Which John Ford film was based on Sinclair Lewis's novel Arrowsmith?

John Ford’s film based on Sinclair Lewis’s novel *Arrowsmith* is *Arrowsmith* (1931).

The film adapts Lewis’s 1925 novel about Martin Arrowsmith, an idealistic physician whose career is shaped by medical research, public health, personal loss, and the tension between scientific principles and practical medicine. Sidney Howard wrote the screenplay, while Samuel Goldwyn produced the picture for release through United Artists.

John Ford directed the film during his early sound-era career. Ronald Colman played Martin Arrowsmith, with Helen Hayes as Leora Arrowsmith, Richard Bennett as Gustav Sondelius, and Myrna Loy as Joyce Lanyon. The adaptation changed important elements of Lewis’s book, including reducing Arrowsmith’s womanizing and omitting his second marriage.

A common mix-up is to treat *Arrowsmith* as a documentary or a straightforward medical procedural. It is instead a pre-Code dramatic film, and its story reaches from rural medical practice to epidemic response and laboratory research. The film earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.