Dr Bull

We watched an old Will Rogers movie (yes, I realize that's redundant) on TCM the other night. It was called Doctor Bull and starred Rogers as a cantankerous-but-loveable New England doctor running into some public oppobrium for being immoral and old-fashioned, but triumphing (of course) in the end, getting up the nerve to marry his platonic-but-dangerous widow-lady girlfriend, curing the paralyzed young man, and saving the town from a typhoid epidemic.

What I particularly liked was the way the film was bookended by very similar scenes: the train pulling into the small town, the mail sack being tossed out onto the platform, and the conductor calling "New Mitford! All out for New Mitford!" - with no one disembarking - and then the postmistress picking up the mail and the conductor greeting her in what was clearly a daily ritual. The exchange at the end sort of wrapped up the loose ends of the plot, but the one at the beginning set the tone - and established the conductor (not that we see him again until the end) as a quirky guy in his own right.

"Good morning, Miss Helen," he says to her. "Did you have a good Christmas?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she snaps back. "In this dull place how could I?"

And he says, in a tone mingling delight, agreement, and discovery: "Yes, it is quite dull, isn't it?"