Dr. Cook’s Garden 1971

James Tennyson, played by Frank Converse, is a young and idealistic physician who returns to his hometown of Greenfield, Vermont to work with his mentor Dr. Leonard Cook, played by Bing Crosby, a father figure to him. Tennyson’s own father was abusive and prone to drunken rage, a memory that fuels his resolve to heal and protect others while he remains wary of power. The town welcomes him back, and Cook’s house becomes a hub of care, with Dora Ludlow, the housekeeper Abby Lewis, explaining Cook’s heart troubles and the need for an attentive assistant. This homecoming sets the stage for a quiet, intimate drama about loyalty, power, and the costs of mercy.

Back in town, Tennyson is reunited with Janey Rausch, his childhood sweetheart, Blythe Danner at his side. Yet gratitude gives way to unease as he notices a string of sudden patient deaths and a disturbing pattern in the doctor’s practice. He also uncovers in the doctor’s medicine cabinet a large supply of poisons that should not be there. As he digs deeper, the plausibility of Cook’s benevolence begins to crumble, and Tennyson’s clinical instincts push him toward a forbidden conclusion: something more is happening behind the veneer of care.

Gathering clues, he learns from the town constable’s worldview that the Lord has blessed Greenfield with long life for the kind and quick demise for the unworthy. In Cook’s files, Tennyson discovers a cryptic marker—the letter “R”—which also appears in the doctor’s garden, suggesting a plan to remove those the doctor deems unworthy. The realization shakes him, and he confronts Cook, who does not deny the pattern and speaks of euthanasia as a form of service to the community.

Cook claims the killings were a means of removing a painful evil, even recalling the murder of his abusive father, and he defends his garden as a metaphor for control and beauty. Tennyson, torn between loyalty and law, agrees not to report him on the condition that Cook retire from medical practice. But Cook, in a chilling gambit, tries to poison Tennyson, turning their reunion into a deadly confrontation. The duel ends when Cook suffers a heart attack; Tennyson refuses to fetch him medicine, a deliberate act of final mercy that ends the threat but leaves a town to ponder the boundaries of mercy and justice.