Crime Doctor (film)

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Crime Doctor
Directed by	Michael Gordon
Produced by	Ralph Cohn
Written by	C. Graham Baker Louis Lantz Max Marcin (radio series Crime Doctor) Jerome Odlum (adaptation)
Starring	Warner Baxter Margaret Lindsay John Litel
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	June 22, 1943
Running time	66 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Followed by	Crime Doctor's Strangest Case
IMDb profile

Crime Doctor (1943) is a crime film starring Warner Baxter as a man with amnesia determined to remember his past. The film, released by Columbia Pictures, was based on the Crime Doctor radio program and spawned nine sequels:

Crime Doctor's Strangest Case (1943)
Shadows in the Night (1944)
The Crime Doctor's Courage (1945)
Crime Doctor's Warning (1945)
Just Before Dark (1946)
Crime Doctor's Man Hunt (1946)
The Millerson Case (1947)
Crime Doctor's Gamble (1947)
The Crime Doctor's Diary (1949)

[edit] Plot summary

During the Great Depression, a man (Warner Baxter) is thrown out of a speeding car. When he comes to in a hospital, he finds he has amnesia. However, he is visited by a man who doesn't believe he cannot remember who he is. He calls the patient Phil and demands to know what happened to a valise, but runs away when Phil buzzes for help. When he recovers, he takes the name Robert Ordway, after a hospital benefactor.

Ordway's doctor, John Carey (Ray Collins, who portrayed Ordway on the radio show), wants to continue treating him after he is released and offers him a room in his house. All attempts to discover his identity fail, so Ordway decides to learn all he can about his condition. After ten years, he has become a successful psychiatrist, in partnership with Carey. Ordway begins treating prison inmates. He is so successful, he is named head of the state parole board.

While on a date in a nightclub with social worker Grace Fielding (Margaret Lindsay), he is recognized by two men from his past, Joe Dylan (Harold Huber) and Nick Ferris (Don Costello). They and a third man, Emilio Caspari (John Litel), are unsure if he is their partner in crime, so they get a prisoner, his girlfriend Pearl Adams (an uncredited Dorothy Tree), to apply for parole. At her hearing, she calls Ordway Dr. Morgan. He badgers her until she finally reveals that he is indeed Phil Morgan, the mastermind of a $200,000 payroll robbery, from which the money was never recovered.

In an attempt to remember, he contacts the three men and reenacts the events of the day he lost his memory. Tempers flair and the men fight; during the struggle, Ordway is struck on the head and recovers his past. He also ends up with the gun. He calls the police and has the gang arrested.

Then he insists on being tried for the robbery. The jury finds him guilty, but recommends clemency. The judge sentences him to the minimum term of ten years, but suspends the sentence.