OVP: Teacher's Pet (1958)

Film: Teacher's Pet (1958)

Stars: Clark Gable, Doris Day, Gig Young, Mamie van Doren, Nick Adams

Director: George Seaton

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Gig Young, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Doris Day: click here to learn more about Ms. Day (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Doris Day would never win an Academy Award in her career, and would only be nominated once, for Pillow Talk in 1959.  There are actresses we're going to profile this season who enjoyed genuine critical success (like Audrey Hepburn) and others who never got that kind of recognition (like June Allyson).  Day's Oscar nomination theoretically puts her in the middle, but to be honest-that's being charitable to the Academy.  Day's movies were not meant to be critically-acclaimed-they were meant to make money.  Her citation for Pillow Talk was considered to be something of a surprise, even to Day herself, and less about her acting & more an acknowledgement that she'd been the biggest actress of the decade (and should have an Oscar nomination to show for it).  But the next year, when she got actual buzz for Midnight Lace (a film, it's worth mentioning, that's not very good even if Day was lauded at the time), they felt she'd had enough praise.  This is true for most of the serious or seriously-considered films of Day's, including our film today, Teacher's Pet.  The movie got Golden Globe nominations for Clark Gable & Gig Young, Young got an Oscar nomination, and it was cited by the WGA & Academy for writing, as well as the DGA for its direction.  But Day-not a mention...proof that she was never really taken seriously by the powers-that-be as anything other than a way to make some money.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie honestly has a cute premise.  We've got James Gannon (Gable), a grizzled news reporter who grew up in a newsroom (and only knows that life) who writes a letter to the instructor of a journalism school saying he won't speak in her class because he doesn't believe in journalism school.  When he's forced to apologize, he finds the instructor, Erica Stone (Day) to be less mockable (and far prettier) than he had thought in his letter.  He assumes the guise of a student, one who shows intense promise, and the two start a professional (and romantic) relationship, one that falls apart when James's identity is revealed.  The movie then meanders a bit, both sides softening their stances, and ends with him respecting her and her ending up on his arm, both in love.

The movie's premise and first thirty minutes is really smart, and almost justifies the casting.  Gable & Day are professional movie stars, and both know how to sell a two-dimensional plot, and we get some really fun dialogue about the benefits of both education and real-world experience.  I liked seeing Day in smart woman mode, and not just "preaching from books" but it's clear the writers want her to actually be good at her job and not just "seems good" until Gable shows her the ways of the world.  That theme continues throughout the movie, but it fails once the two start being romantically involved.  Gable is too old for this part, and not necessarily the romance, but the idea that he's going to learn more from Day given his background.  He doesn't sell the transformation particularly well (the script doesn't help him there), and by the last thirty minutes they introduce a whole new topic (the economics of a newspaper) as a bizarre 11:00 number to the plot that feels tacked on because they didn't know how to end the picture.

Honestly, the Oscar nominations perplexed me here.  The film was a hit, so maybe that was the driving factor, but most of Day's movies were hits...I don't get why Teacher's Pet got all of this love when she'd also been in serious films like Julie and The Man Who Knew Too Much a few years earlier with little notice.  Anyway, the two Oscar nominations are quickly discarded.  The screenplay, as I said, suffers after thirty minutes (the movie is two hours long), and really doesn't know how to end this with the two of them both respecting each other AND falling in love AND staying in character (and so it doesn't).  The nomination for Gig Young is even more bewildering, not necessarily because he's bad, but because he's so ancillary.  He's meant, I think, to be a romantic rival to Gable but there's no actual rivalry, and honestly I think he'd 100% be the "gay best friend" if this was a 1990's rom-com.  He's meant to be the comic side piece, but only a couple of his jokes are funny, and there's nothing meaty or showy in his work, or even admirable in adding to the picture.  He's just sort of there-definitely one of the weirder Classical Hollywood acting nominations I've come across...the only way it makes sense is if Teacher's Pet was far closer to Best Picture or Director nominations than I'm giving it credit for (which given the DGA & WGA nominations, may have been the case).