I'm usually not a fan of overly sentimental movies, but I absolutely loved Cheers For Miss Bishop.

After viewing this movie I am shocked that Martha Scott is not remembered today. Her performance in this movie was just superb. She effortlessly moved from portraying Ella as a naive young teacher to a seasoned old timer.

Yes, this movie had its problems (most notably was Amy conveniently dying in childbirth and no one seemed to care),but I'm willing to overlook those faults.

I was totally caught up in this movie and in Ella's life. Her relationship with Sam was so tender and sweet. And even though I saw the ending coming a mile away, I was in tears when Ella arrived at the banquet and realized that it was for her.

I do have to quibble with a fellow reviewer's comments that this film was trying to evoke Casablanca. This movie was released in 1941. Casablanca was released in 1942. Please, if one is going to make such criticisms of movies, it's much more effective to have one's facts straight.

Most of Cheers for Miss Bishop is told in flashback as Martha Scott reminisces with old friend William Gargan about her fifty years as a professor of English at Midwestern University. In fact the whole film is held together by Martha Scott's powerful performance in the title role.

Scott tells of her life beginning with her accepting a position at a small college after graduating from same as an English teacher. She's one of those rare people who's life and job become bound as one and finds she has no use for the other aspects of life like home and family. Even Robert Donat's Mr. Chips married Greer Garson albeit ever so briefly.

Not that she didn't have chances to marry, but her career and her students came first.

Martha Scott gets good support from a nice ensemble of players that also include Edmund Gwenn and John Hamilton as her college presidents, Dorothy Peterson as her mother, and Mary Anderson as her great niece.

Particularly impressive to me was Rosemary DeCamp as a young Scandinavian immigrant student who Scott recognizes intuitively as being an incipient genius with a photographic memory. When she's accused of cheating Scott saves her from expulsion by having her recite the Declaration of Independence from memory. It's a very powerful screen debut for Rosemary DeCamp.

Still the film is Martha Scott's show and a good show it is too.

Did you ever have a spinster school-teacher whose unique look at life made you open your eyes to a world you never would have imagined without them? That's the magic of Martha Scott's Ella Bishop, and in this story, her career is explored from her college graduation to her retirement and how her lengthy tenure is honored. Of course, a lovely lady like Ella Bishop has many suitors, none more memorable to her than handsome William Gargan, but as time goes by, her dedication to her students take precedence over her love life. Changes in administration and teaching methods also have an effect on her, and with brief conflicts over her methods after initial college president Edmund Gwenn retires, she becomes known for being a cantankerous old lady. So what does a cantankerous old lady do to show she is changing with the times? Go out and buy that new fangled contraption called an automobile, that's what. She also takes in a new born orphaned baby girl, and as time goes by, her role as surrogate mother to this infant becomes a major priority as well. But every beautiful career must have an end, and Scott intends to go out with dignity.

This slice-of-life drama isn't a full plot for sure, but other than a montage of history passing by (which cuts out several decades of her life),that doesn't matter in the structure of this touching drama. Scott, fresh from her success as the young bride in "Our Town", is equally as good here, and this certainly could be called "Our School" had it not been based upon a book (by Bess Streeter Aldrich). Great character performances aid in the passage of time with Sterling Holloway going down El Brendel territory as a gardener who keeps going "Yumpin' Yimminy!" every time somebody treads through his flower beds. But what the story's true theme is follows her interest in various students: a country bumpkin who makes it big, as well as a female European immigrant who becomes a famous historian. While there are a few minor disappointments in the film's flow, it culminates in a beautiful conclusion where all her efforts of the past come back to pay homage to her.

Movies about teachers have been a mixed bag with some good ones ("Remember the Day", made the following year; "Good Morning, Miss Dove", "To Sir With Love", "Up the Down Staircase") and a few others of mixed messages ("The Class of Miss MacMichael", "Teachers") and of course, some modern classics ("Lean on Me", "Stand and Deliver", "Dead Poets Society"). Teachers either touch our lives, annoy us or bring out a desire to find the truth about things we feel passionately about. "Miss Bishop" might not be a great film, but it certainly inspires a respect and memory of those who did, like Martha Scott's lovely lady, and reminds us of the innocence of those lost years that no matter how much you change over the years can never forget.