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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.

Enjoyed this picture which deals with a young woman, Martha Scott,(Ella Bishop) who is bound and determined to go to college and become a teacher. Ella accomplishes her goal and is given the position of a freshman English teacher in her home town college. Edmund Quenn,(James Cocoran) "Miracle on 34th Street" who played the role as the college president and gave Ella this job at the college and grew very fond of her. Ella meets a young man and falls in love with him, however, he runs off with her sister and destroys her marriage plans and her thinking about ever getting married again. Sidney Blackmer,"Rosemary's Baby", gave a great supporting role along with Marsha Hunt. There is another romance that Ella experiences except it is with a married man and his wife will not give him a divorce, so poor Ellas has to make a big decision about which way she is going to take. William Gargan, (Sam Peters) is deeply in love with Ella and wants to marry her and stands by her when life's troubles came her way.

The sad part about this film is that Martha Scott never received an Academy Award for her great acting performance role in this picture.

Elderly retired teacher Ella Bishop (Martha Scott) recalls 50 years of her teaching career. In the 1880's, young student Ella is excited after listening to a lecture and inspired to be a teacher.

This kind of light sentimental fare was probably good nostalgic entertainment for a public eager to get away from the news of the war. It spends a lot of time on her personal life, but it's a student reciting the declaration of independence that hits hardest. The personal life is a lot of melodrama. The start has some good melodrama, but that mostly peters out. The teacher student stories are the heart of this type of movie and that's fine.

On rare occasions, our daughter (and/or) her mother, will make, either her famous 'No Bake Cookies' (mom) or 'specialty brownies' (daughter), and the very moment that, any of our 2k-5k taste buds, actually reach either of these referenced treat's 'flavor nucleus', the wiring from our mouth's, complex-nervous-system, accesses the brain's 911 dispatch & instantaneously, confirms that, something in Denmark, isn't 'as ripe as it should be':

Not enough or to much - butter, salt, vanilla extract or egg(s), etc., but irrespective, what the exact problematic ingredient might be, it is often, in a mere instant that, we collectively realize that, something, has been Inadvertently changed (from either chef's original recipe).

Subsequently, 'Cheers for Miss Bishop', seemed to have all the right ingredients necessary, to not only make a genuinely exceptional film, but it also {seemingly} contained, the rarest of ingredients that, often can take an exceptional movie, and morph it, into a potential contender, as a true historical-classic.

And, considering the great film-classics, from the same era, such as: 'Stagecoach' (John Wayne), 'War of Wildcats' (also staring Martha Scott, opposite John Wayne) or, 'Grapes of Wrath' (w Henry Fonda) - Cheers for Miss Bishop's half-century plus (old) release date ('41), just cant be, the scapegoated-ingredient (either).

In the meantime, take heart that, this is a much-better-than-average movie, for the time period; however, its overall trajectory, seems quiet predictable, and merely borderline inspiring.

[Conversely, for those that can appreciate this type movie's genre & theme, especially the intrinsic value of students, after having been exposed, to any truly, exceptional teacher, viewers may want to consider the (classic) film: 'Good Morning Miss Dove' ('55)! ]

In some ways, this reminded me of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1939) in that it quite touchingly illustrates the dedication of a schoolteacher to a profession that frequently saw their own lives being sacrificed. It also features a character who isn't always appreciated by her students or even by some of her professional colleagues as time marches on. "Ella Bishop" (Martha Scott) has always been keen on education and takes great pride in being a woman of letters. She shines at school and is picked by its principal (Edmund Gwenn) to teach the younger kids English - a task that turns out to be quite a bit harder than you might have thought. At this stage in her life, romance is still a distinct possibility but rather cruelly her cousin "Amy" and another man's wife got in the way - and so the remainder of this feature focuses on her strict but affectionate commitment to her charges whilst her own life follows quite a turbulent path of it's own. When her sister dies moments after her daughter is born, "Ella" adopts her (Marsha Hunt) hoping that she will grow into a woman with ideals and principles of her own whilst giving her a renewed sense of purpose. Her one stalwart throughout her life is her loyal friend "Sam" (William Gargan) but can anything ever come of that? You also have to feel sorry for the poor old gardener (Sterling Holloway), too. It is poignant at times, but as it progresses it can't stay out of the realms of sentiment and gradually becomes a rather predictable tale that is both sad and valedictory in equal measure, but just a bit hastily arrived at and gloopy. That said, Scott delivers an emotionally charged performance here and it does remind you that there was time, quite recently, when education was a bit of a luxury.

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 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.

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.

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.

Martha Scott gives a memorable performance as Miss Bishop, who teaches freshman English for over 50 years and obviously has an effect on her students. The effects should have been more closely depicted. We briefly see a student with interest in astronomy. We can hardly think that a student will be nurtured through an understanding of a transitive verb. The one student who is affected by Bishop is a terrific Rosemary De Camp in a supporting performance. De Camp plays a foreigner who memorizes the Declaration of Independence and years later becomes a history expert.

The film depicts the life of Miss Bishop. Unfortunately, for her, what we see here is a revisit to the radio soap opera of the 1930s, Helen Trent. Remember Helen? She never went beyond 35 but had miserable luck when it came to men. The same is true for Bishop here except for the fact that she ages the 50 years.

Edmund Gwenn is marvelous as her first college professor. He certainly would serve as an inspiration to us all.

Bishop's love life was something else. She had every opportunity to marry milkman William Gargan but refused to do so. Anything to do with social class here? Methinks so. Two other romantic liaisons end miserably and tragically as well.

Still, Scott's acting is terrific here. It was interesting to see that after 25 years of teaching, her methodology is criticized by the new college president. She is essentially told to get with it and she takes the plunge into the new century with new clothes and driving a car!

This film is a total memorable experience!

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."

The Plot.

In old age, Miss Bishop reminisces about her life. As if anyone cares.

A dedicated teacher, she spent her whole life teaching at Midwestern College.

She never married when her first love married her cousin and another could not get a divorce from his wife. Man, she's a mess.

When her cousin dies giving birth, she raises the girl as if she were her own daughter and names her Hope. Because her cousin had none.

Throughout her life, she proved to be an inspiration to many students, many of whom move on to great things. While she sat at home and stewed.

On her retirement, many of her students return to say farewell. They are all happy she is gonna die.

This is a movie where making the star look old mean putting a white wig on them.

Doesn't that say it all?