greer garson, as the first female teacher at a small private school for boys in 1954’s Her Twelve Men, makes sure young rex thompson is up on the travels and travails of Odysseus, his escape from Calypso, and all that Greek gods business. Garson, the British actress who won an Oscar for Mrs. Miniver, has to deal not only with her dozen Oaks School lads but also with the amorous entreaties of Robert Ryan and Barry Sullivan, too. The film, marketed by MGM as a kind of distaff Goodbye, Mr. Chips, was based on a story from the Ladies’ Home Journal. (Its original title: Miss Baker’s Dozen—ouch!) The well-worn copy of Homer’s epic poem in Thompson’s hands is the reliable S. H. Butcher and A. Lang translation—book number 167 in the Modern Library collection.