“How Did He Die?” “I Haven’t Decided Yet.”
Sometimes, I forget just how old some tropes in genres can be. Part of that is tropes come in and out of fashion. I’m not familiar with all the tropes of romantic comedies, but watching Teacher’s Pet, I found a couple of them. Not that it kept me from enjoying this film.
The movie follows James Gannon (Clark Gable), the city editor for a newspaper. He never attended college and is proud of it, so when he is asked to come speak to a college journalism class, he sends back a rather snide letter.
However, the paper’s owner isn’t pleased with his decision, so James is sent to the class to apologize to the professor, Erica Stone (Doris Day). However, he misses his chance before the class starts, partially because he is distracted by just how beautiful Erica is. Using a fake name, he signs up for the class. Can he keep up the deception and win over Erica?
While I didn’t include this as a part of the teaser, James and Erica definitely have a meet cute, at least for James. Erica really hasn’t noticed him yet, so some people might not count it. And there’s the entire James keeping who he really is secret from Erica. As I said, there really is nothing new when it comes to genre stories (and as a mystery reader, I acknowledge this).
This movie mostly manages to surpass anything familiar. It is told from James’s point of view, which I found an interesting change for a romantic comedy. Yes, we can easily follow Erica’s feelings as the movie progresses, but we never see her when James isn’t around. I thought that was a fun change.
However, I will say that parts of this movie don’t age well. James really becomes obsessed, and at one point crashes what he thinks is a date Erica is on. Now, I will say the results were very funny, but I was looking at the screen cringing a little as the scene was set up.
I think part of this is because of the age gap between Clark Gable and Doris Day. We’re just supposed to ignore that fact, which makes it even creepier to me. They rewrote the part a little when Clark Gable was cast, but it wasn’t enough for me viewing the movie in 2023.
And this isn’t the fault of any of the actors. I think this is the first Clark Gable movie I’ve seen, and I enjoyed watching him. Doris Day is charming as always. The rest of the cast is fantastic as well.
I realize that this might sound like I didn’t enjoy the movie. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, there are several things that didn’t age well, but this movie still has plenty of funny moments and some great banter as it goes along. Even if you know a joke is coming, you can’t help but laugh.
An interesting thing I noticed, the movie was filmed in black and white. That’s not a reason to avoid the film. That’s more something to note in passing.
How you feel about some of the dated elements will determine how you feel about Teacher’s Pet. While those elements did bother me, they didn’t bother me enough to ruin the film. I laughed as I watched and had a smile on my face when it ended.
The class assignment that Gable’s character wrote had all the guts and heart that would win over Doris’ character and me!
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