Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Gordon Getty’s opera, reimagined for film, is based on the popular 1934 novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips and other stories by James Hilton. Goodbye, Mr. Chips tells the story of a teacher at Brookfield, an all-boys English boarding school to which “Chips” dedicates most of his adult life. The film chronicles Chips’ story of love, loss and learning over his decades-long tenure at Brookfield. 

The film stars Nathan Granner in the titular role of Mr. Chips, Marnie Breckenridge singing Kathie and Linford, Lester Lynch as Merrivale, and Kevin Short as Ralston and Rivers. The orchestra is conducted by Nicole Paiement. Members of The Young People’s Chorus of New York City, conducted by Founder/Artistic Director Francisco J. Núñez, represent the boarding school’s students.

Hilton’s masterpiece is largely a series of vignettes where few characters, Chips and Kathie aside, appear or are mentioned in more than one scene. Opera and the spoken stage tend to work best when we follow a few characters over time. Thus Doctor Merrivale, who is found only in the opening scene of the book, becomes the narrator who guides us through the opera. Likewise, Kathie reappears in flashbacks long after her early death in childbirth. 

One of the recurring themes in the book is the loss of Chips’ old students, one after another, in the Great War. I express this powerful idea by making sure that all three students whom we meet by name before the war die in it, and are seen again in ghostly presence as Chips reports their loss to the student body in chapel, and once more in his deathbed delirium.

Chips’ antagonist is the overbearing new headmaster Ralston, who sees Chips’ ways as slack and old-fashioned, and demands that Chips retire. Ralston gets his comeuppance when the school backs Chips. He moves on, and does not reappear in the novel. I adapt one of Hilton’s short stories about Chips to bring Ralston back at the end. In that story, an old student faces twelve years in prison for grand larceny, worries that the scandal will ruin the chances of his son’s admission to Brookfield, and asks and receives Chips’ promise to help. I make the son a grandson, and turn the old student into Ralston. 

These retouches to expand the roles of Merrivale, Kathie, the three students and Ralston allow the audience to see familiar faces and hear familiar voices from scene to scene. That somehow seemed right to me, and offered the practical advantages of role consolidation without much changing of Hilton’s beautiful design.