The Trouble with Angels (1966) on Netflix

PG19661h 52mComedy Family

Mary Clancy and Rachel Devery arrive at St. Francis Academy, a convent boarding school run by Mother Superior. Bored by the routine, the two turn to pranks on the nuns.

Watch on Netflix
Watch on Prime
Watch on NordVPN

Netflix3.7/5
IMDb7.3/106,538 votes
Rotten Tomatoes75%

Trailer

Plot summary

On a train through 1960s Pennsylvania, Mary Clancy talks the other girls into a prank before they reach St. Francis Academy, the convent school where Mother Superior scolds her and Rachel Devery on arrival. Bored once term begins, the two sneak classmates through the cloisters for money and are put on dish duty. In gym class they fake illnesses to avoid swimming, and a complaining letter Rachel writes to the head of her former school is intercepted before it reaches him. Inspired by the soap, Mary mixes bubble powder into the sugar bowls set out for the sisters and is sent to the chapel. After art class she recruits her cousin Marvel-Ann as a model for a cement casting, and the nuns spend hours freeing her from it.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Trouble with Angels (1966)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Producer William Frye's first choice for Mother Superior in The Trouble with Angels was Greta Garbo, whose last film appearance had been in 1941; she turned down his offer of $1 million to star.
Rosalind Russell turned a favour to an old school friend who was starting a Catholic girls' school in St. Louis into the film's world premiere, convincing Columbia to hold it at the Fox Theatre with ticket proceeds going to the school's building fund.
The film was based on Jane Trahey's 1962 memoir Life with Mother Superior, about her own high-school years at a Catholic school near Chicago in the 1930s. The memoir showed a boarding school; Trahey actually attended what is now Providence St. Mel School, a day school.
Hayley Mills was 19 and June Harding was 28 while playing schoolgirls whose characters age from 14 to 17 across the three years covered in the plot.
In August 1963 Ross Hunter wanted Loretta Young, Jane Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck and Virginia Grey to play nuns and Patty Duke and Mary Badham to play students.
Hayley Mills's character Mary Clancy, the girl with the "most scathingly brilliant ideas", was based on Jane Trahey's friend Mary, who became Sister John Eudes Courtney, a Sinsinawa Dominican nun.