Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941) is a film based on the novel Miss Bishop by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Bess Streeter Aldrich

Bess Streeter Aldrich was an American author.Bess Streeter was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. After graduating from Iowa State Normal School, she taught school at several locations in the west, later returning to Cedar Falls to earn an advanced degree in education...

. It was directed by Tay Garnett

Tay Garnett

Tay Garnett was an American film director and writer.Born in Los Angeles, California, Garnett served as a naval aviator in World War I and entered films as a screenwriter in 1920. He was a gagwriter for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, then joined Pathé and began to direct films in 1928...

 and stars Martha Scott

Martha Scott

Martha Ellen Scott was an American actress best known for her roles as mother of the lead character in numerous films and television shows.-Early life:...

 in the title role. The other cast members include William Gargan

William Gargan

William Gargan, born William Dennis Gargan July 17, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, USA and died February 17, 1979 aged 73 on a flight between New York and San Diego.He was an American motion picture, television and radio actor...

, Edmund Gwenn

Edmund Gwenn

Edmund Gwenn was an English theatre and film actor.-Background:Born Edmund John Kellaway in Wandsworth, London , and educated at St. Olave's School and later at King's College London, Gwenn began his acting career in the theatre in 1895...

, Sterling Holloway

Sterling Holloway

Sterling Price Holloway, Jr. was an American character actor who appeared in 150 films and television programs. He was also a voice actor for The Walt Disney Company...

, Dorothy Peterson

Dorothy Peterson

Dorothy Peterson was an American actress.Peterson was born in Hector, Minnesota of Swedish immigrant ancestry. She made her screen debut in 1930's Mothers Cry, a domestic drama that required the 29-year-old actress to age nearly three decades in the course of the film...

, Marsha Hunt

Marsha Hunt (actress)

Marsha Hunt is an American film, theater, and television actress who was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s.-Career:...

, Don Douglas

Don Douglas

Don Douglas was a film actor, born Donald Douglas on 24 August 1905 in Kinleyside, Scotland, UK.He appeared in over 100 films from the late 1920s to the 1940s including The Great Gabbo , Life Begins , Men in White , Madame X , Cheers for Miss Bishop , Now, Voyager , Little Tokyo, U.S.A. , Tall in...

, and Sidney Blackmer

Sidney Blackmer

Sidney Alderman Blackmer was an American actor.Blackmer was born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina. He started off in an insurance and financial business but gave up on it. While working as a builder's laborer on a new building, he saw a Pearl White serial being filmed and immediately...

. This film marked the debut of Rosemary DeCamp

Rosemary DeCamp

Rosemary DeCamp was an American radio, film and television actress.DeCamp first came to fame in November 1937, when she took the role of Judy Price, the secretary of Dr. Christian in the long-running radio series of the same name. She made her film debut in Cheers for Miss Bishop and appeared in...

.

Plot

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 her vixenish cousin Amy; she remembers when her father had a farm near the town. Ella is an inhibited girl whose frustration grows as she approaches womanhood. 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. Delbert and Amy run off together; but 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 she eventually breaks off the relationship; later, she is distressed to learn that John 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 true fulfillment. However, the 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

Lux Radio Theater

Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...

 with Martha Scott and William Gargan reprising their film roles and on the November 6, 1946 broadcast of Academy Award Theater

Academy Award Theater

Academy Award was a CBS radio anthology series which presented 30-minute adaptations of plays, novels or films.Rather than adaptations of Oscar-winning films, as the title implied, the series offered "Hollywood's finest, the great picture plays, the great actors and actresses, techniques and...

 starring Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

.