Main Cast: Martha Scott, William Gargan, Edmund Gwenn, Sterling Holloway, Sidney Blackmer
Release Year: 1941
Country: US
Run Time: 95 minutes
Plot
Something of a distaff Mr. Chips, schoolteacher Ella Bishop (Martha Scott) devotes her life to her work, ageing 50 years (from 19 to 69) in the course of the film. At a testimonial dinner on the occasion of her retirement, Miss Bishop's former students wonder why their beloved teacher never married. In flashback, the audience learns that town grocer Sam (William Gargan) has carried a torch for her for five decades, while she obliviously pursued unfortunate romantic relationships with weak-willed Delbert Thompson (Donald Douglas) and unhappily married John Stevens (Sidney Blackmer). Adapted by Stephen Vincent Benet from the melancholy novel by Bess Streeter Aldrich, Cheers for Miss Bishop was not only a tour de force for Scott, but also represented the screen debut of another young character actress, Rosemary De Camp. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
John DuCasse Schulze - Art Director, Tay Garnett - Director, William F. Claxton - Editor, Edward Ward - Composer (Music Score), Edward Ward - Musical Direction/Supervision, Hal Mohr - Cinematographer, Richard A. Rowland - Producer, Stephen Vincent Benét - Screenwriter, Sheridan Gibney - Screenwriter, Adelaide Heilbron - Screenwriter, Bess Streeter Aldrich - Book Author
Miss Ella Bishop is a teacher at a small town Midwestern college. The story is told in flashback and takes place over many years, from the 1880s to the 1930s, showing her from her freshman year to her retirement as an old woman. At the beginning she lives with her mother and vixenish cousin Amy, and remembers when her father had a farm near the town. Ella is an inhibited girl whose frustrations grow as she approaches womanhood. As a woman, her ambition to teach causes her to lose her only opportunity for true love, and her life becomes one of missed chances and wrong choices.
She is engaged to lawyer Delbert Thompson, but she learns, to her distress, that Amy is pregnant by him. He runs off with Amy, but later Amy dies in childbirth, leaving Ella to care for Amy's daughter Hope. Hope grows up and marries Richard, and they move away and have a daughter named Gretchen. Ella also has a fling with another teacher, the unhappily married John Stevens, but eventually calls off the relationship; later she is distressed to learn that Stevens has been killed.
Through all the years Ella is supported by her friend Sam Peters, a local grocer. Another source of support is Professor Corcoran, the college president who hires her as a teacher and persuades her to stay when she considers leaving. His death is a blow to Ella. As Ella reaches old age, she reflects back and realizes she allowed the years to go by without achieving what she believes to be her true fulfillment. However, her years have not been without glory, and her moment of triumph arrives when her numerous now-famous students from over the years return to a testimonial dinner at the school to honour their beloved Miss Bishop.
Adaptations to Other Media
Cheers for Miss Bishop was adapted as a radio play on the March 17, 1941 broadcast of Lux Radio Theater with Martha Scott and William Gargan reprising their film roles and on the November 6, 1946 broadcast of Academy Award Theater starring Olivia de Havilland.
