Dr. Christian: Melody For Three

Fay Wray is Mary Stanley, a divorced small town music teacher and single mother, who is raising her violin protege son, Billy (Schuyler Standish), in the small town of River's End. The boy practices relentlessly and with a passion that leads everyone in the bucolic hamlet to anticipate Billy's eventual success as a world-class musician.

Unofficial town father, Dr. Paul Christian (Jean Hersholt), takes an interest in the boy when he sees an opportunity to reunite Mary with Billy's estranged conductor father, Antoine Pirelle (Walter Woolf King) and impart some sage wisdom on the value of family unity.

John Alton, the brilliant cinematographer who greatly expanded the lexicon of film noir in his later work with director Anthony Mann, brings a complex psychological intensity to the images of Melody For Three. He elevates the greatly beloved Dr. Christian series to a genuine slice of small town Americana that is as potent as a William Saroyan play or a Norman Rockwell painting.

• drama