1972 — The historic domination of American movies by medical heroes will be broken at last by an epic film dramatizing the true role of the chiropractic profession as the world’s leading natural healing art and science.

Top professional directing, production and dramatic talent will be brought into play in the creation of this powerful, full-length feature film, according to Dr. L.T. Frigard of Stockton, California.

A screening of the pre-final cut of the film is scheduled this fall under terms of a contract signed this week with Hollywood producer-actor Patrick McGoohan.

The movie, showing the conflicts and hardships chiropractors have overcome in order to heal millions, will be scripted by McGoohan, a dedicated chiropractic layman.

Financing of the film will be from within the chiropractic profession “for plain and obvious reasons,” according to Dr. Frigard, organizer of the corporation which will handle the creation and distribution of the 90-minute film.

Doctors of chiropractic will be able to invest in a partnership for $100 per share, with 7 percent interest, with a share of possible profits on each share owned.

“If the chiropractic profession is ever to achieve its goals, including inclusion in Medicare and its rightful recognition as the world’s leading natural healing art and science, it must take the offensive by reaching the people through the mass media,” Dr. Frigard stated in an exclusive interview with Chiropractic Economics.

“This film will employ one of the top professional producer-directors in Hollywood and will be suitable for sale to television after showing in movie theaters.

“An effort will be made to enter it in international film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Venice and San Francisco.

“The film can then be entered in competition for an Oscar. However, these steps will be taken only after a gala premiere before an international audience of chiropractic practitioner, educators and laymen.”

The procedure in the production of any movie calls for assembling the file for review by all of the concerned parties. It is the plan of the Chiropractic Documentary Film Corporation to call leaders of the chiropractic profession into consultation on the final version of the film, according to Dr. Frigard.

This final review showing will probably be held sometime in October, said Frigard, who also foresees effective use of the film in student recruitment.

Filming will be on location at a number of chiropractic college campuses, including Palmer College, where some of the scenes in the early life of D.D. Palmer, founder of the profession, will be staged.

A leading character actor, Max Showalter, will play the role of the chiropractic pioneer. Terming Showalter “an actor’s actor,” film producer-director McGoohan recalled the veteran character performer’s appearance in sixty Hollywood movies, as well as his portrayal in the male lead of Hello Dolly on stage.

“Actors and actresses of Showalter’s stature are vitally necessary to provide the power to bring to life scenes such as the famous courtroom trial which precedes D.D. Palmer’s jailing for the illegal practice of “medicine,” stated McGoohan.

As a professional actor and producer-director of unexcelled credentials, McGoohan has been given a completely free hand in creating what Dr. Frigard believes will be “Not only a fine movie about chiropractic, but one of the finest movies ever filmed about a man who, like Galileo, would never recant.”

Movie and TV audiences will recall McGoohan’s roles as Jones, the secret agent of Ice Station Zebra, the compassionate veterinarian in Walt Disney’s movie about the personality cat, Tomasena, and as Mary’s half-brother in the highly-acclaimed Mary, Queen of Scots.

Television work for which McGoohan is best remembered includes the Secret Agent series which he produced and directed and The Prisoner, for which he was writer-director. Interestingly, in The Prisoner, McGoohan created a hero who refused to lose his individual “soul” through being pushed, debriefed, filed, indexed or numbered.

“I feel that in producing this documentary about the chiropractic profession, McGoohan is creating the epic story of a profession which has refused to be folded, stipulated and mutilated out of existence by one of the most high-powered public relations-legislative lobbying organizations ever created,” Dr. Frigard declared.

How did one of television and filmdom’s “golden people” come to feel so strong a kinship with the hearty but often-vilified chiropractic profession? As is often the case with the great as well as the humble, a potentially disabling accident struck. “I was making a movie called The Moonshine War, when I somehow triggered a disc problem which hit me hard in the back and left leg,” McGoohan recalled. “It looked as if surgery was the only way out. And I knew that even orthopedic medics are pretty shy when it comes to this type of procedure.”

But fortunately for the personable film actor, a meeting with Dr. Frigard happened “almost providentially.” Before too long his leg and back problem were under control, with nothing more radical than standard chiropractic procedures.

Later, an even more serious problem struck McGoohan’s daughter, Catherine. The medical profession’s prognosis: a permanently crippled condition as a result of rheumatoid arthritis. This attractive young girl was doomed to life in a wheelchair. Even the very considerable financial resources at her father’s command could promise no hope of respite from the grim prospect of invalidism.

Then, on the scene came Dr. Frigard, by then the McGoohan family chiropractor. Today, vivacious Catherine McGoohan walks briskly to and from classes on the beautiful and rolling Palmer College campus. Without any sign of a limp!

From such personal experiences comes the motivation to produce a truly powerful film. In addition to the discovery of the chiropractic truth of the innate wisdom of the body, the McGoohan documentary will progress to other never-to-be forgotten scenes such as the last address by B.J. Palmer, to be filmed in Davenport during the college’s homecoming this August.

Other hoped-for highlights in the film are a debate between the medical and chiropractic professions, with attorney Melvin Belli chairing the verbal confrontation.

There will be interviews with Dr. Marcus Bach, world renowned philosopher, traveler and author, Edward L. Kramer, and other prominent men and women outside chiropractic. Students will also be interviewed in the film and scenes with interesting and noteworthy practitioners will be included.

In addition to financial investments from individual chiropractors, Dr. Frigard and other key figures in the Chiropractic Documentary Film Corporation also are hoping for support from state, local and national chiropractic associations.

“In the final analysis, the impact of this film will be tremendous, both in getting sick people into chiropractic offices where they can be healed and in helping the profession reach its proper level of public recognition and financial prosperity,” Dr. Frigard emphasized.

In the opinion of the author of the best-selling Whiplash, the quickest, surest and perhaps only way to turn the tide for chiropractic is with a first-rate documentary film. “We have the director and producer in the person of Patrick McGoohan and we all know that we have the world’s greatest true story to tell,” the Stockton DC concluded.

The tab for the effort is estimated at $225,000. A formal offering of partnerships are now open to the profession.