A year after Gregory Peck’s magnificent performance in To Kill a Mockingbird turned his heroic character, Atticus Finch, into an unforgettable icon, he played another paragon of human understanding and a passion for justice. Captain Newman M.D. stars Peck as a World War II-era military psychiatrist running an Arizona-based hospital ward. The facility is dedicated to soldiers and pilots suffering from the psychological effects of battle, and Newman-—his unit understaffed and his mandate undercut by senior officers skeptical of war-induced mental illness—has his hands full.
Helping him to no small extent is an orderly, Corporal Jake Leibowitz (Tony Curtis), a New Jersey-born hustler with an equal interest in understanding the damaged conditions of the patients and pulling minor scams to boost the ward’s morale. Also on hand is Lieutenant Francie Corum (Angie Dickinson), a nurse in a somewhat ambivalent romantic relationship with Newman.
Based on a 1961 novel by Leo Rostan, the film, engagingly directed by David Miller (Sudden Fear), works as an irresistible showcase for actors, playing Newman’s patients, to chew scenery and get away with it. Eddie Albert has a whale of a good time as Colonel Bliss, whose orders to send soldiers to their deaths has cost him his sanity.
Insisting that Bliss is gone and he is now “Mr. Future,” the old soldier becomes lost in his psychotic break from reality, and Albert portrays Bliss as a kind of riddle-mongering, smirking clown. Singer Bobby Darin has a star turn as Corporal Tompkins, an air gunner suffering from the shock of a nightmarish event he witnessed but can’t discuss without sodium pentothal. And Robert Duvall—Atticus’ Boo Radley in Mockingbird—is memorable as Captain Winston, turned catatonic after more than a year hiding from the Nazis.
Captain Newman, M.D. straddles stirring drama and cathartic comedy in a way that reminds one of television’s MASH, provoking tears over limitless human sorrow and laughs whenever Newman’s herd of sheep (which he keeps for experiments) runs amok on his base’s airfield. An altogether enjoyable production with a heart, Captain Newman, M.D. is a winner. Strongly recommended.