hyped garbage

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I'm trying to think if I ever saw a film starring Claudette Colbert that I didn't like. None that I can remember, and this film is no exception. It's an utterly charming story of a school teacher with 2 men -- an elementary school boy that has a crush on her, and a fellow-teacher who marries her. Along the way, the teacher almost loses her job when she spends a summer in the same resort (gasp!) as her future husband. A scandal is averted when the male teacher resigns, but before too long they secretly marry. Eventually, the young boy grows up to be a presidential candidate, and the husband disappears in World War I. At the beginning of the film, the teacher is trying to meet the presidential candidate to wish him well, and at the end of the film she succeeds. In between, the back-story is told via flashback.Claudette Colbert is wonderful as the teacher...but she was always wonderful! John Payne was excellent as her future husband, and Payne is an actor who may not have been given his due; always dependable. Shepperd Strudwick plays the boy as an adult, while Douglas Croft plays him exceptionally well as the boy.While I can't quite say this is a "great" film, it's certainly a very, very good one. It only finally popped up on TCM very recently.

This begins at a political party convention in Washington, D.C., as candidate Dewey Roberts (Shepperd Strudwick) prepares to deliver his speech to accept his party's nomination for a U.S. Presidential bid, when his former schoolteacher, Nora Trinell (Claudette Colbert), arrives to attempt to capture a glimpse of and to offer a note of congratulations to one of whom she feels proud to have influenced during his formative years.But the program experiences delay, as attendees and a national radio hookup await the arrival of Candidate Roberts, Miss Trinell reminisces of her arriving from Connecticut into a rural Indiana community back in 1915, to instruct her eighth-grade class, which includes three lively pupils: Young Dewey Roberts (Douglas Croft), Kate Hill (Ann E. Todd), and Peter (William Henderson), Nora detaining the three for misconduct after dismissal.In the meantime, when Nora announces to her class a field trip to the park for a Shakespeare play this coming Saturday, Dewey reports that the school's baseball team has a scheduling conflict, asks to be excused, and runs down the staircase to report to his Coach, Dan Hopkins (John Payne), who decides to have a word with the adamant yet flexible Miss Trinell.Nora and Dan resolve their differences for now before school Principal, Mr. Steele (Francis Pierlot), as the two instructors begin their secret courtship, beginning with an independent Nora's prioritizing career over romance, and soon jeopardizing each of their careers, as marriage is forbidden for a teacher, according to school policy mandates, in 1915.Dewey's parents, Mrs. Roberts (Jane Seymour) and Mr. Roberts (Harry Hayden) demonstrate a liking to his caring instructor, as Nora delivers Dewey's assignments during his bout with a brief illness. Upon her visit, Dewey shows Nora the model boats, which his father has helped him to construct, as ship-making has become a common bond between the two from the onset (since Dewey and Peter argued about the brig, the bark and ship rigged vessels, which, of course, Nora would correct, as her grandfather had been a Naval officer. Kate could not mind her own business during the debate, and had something to say about it, which is the reason as to why she had been detained that day.)Well, fellow instructor Miss Nadine Price (Anne Revere) shares residence at a boarding house with Nora and serves as her confidante of sorts although Nora keeps her mounting feeling about Dan to herself for the most part. Dewey, by now, also admires Nora greatly and dismisses any notion that Nora and Dan are weak enough to fall for each other.Nora completes her partial term of the academic year to vacation for the summer with Nadine and other female instructors at a resort, at which Nora expresses a lack of interest in playing croquet with Nadine or lounging with the other ladies, so when Dan drives by to rescue Nora, they decide to elope in secret, and to spend the remainder of the summer at a different resort, from whence they each send Dewey a postcard featuring the sailboat, "The Mabel." Later in the autumn, when Dewey shows Principal Steele the postcards to prove his point after another argument with Peter, Mr. Steele puts two and two together to confront Dan Hopkins, who secretly sacrifices his career to permit Nora to stay on at her post, and so he enlists in the Service and receives his orders to sail to France.Seasoned with a nice touch of nostalgia, Nora and Nadine light wax candles upon the Christmas spruce, as the boarding house rings in New Year 1916. Dan stops by for a visit, to stroll around the town square with Nora, before his train arrives to deliver him to the docks to sail to France before the U.S. enters WWI.Eventually, Nora transfers from Indiana to a school in Washington, D.C., at which she teaches for the remainder of her career, and garners additional classroom alumni who attend the gathering for Candidate Dewey Roberts. But amid all of the pressure of facing a national audience, will Dewey also "Remember the Day?" This also features Frieda Inescort as Mrs. Dewey Roberts, Marie Blake as Miss Cartwright, Selmer Jackson as Graham, William Halligan as Tom Hanlon, and Chick Chandler as Mr. Mason the Reporter.And the film is released on Christmas Day, 1941, soon after the U.S. enters WWII, to reaffirm sentimental values of patriotism through the eyes of dedicated adults and youths alike.

I have long loved Claudette Colbert in films and am a bit surprised that she isn't more well known for her part in this terrific film. While naturally people tend to think of her from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (two terrific films), it's a shame more people haven't seen REMEMBER THE DAY, as it offered a side to her that wasn't seen so often in films. Here, Colbert is both more sexual and less motherly than she usually seemed in films. Part of this is because her usual asexual hairstyle is gone and she seems to be more of a real woman with real needs and desires. Frankly, apart from her role in SIGN OF THE CROSS, it might just be the sexiest part she ever played. Now this does NOT mean that she was a slut or a loose woman--far from it. But she just seemed more approachable and warmer than in other films in which she appeared.REMEMBER THE DAY is also a highly sentimental film about a beloved teacher who makes her mark on students. However, unlike films like GOODBYE MR. CHIPS and THREE CHEERS FOR MISS BISHOP, the focus in this movie is on the effect she had on one particular student--one who grew up to be nominated for President of the US. The sentimentality is strong but thanks to an excellent script, direction and acting, the film seemed more believable, less maudlin and more authentic than most films of the style.In addition to wonderful work by Colbert, John Payne had one of his better performances and this is a film everyone involved should have been proud of making. A sweet old film that seems to be rather timeless--it's well worth a look.

This was a sweet film about romance during WW I, and I happened to see on a movie channel while staying at a hotel recently. The acting was good, but I am surprised at the accolades of other reviewers. The plot was sort of simple, but my main problem was the ending. So I guess this is a spoiler, although other reviewers have mentioned how it ends.The story begins in 1916, when Colbert is a very young school teacher, probably early 20s. Her student who is going to be the presidential candidate is about 10 or 12. Now at the end, they say that a quarter of a century has passed. That's 25 years. The movie was made in 1941, so that would be just about right. However, Colbert is now an elderly woman, complete with these awful glasses and gray hair in a bun. Her student, who is now the presidential candidate, is a middle aged man with graying hair. His wife, who was also Colbert's student, is an overweight middled aged woman who looks about 50.Uh, excuse me, but if Colber was about 23 at the start, let's do the math. Now she is 48 years old--hardly a dottering old bag who looks like she's ready for a nursing home. Her students were not that much younger than her, and both of them would still be quite young at age 35.What were the producer and director thinking? Didn't anyone else notice this? It's also a little hard to imagine that by age 35, especially in that time period, that the former student would be running for president.