Word: meeker
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Fortunately, both doctor and patient survived. At 42, Nolen is now chief of surgery at Meeker County Hospital in Litchfield, Minn. But The Making of a Surgeon is no tale of easy triumph -or comfort to people headed for the hospital. The point of this impressively honest memoir is that surgeons learn by doing, and patients often suffer in the process. As Nolen tells it, trial and error is still the only way to develop the skill and gall that a first-rate surgeon requires...
...Digest and his senile father jabbers from the porch swing. When the sheriff questions a young mountain girl named Alma McCain (Tuesday Weld) about a traffic violation, he sees her as a chance-perhaps his last -for freedom, rebellion, sexual gratification, maybe even love. Alma's father (Ralph Meeker) sees a chance for something too: protection for his illegal moonshine still. So he encourages his daughter to seduce the sheriff. Alma succeeds, and Tawes is forced to cover up for her father. Undone by all this, the sheriff wanders vacantly around town. His passion for Alma makes...
Tuesday Weld is an understandably desirable love object, a genuine Lolita, but she can make little sense of her rather muddy character. Ralph Meeker, as the ruthless moonshiner, is all sinister smiles and barely repressed violence. The music, sung by Johnny Cash, is slick and unemotional. The main flaw is that the love affair between Alma and the sheriff lacks the qualities of desperation and frustration that would make it convincing. Alvin Sargent's script does not help matters much with such ritual movie Southernisms as "Eat your beans, Grandpa" and "Would you like a Dr Pepper?" Peck succeeds...