“No sadder commentary can be made upon the run-of-the-mill Hollywood production than our report this morning that Rivoli’s A Man to Remember, is a distinguished and unusual film, for the qualities which distinguish it are merely such elements as simplicity, honesty, dignity and human warmth – elements which properly should be found in every film drama yet so rarely are. Our admiration for A Man to Remember is ungrudgingly com­plete, yet we realize the danger of overpraising those who only have done their duty: it implies that we would have been satisfied with less. (…) But there is no real connection – although Hollywood often says so – between a big budget and a big picture, or between a great story and a good story. In this biography of a horse-and-buggy doctor, told episodically and even anti-climatically, there are all the deftly interrelated incidents a narrative needs, all the strong characters a cast requires, all the material a director must have to fuse into a tender, compassion­ate and eloquent drama. From Katharine Haviland-Taylor’s sto­ry, Fatture, Dalton Trumbo and director Garson Kanin have evolved a touching testament to the small-town doctor. (…) The screen (…) has begun to look back into the origins of all those wrinkled scraps of paper and, as their histories unfold, the history of Westport and its people unfold with it, presenting a sometimes bitter, sometimes sentimental but always fascinating study of a small town and its doctor. (…)”.

Frank S. Nugent, A Memorable Film is “A Man to Remember”, “New York Times”, 7 novembre 1938