The Courageous Dr. Christian

Jean Hersholt is concerned about the squatters living in a shanty town just outside the city limits. He persuades the town council to build some decent housing, if he can get the land from Vera Lewis, who wears no make up in this movie. After he gets the land, and Miss Lewis as his fiancee -- not his idea! -- the council changes their minds. The shanty town moves to the empty lot, and just as the authorities send in the police to drive them out, meningitis breaks out and Hersholt orders everyone into quarantine.

I couldn't look at this eighty-year-old movie without thinking about how the more things change, they don't change at all, thanks to a script co-written by Ring Lardner Jr. The movie starts out silly and clunky, and only my insistence on seeing it through made me stick around to the point where it turned very interesting.