Our Miss Brooks (1956)

Directed by Al Lewis. Starring Eve Arden, Robert Rockwell, Don Porter, Gale Gordon, Richard Crenna, Jane Morgan, Leonard Smith, Nick Adams, Gloria McMillan, Joseph Kearns, William Newell.

Everything about this comedy centered on English teacher Arden taking a job at the high school of a small Midwestern town—from the strained performances to the ham-fisted mugging, the script’s tired jokes to Roy Webb’s grating music cues—reeks of a lame feature-length sitcom missing the laugh track. That’s because it is based on a sitcom (and before that, a radio program), and no effort was made to make its cloying style fit a cinematic format. Quite lousy, unless you have a formidable fondness for the source material, if anyone remembers it at all. Though intended to be funny, Crenna’s squawking, ukulele-strangled rendition of “It’s Magic” probably set serenades back a few centuries. Future Playboy Playmate June Blair has a few walk-ons just so the menfolk can stop what they’re doing and go homina homina homina. Despite mutual TV backgrounds, director Lewis is not to be confused with the actor who played Grandpa Munster.

33/100