The Crime Doctor’s Courage (1945)

Warner Baxter returns for a fourth time as Dr. Robert Ordway in The Crime Doctor’s Courage (1945). The newly married third wife of Gordon Carson asks Dr. Ordway to look into his first two wives’ mysterious deaths. Authorities declared both cases to be accidents. Kathleen Carson, played by Hillary Brooke, has begun to doubt the official verdict.

warner-baxter-publicity-photo

Publicity Photo of Warner Baxter in 1924 (Public Domain)

Dr. Ordway arrives at a dinner party to meet Mr. Carson. During the party, the brother of Carson’s first wife accuses him of murdering his sister. Gordon Carson retreats to his study, where a gun shot is heard.

Dr. Ordway enters the study to find Carson dead from a gun shot wound to the head. Carson’s friend says Carson finally succeeded in committing suicide on his third attempt but Dr. Ordway disagrees. The real mystery has begun.

Warner Baxter played Dr. Ordway, the crime investigating psychiatrist, in ten films for Columba between 1943 and 1949. Columba Pictures released The Crime Doctor’s Courage on February 27, 1945. It was the fourth film in The Crime Doctor series.

Warner Baxter was born in Columbus, Ohio on March 29, 1889. Attracted to theater from an early age, he performed as a teenager in vaudeville. Eventually, Baxter started appearing in films. Baxter played a major role in the first surviving Charlie Chan film Behind That Curtain (1929).

Baxter suffered a nervous breakdown in the 1940s. His illness actually led him to the Crime Doctor series. According to his IMDB biography, Baxter was attracted to the month-long shooting schedule and two films a year. The two-month a year schedule allowed him to recover his health. Baxter died only two years after the series ended on May 7, 1951. Baxter was 62 years old.

The Crime Doctor’s Courage runs about 70 minutes. I watched the film on GetTV. You may be able to find it on-line or one of the cable television movie stations. It is not the best film in the Crime Doctor series. I would still rate it 7 out of 10 stars.

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