TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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Queen for a Day
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THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH (1970)
Next: Sudden
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FRIGHT NIGHT (1985)
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7TH CAVALRY (1956)
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4 minutes ago, Fading Fast said:
⇧ That's a really insightful review about a movie I enjoy more each time I see it as, as you point out, it has layers and nuances well beyond its surface story and romance. It definitely deserves to be in the TCM rotation more than it has been.
Thanks. I think viewers are sometimes more predisposed to certain types of movies...especially if the two leads are this good and the story is something that makes sense. One of my majors in college was broadcast journalism, but we were required to take courses in print journalism as well as marketing and advertising courses. So watching TEACHER'S PET, I was reminded of things we had been taught in our college classes...but we also had field trips to TV news studios around Los Angeles...it wasn't all just gaining knowledge inside a classroom.
Day's character should have arranged a field trip for her students to visit Gable's newspaper office, if she had been smart!
One thing that cracked me up was how fast he wrote the news article in her class...I remember in one of my print journalism classes we had to do exercises like that. The professor would only give us 15 or 20 minutes to pound out a 5-paragraph story, after we did a mock q-and-a with the professor who was playing an eye witness to a crime. We had to learn how to craft a solid news story under the constraints of a tight deadline.
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BACHELOR APARTMENT (1931)
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BLUEBEARD (1944)
Next: Vincent Price, Gene Tierney & Glenn Langan
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THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
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THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE (1942)
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MADE FOR EACH OTHER (1939)
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THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE (1942)
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THE MCCONNELL STORY (1955)
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DULCY (1940)
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SMARTY (1934)
Next: Song
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THE KILLING KIND (1973)
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SYLVIA (1965)
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THE FAMILY STONE (2005)
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From 1958
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DULCY (1940)
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MAISIE (1939)
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BRIGHT EYES (1934)
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HIGH TIDE (1947)
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Today's neglected film is from 1958. It has aired 16 times on TCM...but not since 2009.
Some screen comedies amount to nothing more than fluff, and some of them stretch out a gag to the point that the film becomes tedious to watch. Fortunately, those situations do not apply to TEACHER’S PET. This is a product that has a lot going for it. It’s become a forgotten classic (because its stars made other more celebrated films), but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be rediscovered.
TEACHER’S PET espouses the idea that some people may value experience more than education; while others hold education in higher esteem. It is in many ways a think-piece, and as such, it is no surprise to learn the script started as a straight drama, before it was lightened around the edges. This said, the laughs are not fast and furious, and the comic bits result more in amusing chuckles than outright guffaws.
Since the basic idea is not sacrificed for cheap jokes, the film retains meaning. TEACHER’S PET, despite a cutesy-wootsy title, is something that explores a solid issue but doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is blessed with a strong cast. Doris Day plays a journalism instructor whose night class for adults is upended by the presence of Clark Gable, a wise city editor. Miss Day is her usual perky self, while Mr. Gable plays one of his more cynical characters.
To say they don’t get off to a good start is putting it mildly. This meet-cute is more meet-hostile at first. She has contacted his boss, the managing editor, to see if he might be a guest speaker one evening. Because he has neither the time nor the inclination to do any such thing, he fires off a scathing letter. However, his boss makes him attend anyway, and when he shows up in Day’s classroom, he hears her reading the letter to the other students, which they all mock.
His dander is now up, and he sticks around. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Day is an attractive woman and he’s quickly smitten with her, though their philosophies about life and the news business are worlds apart.
She remains in the dark about his identity, led to believe he’s just another adult student enrolled in the course she’s teaching. He comes back week after week, and they develop a relationship…especially when she realizes what a good writer he is. But they’re still at odds about the psychological underpinnings of tragic events that get reported in the news. Some of this dialogue in the movie, while a tad heavy-handed, is thought provoking.
Meanwhile, the romantic comedy elements get dialed up. The film is not actually a sex farce, but it lays the groundwork for Day’s subsequent farces with Rock Hudson. You know, where she often gets flustered battling an alpha male and tries to keep her cool.
There are clever lines in the film. One of the best is spoken by Gable’s character who comments that in these high-brow academic courses, it’s a lot of hooey and amateurs teaching amateurs how to be amateurs. But he’s not allowed to entirely dismiss Day’s notions, since he does find out later on that her father was a renowned journalist who’d been awarded a Nobel Prize.
There is also a good line where their fundamental conflict is characterized as a simple difference in whether journalism is a trade or a profession. Day’s character views it as a profession and wants to make it better. Plus we hear about how print journalism must compete with broadcast journalism on radio and TV.
A few subplots get screen time. The best one involves a young apprentice on staff, played by Nick Adams. His mother (Vivian Nathan) asks Gable to fire her son, so that he will go to college and get an education.
At first Gable is opposed to the suggestion, then ends up agreeing with the lady that her son would not be harmed by getting an education…and besides, he will still have his job waiting for him the day after graduation. Related to this is the repeated point that Gable never graduated from high school. Later in the film, he does get to wear a cap and gown.
Gable’s very good at comedy, and it’s nice to see him try this type of role and succeed at it. He has chemistry with Doris Day in spades, but I was surprised at how well he worked alongside Gig Young who plays the third part of a triangle that emerges when Day is revealed to have a close personal attachment to a university colleague. Young could rely on the stereotype of a stuffy know-it-all hiding in an ivory tower. Instead, he gives us a refreshingly disheveled character.
During his scenes, Young morphs from rival to pal for Gable. Not to mention, he becomes a drinking buddy, too!
Not all of the film is perfect. I didn’t think the office scenes where Gable was in charge were staged very realistically There should have been more noise and work activity occurring in the background. Perhaps I was expecting it to be like Lou Grant in that regard. They all seemed a bit too laidback without facing the pressures of deadlines or complaints from higher management or the reading public.
Also I didn’t think it was entirely believable that Day would have no idea what Gable looked like before she met him. After all, she had requested he be a guest speaker for her class…and wouldn’t he have had his picture appearing in the paper alongside some of the articles he had written, or the columns he had overseen? As an editor, he would surely have written editorials and those features usually have the photo of the editor included.
But I can overlook some of that. For the most part, this is a very engaging motion picture, and we get two spirited performances from the leads.
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Essential: WOMAN WHO CAME BACK (1945)
TopBilled:
This 1945 gem was made independently but distributed through Republic Pictures. Nancy Kelly stars as the title character, a woman who comes back to a sleepy New England town to find things quite unsettling.
First, I should provide a bit of background on the character she plays, as well as the other inhabitants of Eben Rock. She left the area when she was younger and is now going back on a bus. Sitting next to her is an elderly woman also from the same town. They talk about the people of Eben Rock. The old hag seems somewhat superstitious and might even be a supernatural manifestation of the evil that happened there in the past.
Their conversation is interrupted when the bus careens off the road during a storm and plunges into an icy river. Members of the local community rush to the site of the crash, and it is quickly learned there were no survivors, except Kelly. She has a sketchy memory of the crash and cannot provide many substantial details. She does remember the old woman and describes her, but no such person is listed as having been on the bus.
As the story continues, strange things occur. Local townsfolk accuse her of being a witch, and she begins to wonder if it’s all connected to the woman she met on the bus. The writers are careful not to make it too hokey, but there are suggestions that either the hag has cast a spell on her, or that she is the old woman reincarnated and that she had seen a part of herself on the bus. It’s all rather thought-provoking and Nancy Kelly does a great job conveying the terror that increases inside her, when she starts to believe as others do that she’s really a witch.
Of course, there’s a love story too, when one of the men in town has fallen for her. He doesn’t believe she’s a danger to anyone, only to herself if she keeps behaving this way. The love interest is played by John Loder, and he turns in a subtle performance, wisely letting his costar drive the film’s narrative forward.
By the time it all ends, answers have been provided that explain the disappearance of the old woman. And our heroine seems to regain her sanity. But this is no dream, and it’s not explained away as anyone’s fanciful imagination. She really does seem to have been possessed.
The new love she’s found with Loder gives us an idea of what was missing when she began to doubt her own basic goodness. It’s too bad there wasn’t a sequel with her giving birth to a daughter who dealt with the same issues. But at least it ends happily and she doesn’t self-destruct. Because how can you come back from that? I mean, it would be a real scream.
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THREE word titles
in Games and Trivia
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MY FRIEND FLICKA (1943)