General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Teacher's Pet (1958 film)

Teacher's Pet is a 1958 American romantic comedy directed by George Seaton, starring Clark Gable as a hard-boiled newspaper editor who despises journalism schools and Doris Day as the journalism instructor he falls for while posing as a student in her night class. The film was written by the husband-and-wife team of Fay and Michael Kanin, produced by William Perlberg for Perlsea Co., and released by Paramount Pictures.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	New York opening 19 March 1958; Los Angeles opening 20 March 1958; general release April 1958²
Principal cast	Clark Gable (James Gannon), Doris Day (Erica Stone), Gig Young (Dr. Hugo Pine), Mamie Van Doren (Peggy DeFore)¹^•³
Awards	Two Academy Award nominations for 1958: Best Original Screenplay (Fay and Michael Kanin) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gig Young)⁴
Format	Black and white VistaVision, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, 120 minutes, 10,800 feet²^•⁵
Production dates	17 April to late June 1957, with additional scenes in mid-July 1957²
Music	"Teacher's Pet" and "The Girl Who Invented Rock and Roll," words and music by Joe Lubin; the title song is sung by Doris Day²^•⁴
Reception	88% Tomatometer from 8 critics' reviews on Rotten Tomatoes³

Spoilers

Plot

James Gannon, the hard-boiled city editor of the New York Evening Chronicle, has little regard for higher education, having never attended high school himself. Edna Kovac wants Barney, her son, taken off his copy boy job at the paper so he will go back to school, and after she makes this request of Jim, the editor turns her down, insisting that a college could not match the education Barney is getting in his newsroom.²

Gannon is irate when his managing editor orders him to speak at the night-school journalism class of Professor Erica Stone, who has criticized one of his editorials. Shocked to find that the instructor is a young, attractive woman, he registers for the class under an assumed identity, posing as a wallpaper salesman. He plans to humiliate her, but his plan backfires: Erica graciously accepts his correction of something she says in front of the class, praises his writing generously, and advises him to quit the wallpaper business and work at a newspaper. Now schooled as well as smitten, Jim must contend with Erica's accomplished boyfriend, the psychologist Dr. Hugo Pine (Gig Young), whom he undermines by bribing a bartender to spike Pine's drinks.⁴^•³

Jim's girlfriend, Peggy DeFore (Mamie Van Doren), is none too pleased when she catches wind of the situation.³

Production history

Producers William Perlberg and George Seaton purchased the original screen story from Michael and Fay Kanin in February 1952. At that time the film was projected as a 1953 Paramount release, with production planned to begin as soon as the producers completed their current project, The Country Girl. Production was finally set to begin in November 1956, but filming was delayed until April 1957 to fit Doris Day's schedule, according to Hollywood Reporter news items. The Kanins also reportedly planned to publish their original story in an unnamed "national magazine" in 1953, but it has not been determined whether the story was published.¹

The critics stunt. As a publicity stunt, the film's producers extended an invitation in April 1957 to newspaper film critics around the country to play roles in the picture. Over 143 newspapers accepted the invitation, and a drawing selected fifty critics at random to appear as themselves. Norman Isaacs, the managing editor of The Louisville Times, wrote a scathing editorial accusing Perlberg and Seaton of "intellectual bribery." Isaacs claimed the producers could have saved $15,000 by using real New York City newspapermen, who would have appeared for free; the producers responded that the then-current Screen Actors Guild contract required that each performer be paid.¹

The film was shot in VistaVision, Paramount's large-format process, which was unusual for a black-and-white production. Gable was 56 years old during production and died of a heart attack in 1960, two years after the film's release.⁴

Reception and legacy

The film received two Academy Award nominations for 1958, for the Kanins' original screenplay and for Gig Young's supporting performance as Dr. Hugo Pine.⁴^•⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 88% Tomatometer from 8 reviews and a 71% audience score from more than 2,500 ratings.³

The film critic Adrian Martin has described it as a film that plays out a complicated game of social and personal differences between Day's bookish journalism teacher and Gable's hard-bitten editor from the School of Hard Knocks, and singles out a scene involving Day's refined boyfriend and his relation to supposedly primitive black music.⁶ A New York Times review reprinted on Rotten Tomatoes reads the film as an intelligent look at a moment when the old guard of tough-talking reporters was about to give way to a new breed of educated, self-aware men and women.³

The film has remained available on home video and streaming. KL Studio Classics issued a Blu-ray remastered from the VistaVision negative, scanned in 6K and mastered in 4K, with a restored stereo soundtrack and a commentary by film historian Julie Kirgo and filmmaker Peter Hankoff.⁴ As of recent listings it streams or can be rented on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Kanopy, and Hoopla.⁷

The Kanins

Fay and Michael Kanin were a husband-and-wife writing team whose onscreen credit reads "Written by Fay and Michael Kanin." According to the commentary on the KL Studio Classics release, both had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and Michael was the older brother of Garson Kanin, the writer of Born Yesterday. Their screenplay for Teacher's Pet earned them an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.¹^•⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026