Calling All Doctors (1937) User Reviews

Guaranteed Laughs

[Maliejandra · 8/10 · 27 May 2019]

Screened at Cinevent in 2019, Calling All doctors is a crowd-pleasing comedy about a hypochondriac and the precarious situation his condition puts him in. Charley Chase catches something from his sneezing secretary so he goes to his doctor. While standing in the waiting room, a man approaches him and tells him his doctor is busy and that since he is also a doctor and can treat him instead. Truly he is a mental case who believes he is a doctor. He convinces Charley to take him home with him, and makes him go right to bed; then he crawls in with him.

There are lots of laughs to be had from this one, both slapstick and sight gags. Charley has plasters on both his front and back, a barrel of aspirin in his room, and an atomizer that he accidentally fills with red ink. There are also bizarre twin paintings over his and his wife's beds depicting a woman who is overlaid onto a horse.

If you look closely you can tell that Charley's stunt double looked nothing like him.

Doesn't need treatment

[hte-trasme · 8/10 · 3 February 2010]

As Charley Chase's better-known short "The Heckler" abandons basing its comedy entirely on the farcical, absurdist, social situations that Chase was a master of devising and was also a comic character study of the obnoxious fan, this short, "Calling All Doctors" does the same thing for the hypochondriac of the type of which we all know at least one. What this doesn't work as well as "The Heckler," it's still a very funny short comedy.

The first few minutes are pure gags around the hypochondria, and simple as some of them are they all bring laughs, master of quirky gag construction as Chase was. It's often forgotten how much of a talent he had for the pure goofy twist or development that it seems nobody else would think of but which draws a lot of laughs. Here an office plot to scare Charley out worrying so much about his health is accidentally tangled with what occurs when Charley happens to meet the highly amusingly surreal character of Dr. Kronkite, a madman who happens to think he's a doctor.

Of course, comic confusions ensure, though Charley doesn't get to participate quite as much as usual in all of them, contributing from his sickbed for story purposes. Dr. Kronkite especially gets to contribute to a lot of the kind of funny and clever verbal one liners that started becoming prevalent in Chase's shorts during his Columbia era (such as in "The Wrong Miss Wright" and "The Mind Needer") at a studio where many headliners focused only on visual slapstick humor.

While this doesn't reach quite the flawless heights of Charley Chase's best films, there's no reason at all not to like it for the very funny short subject that it is.

Columbia didn't do subtle back in the day...

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 10 October 2014]

"Calling All Doctors" is a great example why Charley Chase's shorts with Columbia were enjoyable but clearly not up to the standards of his wonderful films with Hal Roach Studio. It takes a great idea and simply overdoes it. In other words, it's about as subtle as a stripper at a Baptist wedding! It tries way too hard to be wacky and in the process sinks the overall level of the short to that of a Three Stooges' short (also from Columbia, by the way). Subtle it ain't!

When the film begins, you see that Charley is a huge hypochondriac. It's a neat idea but the hypochondria angle is WAY overdone as NO ONE is that much of a worry-wart about illnesses. The point is just driven home way too hard and I found myself disliking this very quickly.

Later, Charley imagines he's so sick that he needs to go to the doctor. However, instead of meeting his usual doctor, he is met by a new guy. However, the new doctor is actually a lunatic who THINKS he's a doctor. Hilarity ensues until his family learns about the mix-up. At this point they decide to try to teach Charley a lesson.

As I first said, the film tries awfully hard. If it had tried to be a bit more subtle and wacky, it would have been more enjoyable and less, at times, stupid--though I did enjoy the very silly sneezing phone gag. And, despite its lack of finesse, it did make me laugh and that's what's important with a comedy.

So-so Columbia/Charley Chase comedy

[theshape-13 · 5/10 · 21 December 2005]

The second of 2 Chase comedies directed by Charles Lamont, CALLING ALL DOCTORS is not one of the comedian's better COLUMBIA shorts. Charley plays a hypochondriac and germaphobe who's convinced that he is a very sick man. His wife and co-workers, tiring of his antics, dream up a scheme to convince him that he is actually sick!! As the scheme plays out, a wacky sanitarium escapee appears and pretends to be a doctor, confusing both Charley and his conspirators! While amusing in some spots, the comedy comes off as quite predictable. A nice time-waster, but definitely not up to Chase's standards. Lamont would later become the director of Abbott & Costello features.