CHEERS FOR MISS BISHOP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 101, 30 May 1941, Page 16

CHEERS FOR MISS BISHOP

(United Artists)

HAVE not read Miss Bishop, by Bess Streeter Aldrich, on which this film is based, nor do I know when it was published, but I would hazard the opinion

that any resemblance between it and James Hilton’s Good-bye -Mr. Chips would be, as the American radiofeature announcers cannily put it, "purely co-incidental." On the other hand, I would hardly go so far as to say that the film Cheers for Miss Bishop bears only a coincidental resemblance to the screen version of Mr. Chips. For one thing, the parallel between the two films is "plugged" hard in the publicity and on the screen itself the ageing Ella Bishop finally develops an almost startling resemblance to the Robert Donat of the last phase. In short, it is a more or less blatant attempt to capitalise on the success of the earlier film. and like most attempts of that kind, it is not altogether successful. The story told is, in brief, that of Ella Bishop, a foundation graduate of Midwestern University, who becomes lecturer in English at her Alma Mater, and in time becomes herself as much of an institution as the university. During her fifty-odd years of teaching, she has two unhappy love affairs, plus the unrequited but unswerving adoration of her childhood friend, William Gargan. The latter, to some extent, compensates for the former, but her true anodyne is teaching. For, as the film points out not once but several times, "Wisdom (Continued on next page)

{Continued from previous page) is the first cousin to freedom, and freedom is the glory of our nation and our people." And I may interpolate here that I am beginning to get irritated at the way in which a number of recent American films more or less take it for granted that democracy has perished from the earth east of Maine and west of California. Apart from a certain brashness and gaucherie which seem to afflict most Hollywood Americans when they start to talk of things like freedom and democracy, the film is a fair to medium offering. Within the scope of their parts, Martha Scott, as Miss Bishop, and

William Gargan act really well, particularly in the later stages of the story, and their make-up man certainly knew his job, but the film suffered by the inevitable comparison with Mr. Chips, particularly when the advertisements practically promise one a block off the old chip, as it were. And I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for Gargan in his John-Anderson-my-jo-John ole, for after all, even John Anderson had enjoyed the amenities of matrimony before he started down the other side of the hill. So while I am ready to sit up and take notice of Miss Bishop, the cheering must come from some other part of the campus.