TV Quote of the Day (‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ As Larry Vents About Calling Doctors on Weekends)

Larry David [played by Larry David]: “Why don't we just call your doctor?”

Cheryl [played by Cheryl Hines]: “You can't call my doctor on the weekends, unless it's a life-threatening emergency.”

Larry: “What?”

Cheryl: “Yeah, if you call his machine, it'll tell you you can't page him.”

Larry: “You called up and that's what it said?”

Cheryl: “Yeah.”

Larry: “That is obscene, you know that?” [imitating the doctor] " ‘Can't disturb the doctor on the weekend! Don't call Dr. Zeppler on the weekend unless it's life-threatening!’"

Cheryl: “Okay, okay.”

Larry [imitates the doctor's wife]: " ‘Norman, is someone calling? Who's calling? We're in the middle of dinner, Norman!’"

Cheryl: “Larry…”

Larry: "‘This better be life-threatening or you're not gonna leave this house!’"

Cheryl: “Larry, please. I'm begging you!”

Larry: "‘Norman! Unless they were burned in a fire I don't want you getting up from your chair. Do you understand, Norman?’"—Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 1, Episode 9, “Affirmative Action,” original air date Dec. 10, 2000, teleplay by Larry David, directed by Bryan Gordon 

Quote of the Day (René Leriche, on the Patient’s ‘Contact With His Surgeon’)

"The individual on whom we operate is more than a physiological mechanism. He thinks, he fears, his body trembles if he lacks the comfort of a sympathetic face. For him nothing will replace the salutary contact with his surgeon, the exchange of looks, the feeling that the doctor has taken charge, with the certainty, at least apparent, of winning." —French surgeon René Leriche (1879-1955), Foreword to “La philosophie de la Chirurgie” (Philosophy of Surgery) (1951), translated by Roberta Hurwitz

The image accompanying this post comes from Calling Dr. Kildare (1939), the second of a nine-film MGM series starring Lew Ayres (far right) as the idealistic titular character in a big-city hospital.

Though these movies date back more than 80 years, it’s probably easier to find them (courtesy of TCM) than episodes of the 1961-66 NBC medical drama Dr. Kildare, with Richard Chamberlain in the role of the intern and Raymond Massey as his veteran surgeon mentor Dr. Gillespie. And the 24 episodes of the 1972-73 syndicated series Young Dr. Kildare might as well be on the endangered species list.

Nevertheless, Dr. Kildare (who began, incidentally, as a character in a 1936 short story by Max Brand, better known for creating Westerns), remains the ideal caring doctor that patients yearn for—the same kind that pioneering vascular surgeon and pain-management specialist René Leriche hailed, in the above quote.

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, Suggesting Medical Freebies)

“I don't spend thousands of dollars a year at the bookstore or the dry cleaners or the local coffee shop, yet every couple of months or so, the owners throw a freebie my way. On the other hand, I do spend thousands of dollars a year at the doctor's. So wouldn't it be nice if every so often the doctor said: ‘Hey, you've been a loyal customer; this nasal endoscopy's on the house’? It would also be nice if my acupuncturist said, ‘Your money’s no good here, pal. I got this baby covered.’ And I'd love it if my physical therapist said, ‘C'mon, let me grab that check for a change.’ It would also be nice to get every fourth root canal free.”—Joe Queenan, “Is There a Doctor on the House?”, The Wall Street Journal, July 11-12, 2015

Quote of the Day (Albert Murray, on the ‘Stress and Strain’ Endured by Heroes)

“Heroism, which like the sword is nothing if not steadfast, is measured in terms of the stress and strain it can endure and the magnitude and complexity of the obstacles it overcomes. Thus difficulties and vicissitudes which beset the potential hero on all sides not only threaten his existence and jeopardize his prospects; they also by bringing out the best in him, serve his purpose. They make it possible for him to make something of himself. Such is the nature of every confrontation in the context of heroic action.” —American literary and jazz critic and novelist Albert Murray (1916-2013), The Hero and the Blues (1973)

Worldwide these past few weeks—and for the foreseeable future here in the U.S.—medical personnel have emerged as the foremost heroes in the battle against the Coronavirus. 

A fictional forebear of this brave group was the title character of Sinclair Lewis’ 1925 novel Arrowsmith, adapted into a movie six years later starring Ronald Colman (pictured here). The climax of the novel and film is this young doctor’s battle against the plague on a fictional Caribbean island.

Lewis’ dogged pursuit of fact—and deeply realistic depiction of his hero’s life—led to the novelist being rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize. Someday, when our current crisis is over, perhaps another author will deliver a similar masterful account of a field that needs desperately to be better understood.

Quote of the Day (Malachy McCourt, on His Doctor’s Advice)

“My doctor says if I don’t drink, don’t smoke, if I eat properly, take care of myself, I really should live until midnight.”—Author/actor Malachy McCourt quoted in Beth Levine, “BookExpo2017: The Blaguard Lives On... for Now: Malachy McCourt,” www.PublishersWeekly.com , June 1, 2017

Movie Quote of the Day (‘A Day at the Races,’ As Dr. Groucho Deftly Defends His Credentials)

Mrs. Upjohn [played by Margaret Dumont]: “Surely, you don't question the doctor's ability?”

Whitmore [played by Leonard Ceeley]: “No, not exactly. But running a sanitarium calls for a man with peculiar talents.”

Dr. Hackenbush [played by Groucho Marx]: “You don't have to look any further! I've got the most peculiar talents of any doctor you've ever met.”—A Day at the Races (1937), screenplay by Robert Pirosh, George Seaton and George Oppenheimer, directed by Sam Wood

Premiering 80 years ago this week, A Day at the Races clocked in at one hour and 50 minutes, making it the Marx Brothers’ longest feature. That was not its only distinction, however: the other related to Groucho’s character, a veterinarian passing himself off as a medical doctor.

In the original screenplay, this medical masquerader was given the Dickensian name of Dr. Quackenbush. MGM’s legal department, however, discovered that there were at least a dozen real doctors in the U.S. with this name. Nervous studio executives decided that a slight change of spelling would get them out of any legal hassles. Groucho liked the new name so much that he sometimes used it in signing off in letters to friends.

I have to admit to another reason for liking this name: It sounds like a cousin to a town near where I live: Hackensack, N.J. Five years after A Day at the Races, writer-director Preston Sturges used that place name for even more uproarious effect in The Palm Beach Story, when he gave Rudy Vallee’s stand-in for filthy-rich industrial John D. Rockefeller the sobriquet “John D. Hackensacker III.”

Quote of the Day (Moliere, on a Medical Quack’s Progress)

Sganarelle: “No, I tell you; they made a doctor of me in spite of myself. I had never dreamt of being so learned as that, and all my studies came to an end in the lowest form. I can't imagine what put that whim into their heads; but when I saw that they were resolved to force me to be a doctor, I made up my mind to be one at the expense of those I might have to do with. Yet you would hardly believe how the error has spread abroad, and how everyone is obstinately determined to see a great doctor in me. They come to fetch me from right and left; and if things go on in that fashion, I think I had better stick to physic all my life. I find it the best of trades; for, whether we are right or wrong, we are paid equally well. We are never responsible for the bad work, and we cut away as we please in the stuff we work on. A shoe maker in making shoes can't spoil a scrap of leather without having to pay for it, but we can spoil a man without paying one farthing for the damage done. The blunders are not ours, and the fault is always that of the dead man. In short, the best part of this profession is, that there exists among the dead an honesty, a discretion that nothing can surpass; and never as yet has one been known to complain of the doctor who had killed him.”—Moliere, The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1666), in The Complete Works of Moliere, Vol. II, edited by Charles  Heron Wall (1898)