“Goodbye, Mr. Chips” from 1939 was an Academy Award-winning tribute to the teaching profession. Starring Robert Donat, this MGM production depicted the selfless, inspiring story of Charles Chipping, a man who dedicated his whole life to teaching at one institution. “Cheers for Miss Bishop” from 1941 could be considered the female counterpart of this story.
This film was a United Artists release, starring Martha Scott as the title character. It was directed by Tay Garnett. Other actors in the cast include William Gargan, Marsha Hunt, Sidney Blackmer, Rosemary DeCamp, and Sterling Holloway. Like “Mr. Chips,” it was based on a novel of the same name.
This film’s copyright expired years ago, so many low-quality versions of it are in circulation. I saw this movie on Amazon Prime Video, where it is included for free with Prime membership. When obtaining a copy of this film, whether online or on DVD, make sure the runtime is 95 minutes, since many edited versions exist.
A Teacher’s Story
Ella Bishop (Scott) is an eager freshman at Midwestern University, which is just getting started in the 1880s. Ella is very inspired to pursue her goal of becoming a teacher by a motivational speech given by the school president, James Corcoran (Edmund Gwenn). She lives with her hard-working, widowed mother (Dorothy Peterson) and her boy-crazy fourteen-year-old cousin, Amy (Mary Anderson). Ella has a devoted admirer in local grocer Sam Peters (Gargan), a reliable friend since childhood who hopes to marry her someday.After Ella graduates from Midwestern University, President Corcoran offers her a position as an English teacher. She happily accepts. When she meets her first class of students, who are barely younger than herself, she aims to do more than just teach them English. She tries to get to know each student individually to find out what he or she does well and loves. Then, she does anything she can to help all her students reach their goals.
Not long after becoming a teacher, Ella meets a handsome young lawyer who has just come to town, Delbert Thompson (Don Douglas). After an unlikely meeting involving a snowy rooftop, a locked window, and a ladder, they begin seeing a lot of each other. Eventually, they become engaged to be married. However, Amy also is interested in Delbert, and she doesn’t plan on letting her cousin marry him without putting up a fight. Miss Bishop just isn’t destined to become a wife, although she ends up raising her niece (Marsha Hunt) as her own child. University presidents come and go as the years pass, but Miss Bishop remains a faithful institution at Midwestern, doing her job despite numerous personal heartbreaks.
More Than a Teacher
Miss Bishop is more than just a teacher. She is a mentor, a shining beacon for her students to follow in life as well as in the classroom. She is not only concerned with the scholastic duties of teaching lessons, assigning homework, and giving tests. She becomes a personal friend to everyone who walks into her classroom. She goes out of her way to help every student, even at the expense of her personal happiness.Since Ella doesn’t get married or have children of her own, some might say that she misses a lot of life’s great joys. After dedicating her whole life to teaching, a woman in Miss Bishop’s position might wonder whether her work was worth the sacrifices she made. However, we know that Miss Bishop has not only impacted but drastically altered many people’s lives for the better. She encouraged and guided uneducated but eager immigrants and farmers to become world-famous astronomers, historians, and politicians. You cannot discount the influence a good teacher can have on someone’s life.
Inspiring Entertainment
“Cheers for Miss Bishop” is a very inspiring movie, and it’s also very entertaining. It’s not a typical boy-meets-girl story; it’s more like a biopic, since it depicts the title character’s entire adult life. It isn’t based on a true story, but it reflects the real lives of countless unsung heroines of education, real teachers just like Ella Bishop.This movie isn’t just about college life, though. It has romantic sections, as well, as Ella falls in love with two different men throughout the course of her life. Both begin tenderly but grow more dramatic and intense as they near their ill-fated conclusions. It also is a family story, since Ella has a close, loving relationship first with her mother and later with her niece and grandniece (Lois Ranson), whom she advises on important moral decisions with the wisdom she has acquired from her long and complicated life.
This charming story is brought to life by a great cast. Martha Scott is perfect in the title role, conquering the considerable challenge of playing the same character across fifty years of her life. She ages very convincingly throughout the film, not only with makeup and hairstyling changes but also with her acting choices, mannerisms, gait, and even her voice. She is beautifully supported by an excellent ensemble of talent.
I highly recommend “Cheers for Miss Bishop” to teachers, students, and anyone else who lives in these United States of America. It’s an important reminder of what our nation has long represented. I’ll close with this beautiful patriotic toast from Miss Bishop: “So here’s to our nation: she’s young, she’s growing too fast, she makes a lot of mistakes, but somehow she does manage to keep her people free. May she always.”
