So it's not much of a lapse of logic to have him play Felix Klauber, doctor extraordinaire, raised and schooled on the Lower East Side. This melodrama from a Fannie Hurst novel goes in for emotional excess at every turn, but it does provide a rare, compelling look at an urban Jewish community up to and into the Depression, something Hollywood proved extremely reluctant to do. The plot, quite similar to Rodgers and Hammerstein's not-quite-hit "Allegro," has Cortez abandoning his principled work at a Lower East Side clinic, urged by his unscrupulous brother to open a ritzy Upper West Side office and cater to rich hypochondriacs, until he sees The Error of His Ways and returns to the good works he practiced in his old neighborhood. Anna Appel is quite good as his Mrs. Goldberg-esque Yiddishe mama, and Gregory Ratoff, unrecognizable if all you know of him is "All About Eve," is also good as his dad. As the lame schoolteacher who loves him silently and eventually is rewarded for it, Irene Dunne is, as several posters have noted, miles away from Essex Street. Much as I love some of Gregory La Cava's work, it's overheated here, and there's almost nonstop irrelevant Max Steiner sawing through it. Some unusual moments lift it up, notably Cortez operating on his infirm dad and watching him die on the table, and some Lower East Side episodes inserted largely for atmosphere. Good it ain't, but I'm glad I saw it.
Review of Symphony of Six Million
