Actor Who Portrayed Dr. Kildare Dies At 88 Lew Ayres Refused Wwii Combat Duty, Fought Cigarette Ads On TV

Actor Lew Ayres, who starred in the Academy Award-winning classic “All Quiet on the Western Front” - and who was a reluctant warrior in life as well as on film - died Monday. He was 88.

Ayres died in his sleep after being in a coma for several days, said Diana Ayres, his wife of 31 years.

A personable if unspectacular leading man, Ayres was perhaps best known for his title roles in a series of Dr. Kildare movies in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.

But the critical success of his life was the 1930 classic “All Quiet on the Western Front,” in which he played a German schoolboy drawn with increasing disillusionment into the horrors of World War I.

Despite the critical acclaim awarded the film - and general approval of his performance - Ayres soon found himself wallowing in B pictures. His marriage in 1931 to sometime-actress Lola Lane ended in divorce, and his second marriage in 1934, to film star Ginger Rogers, ended a few years later.

Ayres’ career languished until 1938, when he was cast as Dr. Kildare in what was to become a series of nine successful motion pictures.

While the Kildare movies did not win any Oscars, the studios and the public loved them. Ayres, as the crusading young physician, became a symbol across the United States - embodying everything that was good and decent - and American.

It thus came as a shock when Ayres - drafted in January 1942 - announced calmly he would not fight.

Several theater chains, explaining that they were reacting to public outrage, said they would no longer show Ayres’ films. Politicians denounced him and trade publications begged the public not to judge Hollywood by Ayres’ actions.

But the news of the war was bigger than the news of the unwilling warrior, and the controversy about Ayres was soon largely forgotten.

All but unnoticed, he won the Medical Corps status he had sought earlier, and two years later, reporters found him a war-worn, mud-soaked medic, tending the wounded under fire and serving as a chaplain’s aide in New Guinea and the Philippines.

Hollywood soon accepted him back, but the films that followed - “The Dark Mirror” in 1946, “The Unfaithful” in 1947 - were unremarkable until “Johnnie Belinda,” a 1948 movie in which he once again played a sympathetic physician and which won him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

When movie roles grew scarce, he went into television. He was offered the Kildare role in a series, but declined when the network refused to agree to his request for no cigarette sponsorship.

“My feeling was that a medical show, particularly one that might appeal to children, should not be used to sell cigarettes,” he said. Richard Chamberlain got the role.

Ayres began putting his experience behind a project that meant much more to him - an effort “to acquaint the people of the Western world to what the rest of the world believes.”

Ayres and a cameraman toured the Far and Near East for the better part of two years, covering 40,000 miles in a quest for images of Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Judaism and Islamic religions.

The result was “Altars of the World,” a massive, three-part film dissertation finally edited down to a manageable, 2-1/2-hour movie. While never a box office smash, the movie received critical acclaim and eventually won a Golden Globe Award.

He once explained his purpose: “When man understands, he no longer fears; when he no longer fears, he loves; when he loves, there is peace.”