getting too old to be putting in the long hours of a general practitioner in an age of specialization. Either he has to take the job an old friend offered him supervising interns at a teaching hospital, or else he has to take on an assistant to make the workload more manageable at his practice.
Enter James Brolin as Dr. Steven Kiley, a brash intern who thinks he wants to specialize in neurology but is moved when Welby delivers a talk at one of the hospital’s informal lunches. The bigger motivation is money. Kiley needs it, and Welby pays more than anything he’d get in residency. And so the handsome, motorcycle-riding Dr. Kiley accepts Welby’s offer and gets a shingle under the sedan-driving Dr. Welby’s, whose practice is on the first floor of his residence . . . which is where Dr. Kiley will also live.
The pilot is filled with all sorts of dramatic tension and plot twists. There’s even a little romance, as widower Welby is in a relationship with Myra Sherwood played by Oscar winner Anne Baxter, who had a recurring role on the show. After the pilot, Young and Brolin were joined by Elena Verdugo, as nurse Consuelo Lopez.
While not all of Marcus Welby’s 26 first season episodes managed to maintain the dramatic tension of the pilot, most of them are solid and several dealt with hot button issues of the time. In “The Foal,” Dr. Welby tries to help a young autistic child (Brian Dewey), achieve a breakthrough. The goal is to teach him to say his name so he will be allowed to attend school. In “Silken Threads and Silver Hooks,” A
husband starts filming a documentary on his actress-wife’s (Barbara Rush) recovery from a stroke, despite warnings from Dr. Welby. Because this episode aired in 1969, I can’t help but wonder if this was inspired by the story of Patricia Neal. In 1965, the Oscar winning actress suffered a series of debilitating strokes. She made an unexpected return to films in 1968’s The Subject Was Roses, due in large part to the unorthodox therapy methods of her then husband, Roald Dahl.
In “Homecoming,” a young man (Robert Lipton) returns home after a long illness and bursts into Dr. Welby’s office suffering from a violent “acid flash.” While definitely an episode of the time, this episode manages to be affecting even today. Especially since Dr. Kiley makes some surprising assumptions about young drug users.
There is also one episode here that will be of interest to film historians. A young Steven Spielberg directed “The Daredevil Gesture,” in which a hemophiliac teenager risks his life to rescue a companion who has fallen down a ravine.
I found Marcus Welby: Season One a joy to watch and it’s safe to say viewers felt the same way forty years ago. It finished the year in eighth place as the third most-watched TV drama, behind two Westerns: Gunsmoke and Bonanza. Further, the show essentially swept the Emmys in 1970, winning for Outstanding Dramatic Series, Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Brolin), Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series (Young), and Outstanding Cinematography.
Here’s a rundown of the episodes, as described in a full-color, 10-page booklet that fans will appreciate (with copious photos and clever pages that look like prescription paper):
1.) “Hello, Goodbye, Hello.” An outgoing schoolteacher with only a few months to live goes into seclusion, and Dr. Kiley attempts to get her to live the life she has left.
2.) “The Foal.” Dr. Welby attempts to help a withdrawn autistic child communicate despite pressure from the child’s parents and an unfeeling psychologist.
3) “Don’t Ignore the Miracles.” A 42-year-old woman wants an illegal abortion after learning that her husband is having an affair 19 years into a happy but childless marriage.
4.) “Silken Threads and Silver Hooks.” Dr. Welby attempts to discourage a husband from filming a documentary on his actress-wife’s recovery from a stroke.
5.) “All Flags Flying.” The doctors struggle to discourage an aging war hero from sailing alone to the South Pacific, as the voyage could prove fatal.
6.) “Echo of a Baby’s Laugh.” Dr. Welby examines a young wife in her third trimester and discovers a condition in her blood that could spell trouble for the baby and reveal a long-kept secret to her husband.
7.) “The White Cane.” A blind couple’s relationship is tested when an operation restores the young man’s sight and they have to reconcile their worlds.
8.) “The Vrahnas Demon.” An aging yet robust diver refuses to take Dr. Welby’s advice to slow down after he’s informed that he has emphysema.
9.) “Madonna with Knapsack and Flute.” Myra takes a pregnant hippie whom Dr. Welby is treating for mononucleosis into her home and develops an emotional attachment, despite Welby’s warning not to.
10.) “Homecoming.” Dr. Welby and Dr. Kiley disagree on the treatment needed for a recovering drug addict who suffers from the aftereffects of LSD.
11.) “Let Ernest Come Over.” A policeman who is up for a promotion wishes to keep his illness quiet, but Dr. Welby is unwilling to keep the ailment secret because it may hinder the officer in completing his duties.
12.) “The Chemistry of Hope.” Parents of a teenaged boy with leukemia refuse to allow Dr. Welby to inform him of his condition.
13.) “Neither Punch nor Judy.” A priest friend of Dr. Welby’s suffers severe asthmatic attacks due to pressure from his parishioners. The pressure increases when he is unable to restore an injured man’s will to live.
14.) “Diagnosis: Fear.” A basketball player seeks out a faith healer for his injured knee instead of having the surgery Dr. Welby recommends.
15.) “The Soft Phrase of Peace.” Dr. Welby treats the son of a black leader who is injured by police during a demonstration.
16.) “Fun and Games and Michael Ambrose.” A diabetic threatens to stop taking his insulin shots to get even with his father, whom he blames for his mother’s suffering.
17.) “The Legacy.” Consuelo’s mother is diagnosed with a malignant tumor, and although she accepts the doctor’s diagnosis, she finds it hard to accept her roommate, a sour woman dealing with a heart condition.
18.) “Dance to No Music.” Doctors Welby and Kiley conduct tests to determine if a scientist has Huntington’s, a hereditary disease he’s convinced he’s afflicted with. His condition worsens upon learning that his wife is pregnant.
19.) “Go Get ‘Em, Tiger.” Dr. Kiley has to choose between his duty as a doctor and an old friendship when he’s called on to give a friend, a reformed drug addict, a physical exam to fulfill a job requirement.
20.) “Nobody Wants a Fat Jockey.” Despite suffering fainting spells, a young jockey does everything he can to lose weight for the most important race of his life, and in doing so he collapses and is hospitalized.
21.) “The Other Side of the Chart.” When Dr. Kiley is hospitalized for chicken pox, he becomes interested in an exploratory surgery case and attempts to convince the doctor to try alternate testing.
22.) “The Merely Syndrome.” Though she underwent a successful heart surgery as a young girl, a newlywed suffers heart seizures as an adult. Wanting a full life, she pushes the limits despite an overprotective husband.
23.)”Sea of Security.” A student with decompression syndrome insists on one more dive for his degree in oceanography despite Dr. Welby’s advice.
24.) “The Daredevil Gesture.” A hemophiliac begs Dr. Welby to keep his condition secret from his new schoolmates. Dr. Welby is concerned that he risks his health to achieve a normal teenage existence.
25.) “Enid.” Dr. Kiley rescues a young boy with asthma and meets Enid Cooper, a compassionate counselor at an orphanage whose medicine cabinet suggests a dependence on prescription drugs.
26.) “The Rebel Doctor.” Dr. Welby steps in to help a former classmate of Dr. Kiley’s, a maverick young doctor who is fighting to keep his neighborhood clinic operational.
The video transfer looks surprisingly good. Presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, there’s the usual grain that you’d expect from a 1969 TV series, but the colors retain much of their original hues and there’s a surprising sharpness in many scenes.
The audio is a Dolby Digital Mono that’s fairly clean and distortion-free.
Aside from the two-hour pilot and the cool booklet, there are no bonus episodes. However, the packaging is very sturdy with no discs touching.
