HER TWELVE MEN. (1954)

Stately British beauty Greer Garson, red of hair/long of vowel, never fully recaptured the prestige & popularity of her war year films (1939 - 1945), but carried on to diminishing returns till this final film under her M-G-M contract.  (She made only two features as leading lady after this.)  Still, someone had the graceful idea of having her finish as she started; debuting as beloved teacher’s wife in GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS/’39, she’d make a farewell playing a sort of beloved Mrs. Chips.  It’s nearly the only good idea in here.  Technically a widow (she’d already been separated), she’s hired as the first female teacher at The Oaks, a snooty private school for boys.  Inexperienced, she’s condescended to by fellow faculty member Robert Ryan and wooed by rich benefactor Barry Sullivan after she manages to get thru to his troubled son.  The film’s real problem not that you guess all the outcomes, but that it’s all so dull.  Running jokes include having her coffee always boil over and having her charges always call her ‘Sir.”  (The latter rather endearing,)  But typically stolid direction by Robert Z. Leonard doesn’t help, nor disinterest from producer John Houseman, stuck with this studio assignment between passion projects JULIUS CAESAR /’53 (the one with Brando as Marc Antony) and the excellent EXECUTIVE SUITE/’54.  On a happier note, the inevitable warmup between Ryan & Garson as they belt out ’The Twelve Days of Christmas’ with the ‘holdover’ school boys, gives us a break by starting at Day Five and clearing the hell out at Day Eight.  Close call.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Some of the kids obviously ‘parked’ at the school by disinterested parents (now there's a subject for a film!), but in a rather appalling attempt to help one of these lonely kids, Garson’s character is shown faking letters to him which she mails as if they came from his mother.  Imagine the psychiatric bills of the future when he finds out who actually wrote them.  Yikes!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Thanks to Robert Donat’s miraculously clean playing as Mr. Chips, Garson’s initial appeal is hard to miss; and she comes thru even more strongly against Ronald Colman in her other James Hilton project, RANDOM HARVEST/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/goodbye-mr-chips-1939.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/09/random-harvest-1942.html