Clark Gable and Doris Day shine in an overlooked, bright romantic comedy: Kay and Michael Kanin’s elegant screenplay gets in some punches for education and good journalism, and overcomes most dated story aspects. A crusty news editor is forced to attend night school, and discovers that his teacher knows things about newspaper work he didn’t pick up on the street. Gig Young is excellent in the thankless Ralph Bellamy role; Gable mugs too much but demonstrates that he still has what it takes to interest females. Ms. Day’s lecturer goes literally ‘weak in the legs,’ yet doesn’t come off as a ninny. Newly remastered from VistaVision.

Teacher’s Pet
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1958 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / Street Date January 28, 2025 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Clark Gable, Doris Day, Gig Young, Mamie Van Doren, Nick Adams, Peter Baldwin, Marion Ross, Charles Lane, Jack Albertson, Vivian Nathan.
Cinematography: Haskell B. Boggs
Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Earl Hedrick
Film Editor: Alma Macrorie
Costume design: Edith Head
Music: Roy Webb
Written by Faye and Michael Kanin
Produced by William Perlberg
Directed by George Seaton

Writer Michael Kanin scored a co-screenplay Oscar for 1942’s  Woman of the Year. Years later he and his wife and writing partner Fay earned an original screenplay nomination for 1958’s  Teacher’s Pet. Their meet-cute romance of opposites is in the classic Hollywood mold. Clark Gable is a crusty, arrogant Alpha Male, and Doris Day a sprited but vulnerable cupcake whose legs go weak when she’s kissed. Some viewers will blanch at the stars’ age difference (21 years) and others may not like some of the conventions of the 1950s setup, such as Gable’s assumption that female college teachers are by definition unattractive. The stars are consistently charming, even if some of Gable’s playing is too broad. But Billy Wilder would likely approve of the elegant story structure.

The producer + writer team of William Perlberg and George Seaton came through with enough hit movie to stay afloat in Hollywood game for more than 25 years. Most of their pictures are better written than directed but Teacher’s Pet is one of their best. They scored a casting coup in signing Doris Day and Clark Gable, who were surely attracted by the Kanins’ clever original screenplay. The filmmakers and Paramount made only one foolish mistake: why was this bright comedy not filmed in color?  The setting is a night school but not a  Blackboard Jungle.

American Democracy needs a thriving Free Press.

The Kanins’ scenario evokes a nostalgia for a healthy, independent free press, something fast disappearing in America. A large New York newspaper employs more than a thousand people. It’s a major industry. We meet an old-fashioned news man who learned his trade while working. He’s an old hand who resents college-educated upstarts with fancy degrees; he doesn’t realize that his attitude is behind the times, obsolete. A few blocks away, a university class attracts eager students that want to learn journalism.

The only movie expressing more love for America’s free press is Samuel Fuller’s great  Park Row. Neither movie could have known they were praising an institution on its way out.

Self-educated city editor James Gannon (Clark Gable) is opinionated, gruff and rude, and not happy when his publisher orders him to offer his experience to a night school journalism class. As he’s already written its teacher a note expressing his contempt for the idea of teaching newspaper work, Gannon attends the class incognito. To his surprise, he finds himself attracted to the instructor, Erica Stone (Doris Day). He still thinks she’s wasting her students’ time, and tries to prove it. Writing a polished short news piece to ingratiate himself with Erica, Gannon entraps himself: she thinks she’s discovered a great talent, and he realizes that she will eventually find out who he really is.

Jim is still cocky enough to think his direct approach will get him a date with his teacher … until he finds out that Erica is seeing a colleague, Dr. Hugo Pine (Gig Young). Pine turns out to be a handsome intellectual, a bon vivant who writes lofty books, speaks several languages, and can converse intelligently about almost every subject. Has Gannon met his match?

We quickly recognize the beginnings of the light rom-com formula that would soon serve Doris Day as a top star of the 1960s: an independent working woman must negotiate romance with an initially arrogant male. A mistaken identity angle is often present, too. With Day warbling the novelty title tune under the credits we know things aren’t going to get too serious, even if the show starts with Gable’s Jim Gannon bossing his employees and barking orders into telephones. But with a change of tone and the substitution of Rock Hudson for Clark Gable, Teacher’s Pet could easily become a regulation Doris Day sex comedy, say, “Don’t Pet Teacher.”

But this is less Day’s film than it is a vehicle for Clark Gable. We experience most of the plot events through the newspaper editor. James Gannon is a throwback to the  Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur days of fast-talking news hounds. Jim throws his weight around the city room like a big dog and runs his staff according to his personal prejudices. He compensates for his lack of a formal education by dismissing book-learning in favor of frontline print experience. That’s demonstrated in his outright persecution of Harold Miller (Peter Baldwin), a talented reporter who happens to have an Ivy League degree. The unmarried Gannon prefers to play father to his copy boy Barney Kovac (Nick Adams), a teenage dropout. Barney’s mother (Vivian Nathan) begs Jim to fire the kid so he can get a basic education. Jim ignores her: after all, that’s the way he entered the trade, and look how he turned out.

That puts Jim Gannon in an awkward position in Erica Stone’s class. She cheerfully demonstrates that the fundamentals of the profession can be taught, and that Jim’s brand of ‘just the facts’ journalism has serious limitations. Stone insists that the ‘why’ of a crime story is as important as the straight reportage, even though Gannon classifies all speculation and social uplift as ‘soft’ news. Erica reasons that newspapers must go in-depth with context and meaning because the public can get the raw reportage they want from radio and television.

To his surprise, Jim finds himself questioning his credentials, both as a journalist and as a ladykiller. His pride takes a hit when Erica Stone isn’t as easy to corner as his present date, flashy nightclub performer Peggy DeFore (Mamie Van Doren). Erica not only isn’t shocked at Gannon’s taste in women, she mocks his taste by imitating the singer’s va-va-voom stage gyrations. In a ladylike way, of course.

A challenge to Clark Gable’s masculinity?

Gannon discovers that Erica is spending a lot of time with the overeducated, multitalented Dr. Hugo Pine, and develops a serious case of Diploma Envy. Hugo can seemingly do everything. The only way the two men can compete is to try to drink each other under the table. Thus Teacher’s Pet becomes yet another ’50s picture that would charm the liquor industry: ‘interesting’ adults all drink like fish, tough guys and eggheads alike. In a nice development, the romantic rivals become friends while suffering through their hangovers.

Things Were Different in the Past Lesson Number One:   The fact that Jim is old enough to be Erica’s father never becomes an issue, as it surely would today. Clark Gable was making it with MGM starlets when little Doris Kappelhoff was still skipping rope. Yet Gable’s sex appeal never faded. He is equally magnetic with Jean Harlow in 1932’s  Red Dust, as he is 20 years later with Ava Gardner in a direct remake,  Mogambo. Gable is just four movies away from the end of his career, yet he definitely still ‘has it.’

Being more age-appropriate means nothing against that kind of star power. Gig Young may not be as sexless as Tony Randall of later Doris Day pictures, but he also doesn’t get the hormones boiling in the same way. The script compromises — Hugo Pine saves face when the rivalry is revealed to be a misunderstanding.

Jim only knows the caveman approach — when he figures that his attentions have put Erica off balance, he simply grabs her for a tight kiss, no formal invite. When her legs go weak afterwards, Jim knows he’s scored a bulls-eye. Perhaps Clark Gable was the last of the matinee idols who could get away with this statuatory assertiveness. Was it the ears that got ’em?

Gable can steal a kiss, but he takes a demerit for some strained comic overacting, reacting to Day’s journalism lecture by squirming and making uncomfortable faces. Director Seaton should have seen that it was pitched much too broadly. Later on, when Gable attends to Gig Young’s hangover, he’s in much better control.

Is our All-American icon in trouble?

Even after the rivalry crisis goes away, Jim Gannon remains on the defensive. This is the prehistoric era, where males must command dominant position to (gasp) to consider themselves Real Men. How can Jim Gannon consider himself in control when his girlfriend can demonstrate that his entire approach to journalism is invalid?  Proof of Jim’s obsolescence arrives when Jim discovers that Erica Stone’s late father was a renowned newspaper legend, a Pulitzer Prizewinner. Erica’s blood is closer to the profession than Gannon’s could ever be. After his cheap deception and low-grade advances, he’s feeling pretty shabby … but only for a while.

Boy lectures Girl, Girl proves Boy doesn’t know his own business … Boy re-asserts his male prerogative.

Spoilers.  The rescue of Jim Gannon’s self-esteem has classic screenwriting contours. At the last moment, Jim discovers that although Erica’s dad was a world-class editorial writer, the paper he published wasn’t very good. And Erica can see it for herself. She shifts her father-worship to a new man, Gannon of course. But Jim realigns his compass as well. He can be proud of coming up through the streets, but there’s no substitute for a well-rounded education. He acknowedges and rewards the good work of his Phi Beta Kappa reporter, and ships his office boy back to high school where he belongs. All is mended — but with the dominant male on top, calling the shots and making the decisions. The Patriarchy will not yield after all.

Old-school actors Charles Lane and Frank Albertson are fixtures in Gable’s newsroom, which the producers packed with a number of Hollywood columnists and publicists: Army Archerd, James Bacon, Joe Hyams, Erskine Johnson, Sidney Skolsky. ‘Phi Beta Kappa’ man Peter Baldwin eventually became a prolific television director, but not before a stint in foreign films, most notably opposite Barbara Steele in Riccardo Freda’s Lo Spettro. Marion Ross of TV’s Happy Days gets some good moments as Erica’s secretary. As Erica identifies herself as an instructor, not a professor, today’s struggling educators may resent that she has her own secetary as well as a double office. She works at night, yet seems to have evenings free for dinner and dancing. Most part-timers these days don’t even rate basic job benefits.

In addition to Fay and Michael Kanin’s Best Original Screenplay nomination, Teacher’s Pet pulled in a nomination for Gig Young. It was his second Supporting Actor nom; he finally won 11 years later for  They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?  Doris Day would do two more middling romantic comedies before pairing with Rock Hudson in  Pillow Talk. Its success set the template for her next decade on the screen. Three years later, Clark Gable would die months before the release of his final film  The Misfits. In that show his character’s age is a major obstruction to his pursuit of a much younger woman, Marilyn Monroe.

The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of Teacher’s Pet is touted as a new remaster performed by Paramount Pictures, from a 6K scan of the original VistaVision camera negative. It is indeed flawless, and reflects the extra kick of a negative twice as large as normal 35mm … sharp as a tack, with very fine natural grain. Yes, show would be seen more often today if it had been produced in color. Perhaps the studio classified it as more of a drama — Doris Day sings the title ditty, but doesn’t perform in the movie per se. In most of her comedies, she took a break or two to sing, even if just off the cuff.

Writer Julie Kirgo and her oft-times commentary partner Peter Hankoff provide a pleasant and informative audio track for the show, a welcome new extra.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Teacher’s Pet
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Julie Kirgo and Peter Hankoff
Theatrical Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: January 25, 2025
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