An Old Time Radio Diet - Dr. Carew's Wife (from Dr. Kildare)

To continue with my "Diet" theme for Old Time Radio recipes, I found a great episode from one of my favorite series - the Story of Dr. Kildare.  The Story of Dr. Kildare was a radio version of the popular movies of the 1930s that started Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare and Lionel Barrymore as his mentor, Dr. Leonard Gillespie.  Ayres and Barrymore played the roles that they had in many of the early movies.  Dr. Kildare was the gifted, young doctor while Dr. Gillespie was the great diagnostician.  Together, they were able to solve many (though not all) the cases that came through the front doors of Blair General Hospital in New York City.  Joining those two great actors in the cast were Ted Osborne (as the Hospital Administrator Dr. Carew), Virginia Gregg (as Nurse Parker) and many, many guest stars.  Each radio program started with Lew Ayres setting the scene with this great opening:

"one of the great citadels of American medicine -- a clump of gray-white buildings planted deep in the heart of New York -- where life begins, where life ends, where life goes on." 

I have not seen the movies, but something tells me I should.  What was really interesting is that I did not realize that Lionel Barrymore was wheelchair bound since the early 1930s because of severe arthritis and muscular pain.  I though the wheelchair for his brilliant role as Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) was part of the character.  But on radio, it does not matter if the actor is standing or sitting!

John Muir Medical Center (Walnut Creek, California) - 2013

Running a hospital is hard work.  Poor Dr. Carew (voiced by Ted Osborne) is always flummoxed by the costs associated with their work at the hospital, appeasing board members, and raising money.  So when they are working on a big event to raise money for Blair Hospital's Polio Wing, he has an idea that his wife, Angela, can perform at the donor event.  She was a great dancer back in the day, but that was many years...and 20 pounds ago.  So Dr. Carew enlists Drs Kildare, Gillespie, and one Dr. Brownlee from England to help Angela shed that extra weight.  And while she was keeping to her diet during meal times, Angela had extra-curricular eating that was slowing her down and moving the scale in the other direction.  While Dr. Brownlee did not have much to add to the regiment that Angela was on, he did have a great suggestion for keeping her on it - an incentive!

If you are trying to lose weight (like me) - I hope you have a good incentive out there.  That is in addition to the benefit of being healthier!

Dr Carew's Fat Wife (February 1, 1950)



Here are some links to programs relating to The Story of Dr. Kildare:

• The Story of Dr. Kildare radio program episodes via the Internet Archive
• The Story of Dr. Kildare on the Digital Deli 
• The Story of Dr. Kildare on Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs
• The Story of Dr. Kildare from the RadioGOLDINdex
• Dr. Kildare page on the Wikipedia
• Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#82)
• Here are all of my Old Time Radio Blog Entries

An Old Time Radio Diet - All Blog Entries

• "A Piece of Pie" from the Damon Runyon Theater
• "The Vegetarian" from It's Higgins, Sir!
• Magnificent Montague's Diet
• Dr. Carew's Wife (from Dr. Kildare)