Frank Borzage's Green Light (1937)

Frank Borzage was that rarity of rarities, an uncompromising romanticist.
--Andrew Sarris

Frank Borzage's Green Light stars Errol Flynn and is from a novel by Lloyd Douglas -- and I doubt that many people these days remember any of those three names.  Borzage had a long career -- he made his first movie in 1919 and his last in 1959 -- Errol Flynn is known for his swashbucklers and Westerns and Lloyd Douglas for his religious novels made into movies, especially the two versions of Magnificent Obsession (John Stahl in 1935 and Douglas Sirk in 1954).

Errol Flynn was just starting out at Warner Brothers and was given an unusual role, the kind usually given to Paul Muni, of a doctor experimenting on himself to find a vaccine for spotted fever, and he's quite effective in his role (for the record, I much prefer the elegant restraint Flynn showed in the films he made with Raoul Walsh to the hijinks and grinning roles with Michael Curtiz).  Flynn ends up in Montana experimenting on himself because he has taken the blame for the botched surgery by another doctor that led to a patient's death. This film was shown on TCM as part of a tribute to Anita Louse, who plays the daughter of the dead patient and who eventually falls in love with Flynn.

The biggest problem with the film is the mushy religiosity espoused by Lloyd Douglas in the person of a minister who tells Flynn that he will need to get a "green light" of some sort and he will know what to do.  The fine cast includes Warner Brothers regulars Cedric Hardwicke, Margaret Lindsay and Walter Abel, the score is by the reliable Max Steiner and the cinematography is by Byron Haskin, who was soon to become a director.  Borzage made a much better film that same year, History is Made at Night, but must have felt some sympathy for Lloyd Douglas because Borzage's last film, The Big Fisherman (1959) was also from a novel by Douglas.