REMEMBER THE DAY (1941)

While Sentimental Education stories never go out of fashion (especially in youth-obsessed Hollywood where producers all think they must have been the first person to ever get wised-up), tales of Sentimental Educators wax & wane.  But after GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS hit big (1934 book/1939 film), they started to come out of the woodwork.  This effective number, based on a B’way play that had a modest run a year after CHIPS was published, is a female driven variant.  Claudette Colbert plays the now elderly teacher, in D.C. to hear a speech by a former favored pupil, now the likely next President.  She thinks back to her beginnings as a young substitute at a small town grammar school; of the fellow instructor she stumbled into love & marriage with; and of currying a student’s potential, the future Presidential hopeful, while gently tamping down on his schoolboy crush for her that threatened to spiral into paralyzing self-pity & depression.  The film really ought to be a giant pile of mush.  Yet, even more than CHIPS, it never bogs down in spite of splashing in every possible puddle of genre sentiment & tropes.  Credit sec playing by the cast in keeping things under control: Colbert, brisk & enchanting at all ages; a surprisingly hunky John Payne; an OTT turn that thaws from Anne Revere as the spinster teacher Colbert is on track to become; and a spunky turn from Master Douglas Croft as the boy who’ll grow up to be a great man.*  But will he remember his beloved teacher after all these years?  (Whadda you think?)  All of this steadied by director Henry King who had a gift for getting away with three-hanky weepies by not having anyone press too hard.  Always at his best in small town Americana (as opposed to the prestige items production chief Darryl F. Zanuck forced on him), this one right in his sweet-spot.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Croft never got his career back in gear after returning from WWII service.  But in his early teens, he was briefly the go-to kid to play the film's star 'as a boy' in the opening reel: Gary Cooper (PRIDE OF THE YANKEES), James Cagney (YANKEE DOODLE DANDY), Glenn Ford (FLIGHT LIEUTENANT) and Ronald Reagan (KING’S ROW).