Captain Newman, M.D. (1963)

Directed by

David Miller

Genre

drama film, comedy film, war film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 06m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 34 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A compassionate Army psychiatrist runs a ward for soldiers with psychological wounds during World War II. He uses unconventional methods to reach men broken by combat, facing resistance from the military bureaucracy. The film balances moments of humor with the quiet sadness of treating battle trauma.

poignantwrygentlewar-adjacentcharacter-drivenbittersweetearnestmedical

What happens

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. Darin earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for the same category. 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. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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