Goodbye, Miss Turlock

There is something of the "How Green Was My Valley" about this engaging little retrospective from a narrator who recalls his childhood in a one-room school built in 1902. He can't recall everyone's name from the time, but that doesn't really matter as we see kids of different ages play merrily in the playground before being summoned by the bell of the stern and fastidious "Miss Turlock" (Nana Bryant). She puts up with no nonsense and seems to have eyes in the back of her head! Didn't we all have one like that? It's a subtle little reminder that a century ago, education was sometimes a bit of a luxury and that in many ways those often rather solitary looking figures helped to make us who we are today. Worth ten minutes.

This short can be found as an extra on the DVD for the Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams film "Fiesta".

This Oscar-winning short is from MGM's 'Passing Times' series by John Nesbitt. These films tend to look back fondly at the 'good 'ol days'--with very a idealized view of America.

In this installment, the narrator (Nesbitt) talks glowingly about life in the one-room schoolhouse. It also focuses on Miss Turlock--the teacher in this school. It's all very sentimental and very well made. Though, I must admit, also very slight and overly idealized--making the one-room schoolhouse seem like the best darn form of education ever created.

By the way, watch the spitball on the blackboard. It will appear and disappear and appear again due to some continuity problems.

Goodbye, Miss Turlock (1948)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning short has an adult (narration by John Nesbitt) looking back at his childhood where he was taught by a stern teacher in a one-room school. This is a pretty good short as it does a very good job at showing how an adult can look back at his childhood with fond memories of something small yet that thing might have meant the world to them. This film is also a social commentary as we get a few punches thrown about various highways that are going up and cutting into the old country school, which allowed kids to be taught by the same person throughout their young lives. Nana Bryant, a veteran of over one-hundred films, does a nice job in her role even though she doesn't have a single line of dialogue. The film runs a short 12-minutes but there's enough kindness in the film to make it worth viewing.

My mother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Iowa, in the 1940s. Several years ago we drove to the spot where the schoolhouse was, to find it had been torn down.

Each morning she had to arrive early to the freezing building to light a coal stove for the children who would arrive later.

These schoolhouses were the centers of their communities.

I remember this film when I saw it in the 1950s, as a short accompanying the major feature. It stuck with me, not knowing at the time that my mother taught at one. And so after several google searches I found it, 60 years later, on YouTube.

It is sentimental, of course, but nothing wrong with that. And it contains the stereotype of the "old maid" schoolteacher. My mother wasn't an old maid, as the fact of my existence proves. There were few jobs that women could have all of their lives back then other than teaching school.

We have decided to show this to our grandchildren, to give them an idea of something that their great grandmother did. We think it will mean something to them.

Miss Turlock is presented as compassionate and wise. And a good teacher. It was a life to be proud of.

A sweet little film depicting a part of rural life in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

1948 was a year for strong women. Loretta Young won the Best Actress Oscar for THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER, beating out (among others) Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc. This typically sentimental "Our Passing Parade" short about an old-maid teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, played by Nana Bryant, won the Best One-Reel Movie Award.

Like all of the Passing Parade short subjects, it was written and narrated by John Nesbitt. Nesbitt would tell you what was going on, even as the performers proceeded to perform their actions. It's an old technique from silent movies, called "Animated Text" and it required good humor, a strong sense of irony and good writing, lest it turn into that bane of all narrated cartoons, "Radio With Pictures." Fortunately, it has those.

By the way, in checking the Oscar competition for 1948, I noticed that the best cartoon was TWEETIE PIE. I'm not sure how that fits into the "strong women" thought in the first paragraph.