Thursday Film Picks- girl Teachers

 

I would never want to be a teacher....never. I would want to strangle many of those kids. I applaud teachers who must deal with so much. Here, they are talking about having the kids give up their cell phones when they enter class...YESSSSS! I am going to talk about teachers and am centering on the women who often make up this employment sector so, here are my 3...

1. THESE THREE-1936

I fell in lust with Joel McCrea when I saw this film even though I was a kid. Ok, I thought he was dreamy but I’m talking about the film not hubba hubba so this film is based on a Lilian Hellman play about a nasty kid ruining the reputation of 2 teachers saying they are in a lesbian relationship. We can’t have that for 1936, so it changes where the womens’ reputations are hurt when the doctor( McCrea) falls asleep in a chair in one of the teacher’s rooms and the brat decides to create an uproar saying he stayed overnight. The 2 teachers are played by the beautiful Merle Oberon and Miriam Hopkins, known to have been a very difficult person to work with. The 2 women teachers are friends who decide to open up a school for girls and the doc falls for Oberon and vice versa neither knowing that Hopkins has also fallen for the Doc. The one who notices all is Slytherin bitch Bonita Granville, an excellent child actress who almost steals the picture from the 3 leads with her vile character. This is an excellent film which was remade as “The Children’s Hour” with Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner as the leads but I’m sticking with the original version of the book since I still have to see the remake.

2. TEACHER’S PET-1958

This is a fun comedy that stars Doris Day as the teacher and Clark Gable as the student…yes, student. Gable plays an old-fashioned, hard-hitting newspaperman who thinks the new style of writing the news is dumb as sh&@). His editor gives him the wonderful news story to look into this new way and to look into a journalism class and report on it. Reluctantly, he goes only to find Ms. Day making fun of his own article he had written. He decides to fib, saying he wants to learn about journalism and takes her class. Of course, the 2 start to fall for one another with Gig Young coming between the 2 as her shrink boyfriend. It’s funny and enjoyable especially Gig Young as the amiable boyfriend which he perfected in the 50s ( belying his true personality which was an alcoholic who abused his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery and ended up murdering his new young wife and then killing himself in 1978..a real shame).

3. THE INNOCENTS-1961

This eerie and quite scary film stars Deborah Kerr as a young governess sent by the cold uncle to teach his niece and nephew who are staying at his country estate since he has no real care about them but was left in charge of them when the8r parents died. When she comes to the estate and meets the kids, they seem ok, at first, but they seem to live within themselves and have secrets. Soon you learn that the former governess and the valet had a torrid affair where both died soon after but they are far from gone. They seem to be connected to the children and rule the kids. Kerr sees the 2 spectres and tries to get the kids to admit to seeing them but they refuse. Let me tell you, when I watched this and saw the ghost of the woman, in her black outfit standing at the water’s edge, it totally freaked me out and even now, I’m uncomfortable thinking about that scene. The whole film is, to me, one of the scariest films and it has no special effects or typical scenes one expects but just simple scenes like the one I described, frankly, Deborah Kerr played a teacher more than once…”Black Narcissus”  and “The King and I” are 2 i could have chosen but I wanted to choose this one since she does try and teach the kids in more than one way.

Which teachers in films can you think of?

Oh, the songs, from yesterday’s post that won, nominated and got nuttin? Talk To The Animals won the Oscars, Bare Necessities was nominated and To Sir, With Love got nadda! There was a huge stink about this back in the day.