Good Morning Miss Dove

[stuart.uk]

Good Morning Miss. Dove, starrring Jennifer Jones, has been repeatedly on UK digital over the last yr. However, last weekend was the first time I saw it.

Some aspects of the film, told in flashback, I found disappointing. I wanted to see how the young Miss. Dove gradually turned herself into a spinster schoolteacher, however, for reasons unexplained Miss. Dove became an old maid when she was still young. In fact one man said he proposed marriage to her 20-yrs before and she was an old maid then. Yet in watching the film I got the impression that Miss. Dove, serioulsy ill in bed, was no more than in her mid 50s, because she talked seeing a newly born baby through to his graduation before she retired.

One thing that ammused me though was while the normally beautiful Jennifer Jones was cast as a plain looking school teacher, another actress, known for playing plain Jane's. Mary Wickes (as in Now Voyeger and White Christmas) played a glamorous young school-teacher. Both ladies could almost have swapped roles LOL

[knitwit45]

Stuart,where did the movie start for you? It sounds like the first portion was cut. Miss Dove was in love with, and I believe engaged to, a young man when she was very young. They planned on careers in archeology, I believe. Her father's sudden death exposed the fact he was bankrupt, and owed a fortune to the bank. She decided to give up her young man and work to pay off her father's debts. The banker asked her to marry him, but she always refused, as she had always been in love with her banished fiance.

It sounds like the movie was heavily edited. Hope this explains some points...

[stuart.uk]

Nancy

I saw the begining of the film with Marshall Thompson, where she was young and attractive and that she had to gie him up, so she could pay off her father's debts. However, I thought her early yrs as a school teacher she would have looked the same and gradually turned into an old maid as the yrs progressed, but even in scenes with the younger version of Robert Stack, she appeared already to be the spinterish Miss. Dove. Maybe she felt, it was expected for a school-teacher, even one who was young, to create a certain image in the class-room, in what I think was the 1920s

[knitwit45]

Stuart, I haven't seen the movie in several months, but I've been thinking about it, and to me, Miss Dove shut down all personal feelings to endure the pain of her decision. When she was in the hospital, it was the first time she had allowed herself to even think about the past. Part of that shutting down was to give up pretty clothes, plain and simple would do.

[mrsl]

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Stuart:

You surprise me. You're usually more keen on feelings. I had a wonderful aunt who had a very short, arranged marriage with a terrible man way back in the late 30's and she never came out of the hurt and unhappiness he caused her. He broke her spirit and nothing ever brought it back. She was a loving woman to all of us kids (nieces and nephews), but never had any of her own, and never tried to be a good time gal because she didn't want to chance getting another man like her husband. Better to be alone than with someone like him. Miss Dove felt she could never repeat the feelings she had for her guy, and chose to give her love to her students.
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