Blackboard Jungle

A history professor once told me, "If you want to change history, become a historian." This statement might also apply to movie critics. I came of age (turned 13) when I saw this movie when it was first released in 1955. My buds and I liked the movie, not because it was a shocker, which it was not, but because it dealt fairly realistically with teenagers, much more so than say the old Andy Hardy series. To my knowledge no one was really shocked by this movie. There was no big hoopla by "concerned" citizens as there would be when Elia Kazan's "Baby Doll" played on the same screen a few years later. And "Rock Around The Clock" was not considered rock 'n' roll by most teens, only a pop hit along the lines of "Sh-boom." The first record actually considered rock 'n' roll by most teens was Chuck Berry's "Maybelline." When my buds and I first heard it on the radio, we stopped the car and listened intently to a new kind of teen music. That did not happen with anything Bill Haley and the Comets put on wax. Those who say "The Blackboard Jungle" was a shocker simply did not live through that period of history. Some of these same critics believe that the average family of the 50's was like the one portrayed on "Leave It To Beaver." I knew of no family in my neighborhood that lived like the Cleavers. We found "Rebel Without a Cause" and a somewhat neglected film "The Wild One" to be the ones that related to our rebellious side. "The Wild One," especially Marlon Brando's performance, was the standout film for us teens in those days. Another later Robert Mitchum flick, "Thunder Road," was also a movie that spoke to the teens of the period. Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Robert Mitchum were movie role models for many of us growing up in the turbulent 50's, not Glenn Ford or even Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier.

That's not to say that this movie is not worth seeing, for it is a good movie dealing in a somewhat no nonsense way with teaching rebellious and sometimes dangerous teens, who see nothing relevant in book learning and who don't want to be exposed to the higher levels of intellectual endeavors. How do you teach the unteachable? Still a challenge today in the American classroom.

In the mid 50's, when this film was released my parents like many other people who had teenagers were very reluctant to permit them to spend their allowance money for a ticket to this one. The film is superb, very realistic , giving an in depth view over problematic educational situation. But not only this- it is also a social outcry about racial problems, poverty problems, and when I viewed this film again in 2005 (yes, I managed to enter the theater in the 50's after all..) I was very astonished to realize that later films about the same situation-and there were quite a few of those during the years to come- displayed the same situations , motives and dilemma's. One realizes a very outstanding fact , which, if you will, is heart touching: these violent juveniles can easily dodge school, nobody can make them to stay in class, they even dread to face an expulsion , because deep in their heart they know that education is essential for their future if they ever want to get out of the vicious circle of poverty and low class, that holds them inside it.

Certainly a classic American motion picture. Glenn Ford stars as a teacher who is proud of his profession and is dedicated to teaching others. He is assigned to an unruly inner city high school filled mostly with teen-age thugs. The general attitude of the schools staff is to just sit on the garbage can (referring to their student body) from year to year. Fords Richard Dadier character attempts to teach these penitentiary candidates is met with resistance led chiefly by the ultimate juvenile delinquent Artie West played masterfully by Vic Morrow.

Well cast with a number of fine actors and actresses virtually all films that followed this one and dealt with unruly schools and students are born from this one. Sidney Poitier turns in a great performance as a student who has academic potential but is torn between his street ways and his desire to become educated and better himself. While watching this film it's hard to imagine any worse situation-taking place in a high school. Yet what has been happening in Americas high schools of recent makes the goings on in the classroom of Richard Dadier seem quite mild. A young Jamie Farr who would achieve fame as Klinger on the long running TV series MASH is cast as a simple minded student in the class of delinquents. None of whom will ever pitch for the Yankees by the way! After seeing this movie you might just say `Oh Daddy-O what a good film'

"Blackboard Jungle" marked a turn around in films coming from Hollywood. This was a film that dealt with a reality that movies had not dared to touch before in the way they always wanted to sugar coat every picture about teens in high school. The guys one sees here are the real thing, as though taken from any high school in the inner city of that time.

The amazing thing this high school, at the center of the action, is not typical of any other schools in that one males attended and no females are to be seen around them. By making an old male high school, Richard Brooks updated Evan Hunter's novel to show the violent nature of most of those young men that are clearly from under privileged homes, perhaps, boys whose fathers had bolted and left their women to bring up the sons they didn't want to have anything with.

The film is important in that it marked the arrival of a strong actor that would dominate the movies like no other one, Sidney Poitier. With his handsome looks, and his great screen presence, Mr. Poitier was instrumental in breaking into the main stream movies in ways others tried, but didn't make a dent. Perhaps it was in the cards that Hollywood began dealing with a reality they tried to ignore integrating their stories with Blacks that had taken a back seat to other, not so talented performers.

The film works because of the strong performances by Glenn Ford, Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. Also, the theme song of the film, "Rock Around the Clock" went to become an anthem for viewers that filled the theaters for the thrill of hearing it play as the film started, putting them in the right frame of mind to accept what they were going to see.

Richard Brooks is the one responsible for the adaptation and the inspired direction for the movie that still resonates because of its raw energy.

After nearly 50 years, this memorable movie about a New York City high school remains a standard by which so-called 'high school' movies are judged, made and measured. Without Blackboard Jungle, there might not have been a Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Pretty in Pink, or Breakfast Club.

Before Sidney Poitier 'came to dinner', before Vic Morrow went into 'Combat', before Richard Kiley 'dreamed the impossible dream', and, yes, even before Jamie Farr (ne Jameel Farah), donned a dress, they were all part of The Blackboard Jungle. This movie launched quite a few notable careers.