Dueña de su destino

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.

The best that can be said for CHEERS FOR MISS BISHOP is MARTHA SCOTT gives a quietly understated performance as the lovelorn school marm in the title role. She's clearly the film's best asset.

The script is a mawkish thing, unabashedly sentimental in the tradition of "women's films" of the '40s, never missing an opportunity for a close-up of tearful, self-effacing, noble Miss Bishop as she is forced to discard all of the men who genuinely love her.

With barely a hint of comedy to lighten the dramatics, it wallows in artificial soap suds for the greater part of its length. WILLIAM GARGAN is pleasant as her life-long friend and companion who loves her from afar, and MARSHA HUNT, SIDNEY BLACKMER and STERLING HOLLOWAY do nicely in supporting roles.

MARY ANDERSON plays the vampish "other woman" with batting eyes and coquettish ways in what must be her most overbaked style. Her winning Scott's beau with her wily ways in the moonlight makes for a plot device hard to swallow. EDMUND GWENN lends his solid, dignified presence to the role of a school president who encourages Scott on her decision to remain a teacher at the hometown college.

Through all of the tears, Miss Scott remains as noble as Greer Garson ever was in any of her MGM long-suffering parts thanks to the advice she's always getting from others in the way of modern methods.

Summing up: A poor man's "Chips", overly sentimental story of an old maid schoolteacher with too much syrup in the script--too heavy on unending sentiment.

Trivia note: For a saga that covers some 60 years in the life of a schoolmarm, the make-up artists opted for unconvincing white wigs with unlined faces.

As Miss Bishop, Martha Scott remains just as trim in old age as she was as a young woman instead of undergoing a more realistic aging, as did Olivia de Havilland for her character in TO EACH HIS OWN.

Most of Cheers for Miss Bishop is told in flashback as Martha Scott reminisces with old friend William Gargan about her fifty years as a professor of English at Midwestern University. In fact the whole film is held together by Martha Scott's powerful performance in the title role.

Scott tells of her life beginning with her accepting a position at a small college after graduating from same as an English teacher. She's one of those rare people who's life and job become bound as one and finds she has no use for the other aspects of life like home and family. Even Robert Donat's Mr. Chips married Greer Garson albeit ever so briefly.

Not that she didn't have chances to marry, but her career and her students came first.

Martha Scott gets good support from a nice ensemble of players that also include Edmund Gwenn and John Hamilton as her college presidents, Dorothy Peterson as her mother, and Mary Anderson as her great niece.

Particularly impressive to me was Rosemary DeCamp as a young Scandinavian immigrant student who Scott recognizes intuitively as being an incipient genius with a photographic memory. When she's accused of cheating Scott saves her from expulsion by having her recite the Declaration of Independence from memory. It's a very powerful screen debut for Rosemary DeCamp.

Still the film is Martha Scott's show and a good show it is too.

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.

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.