Cheers for Miss Bishop

I am a teacher, so it might seem a bit surprising that I felt rather indifferent to this film about an English professor. While Martha Scott is competent in the lead role, the film offers nothing particularly new or compelling--especially since the film seems an awful lot like a mediocre re-working of GOODBYE MR. CHIPS. However, unlike CHIPS, this film offers no particularly interesting insights into Miss Bishop and other than teaching for a very long time, I can't think of how this character merits a film. Sure, she sacrifices her love life for teaching, there really is no reason for this to have happened--other than it was a plot device and fit the formula of the film. Please understand, I am not saying the film is bad or not worth seeing--its just that CHIPS and THE CORN IS GREEN and many other films cover the same type material in a much better and more interesting way.

Sentimental, melodramatic, and ultimately unconvincing, "Cheers for Miss Bishop" bears more than a passing resemblance to "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," which was released a couple years earlier. Although the dialog implies that Miss Bishop has deeply influenced her students over the decades of her teaching at a Midwestern college, the film focuses more on the parade of suitors that pass through the family home courting Miss Bishop, her sister, her niece, and her grandniece in turn, than on the student-teacher relationships. Miss Bishop's teaching career is only glimpsed between romantic interludes that assert that even spinster schoolteachers have love lives. Unfortunately, the men in Miss Bishop's life are singularly unattractive and ineligible, except of course for the faithful love-smitten friend that she consistently refuses.

However, despite the flaws in the script, which strives in vain to encompass the personal and global events of a half century into 95 minutes of screen time, the film does have some saving graces. Martha Scott as Miss Ella Bishop is convincing throughout, even in the face of embarrassingly corny lines and cardboard situations. The character ages from her late teens to her early 70's, and, aided only with the white hair and light age makeup of the period, Scott remains convincing throughout. However, unlike the endearing Mr. Chips, Miss Bishop is somewhat brittle and rigid, especially in her mature years, and she does not engender affection from the audience or even from her students, as evidenced by the forced tributes they render during the predictable retirement dinner. Besides Scott, Edmund Gwenn as the college head and Bishop's mentor also rises above the script, although the rest of the cast tends to blur together. However, the distinctive and familiar voice of Rand Brooks, who played Scarlett O'Hara's first husband in "Gone with the Wind," will revive dozing viewers near the end when he appears as yet another suitor.

Tay Garnett's direction can only be described as workmanlike, and, despite the short running time and episodic structure, viewers may glance at their watches from time to time. Although the sets have the cozy fake feeling that distinguished studio films of the era, the black-and-white cinematography is only adequate. While a retelling of "Mr. Chips" from the distaff side may have seemed like a sure-fire project, the film's intended audience of young females today would probably fidget as much as their male counterparts over the syrupy sentiment and quaint conventions portrayed. With a hopelessly dated script, "Cheers for Miss Bishop" is worthy viewing primarily for the performances of Scott and Gwen. However, those who gag on Hallmark greeting cards may want to pass on this one.

This was a kind of a female "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" with Martha Scott in the lead. Unlike "Chips," however, this one centered more around the lead's relationships with the opposite sex than it did her teaching career.

The film starts off well with some wonderful old-fashioned goodness that one can only find in the movies during the 1930s or 1940s. Edmund Gwenn, who plays the president of the college featured in the film, begins a meeting with a prayer! Can you see that in today's films?

Unfortunately, Scott's morals deteriorate as she has a relationship with a married man. Later, her granddaughter thinks of doing the same. Nowhere in the film does it hint that perhaps that is the wrong thing to do! The only comment was that if you have kids, it would cause a scandal inferring that otherwise, hey, go for it! No wonder the Liberal critics love this movie.

If you like women's films, you probably will like this as romance is the main theme. To me, the beginning and the sentimental ending were nice but the bulk of the story.....well, better for someone who prefers "soaps."

I just saw this movie for the first time today. Martha Scott did a superb job playing a mid-western teacher who put her career and love for people above her own personal happiness. I really enjoyed this sentimental piece. The supporting cast was excellent too.

The movie follows the course of an unmarried teacher's life and loves over the period of her lengthy career.

The narrative has to cover a fifty-year span in 90-minutes, which is a challenge even for the best screenplays. This one, however, cobbles together both people and events in a loose way that unfortunately gets little beyond surfaces. Other reviewers are correct—there is very little character development. Instead, people more or less drift in and out of the teacher's life without time to develop. As a result, it's hard to engage with characters, and even with Scott's Miss Bishop since the teacher's role is underplayed. (An exception, as others note, is Minna whose difficulty is very vividly done.) Still, Miss Bishop's recessive manner perhaps conveys repressed emotion, not improbable behavior for a spinster of that time. If some such were intended, it would be an interesting angle, but I don't see much thematic evidence of that. All in all, Miss Bishop comes across more like an on-looker to her own life rather than a participant.

Nonetheless, the film deals, at least tangentially, with a difficult topic for the period. That is, can an unmarried professional woman have a rewarding life without being a wife and a mother. To the film's credit, it appears to say yes, as the final tribute scene affirms. Still, the film does fudge by making the spinster (Scott) attractive and with a life-long suitor (Gargan) whom she inexplicably keeps on a tether. So, remaining unmarried stands as her choice rather than an outside imposition. The film would have been more memorable, I think, had production made Miss Bishop more plain, and dealt with the problems of a plain, unmarried woman given the mores of passing generations. But dealing honestly with plain women was never a Hollywood or box-office favorite.

Anyway, the movie's mainly a sanitized concoction for viewers who like dipping into old style Hollywood soaps. The production's not without its moments, but the overall effect is pretty loose and sticky.