As a general adviser to a little colony in the North Woods, doctor Luke channels his zeal toward building a hospital in the village, for which he has to fight with the local businessmen. Incurring their enmity, they decide to bring a new, younger doctor to take over the practice.
Broken-hearted and just about ready to board a ship for Montreal, a poor worker, Asa Wyatt (John Qualen) asks for Luke’s help in delivering his wife’ baby.
As other small-town doctors, Dr. Luke is hardworking, honest, but underpaid and unappreciated. He is engaged in heroic and lonely battles against the village enmity, the tyrant MacKenzie (Robert Barrot), an industrial bureaucracy, and the pompous Sir Basil Crawford (Montagu Love).
However, the chief attraction of “The Country Doctor” was not the protagonist but the Dionne babies, who were seen in every position possible, in their tubs, on high chairs, in the nursery. “Country Doctor” was so popular that Twentieth Century-Fox rushed into production a follow-up, ”Reunion,” released just months after the original.
In “Reunion,” the plot revolves around the Chamber of Commerce plan to honor the doctor by organizing a reunion of all the people he has brought to life, which means he ahs to listen and try to resolve their problems.
The third screen appearance of the Dionne Quintuplets was in ”Five of a Kind” (1938), which recounts their escapades with puppies and baby horses.
