Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1963

The Contenders:

Captain Newman, M.D.
Hud
Lilies of the Field
Sundays and Cybele
Tom Jones (winner)

Ward Seven

Film: Captain Newman, M.D.
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I fully intended to watch something on DVD today that I had picked out from a local library. However, when the film started locking up a couple of minutes in, it was time for plan B. Plan B for me generally consists of something saved on the DVR or something I’ve found online. The problem with the online films is that in many cases, these are movies that no one knows. Show of hands—how many of you have even heard of Captain Newman, M.D.? One…two…maybe three. Maybe. And I find that really interesting because this is one of those forgotten films that has a cast that indicates it should be far better known than it is.

Captain Newman, M.D. is a mixture of drama and comedy similar in many respects to a film like Mister Roberts despite taking place in a hospital rather than on the deck of a ship. And without as much aggression from superior officers. The titular captain, Josiah “Joe” Newman (Gregory Peck) is the head psychiatrist at a hospital in Arizona during World War II. It’s his job to rehabilitate pilots and air crew who have what we would today call PTSD or something similar. It’s a job he’s greatly conflicted with because he realizes that many of those men that he puts back into the service will eventually come home in a coffin.