VOL. V, NO. 11

By Jean Hanke

Captain Newman is difficult to praise or to dislike. It is basically a stereo‑typed story, with weak characters. Gregory Peck plays a kind, understanding, handsome psychiatrist, (Captain Newman) with believable human failings. Tony Curtis is Newman's wacky, exuberant orderly, Jackson Laibowitz. They are on an Air Force base in 1944 and are involved in the usual escapades.

The orderly steals the commanding officer's Christmas tree for the ward. Newman affects a miraculous cure on a drunken soldier (Bobby Darin), and the soldier goes off to war and is killed. An officer goes beserk and kills himself, and Newman blames himself for not getting through to the mad for the death, but the warm love of his nurse (Angie Dickinson) and the fellows in the psycho ward make him feel better.

Laibowitz steals a salami from a cook for the patients, and when the man comes after Laibowtiz to get the sausage back, the orderly talks the cook into sharing it with all the patients. A flock of sheep, kept by Captain Newman, escape just as the Undersecretary of the Air Force is landing; however, Captain Newman still gets an appointment as head of a military hospital after the war.

For all its faults, Captain Newman still retains some of the charm of Leo Rosten's book, Captain Newman, M.D., from which it was taken.