Blackboard Jungle

Blackboard Jungle is one of the seminal films in Glenn Ford's career. As Richard Dadier, newly minted teacher going into one of the inner city schools in New York City, he's nervous, but full of idealism and commitment that he can make a difference in the lives of these kids.

One of the aspects of Blackboard Jungle that is never discussed is the problem, still very much with us today, of illiteracy. For me the key to the whole story is when Ford has to get down to the level of running a movie cartoon of Jack and the Beanstalk in order to communicate with them. That's when he reaches them and also takes control of the situation in his classroom away from the school thug as graphically portrayed by Vic Morrow.

I was involved with someone for many years and his literacy level was very low. It made him angry and unable to handle the world and all the problems he had in life. He had a worse situation than the kids in The Blackboard Jungle. He was raised in a group home where they didn't care at all if you learned anything.

Blackboard Jungle is also memorable for the use of a previously recorded song by Bill Haley and the Comets that sold a few records the year earlier, but didn't set the world on fire. Director Richard Brooks heard it in young Peter Ford's collection and decided it would be his theme. Rock Around the Clock became a rock and roll institution after The Blackboard Jungle was out in theaters.

Blackboard Jungle also started another less fortunate trend. That of picking very obviously adult actors to play high school kids. A trend that has continued to this day with such shows as Beverly Hills 90210 carrying on the tradition. Capable players that they are and they certainly delivered fine performances, Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow don't look like high school kids, especially not next to Rafael Campos who was in the correct age bracket when the film was being shot.

Teacher burnout is also covered in Blackboard Jungle with Louis Calhern leading the pack of cynics Glenn Ford has as colleagues. In many ways Blackboard Jungle is the grandfather of a film like Stand and Deliver where Edward James Olmos is the dedicated math teacher of inner city kids a generation later. Other than ethnic, not too much difference between Richard Dadier and Jaime Escalante.

Richard Brooks assembled and directed a cast that made a classic that's still agonizingly relevant today.

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'

James Dean's untimely death in September of 1955 made "Rebel Without a Cause" a booming box office and critical success. Overshadowed due to that was "Blackboard Jungle", a superior and more important film than the aforementioned "Rebel Without a Cause" (contrary to popular belief admittedly). It is New York in the mid-1950s and former military man Glenn Ford (in his greatest screen role) takes a job as a high school teacher in the inner-city. Soon it is blatantly apparent that the school is full of male thugs (most notably guys like Sidney Poitier, Vic Morrow, Paul Mazursky and even Jamie Farr) who run things with total disregard of faculty rules and policy. Ford becomes enraged and proves to be a lot tougher than originally thought. However when pregnant wife Anne Francis starts receiving anonymous phone calls and letters from one of Ford's students about a possible affair between he and one of his female co-workers, the real fireworks start. At first Ford believes that Poitier is the culprit, probably based more on race and Poitier's obvious intelligence rather than actual proof. It takes lots of time and effort, but Ford becomes determined to get through to his pupils and weed out those who are trying to impede his progress and the advancement of others at his school. "Blackboard Jungle" is another excellent piece from writer-director Richard Brooks (Oscar-nominated for writing). It is the first truly legitimate movie that dealt with 1950s teenage angst and it rises above every other movie of the genre. Ford is a revelation, once again showing that he is probably the most under-appreciated actor throughout the history of the cinema. With that said, "Blackboard Jungle" is likely best remembered as Poitier's breakthrough role, a role which ultimately led to outstanding movie after outstanding movie throughout the late-1950s and 1960s. Poitier, 28 at the time, plays much younger than he was and adds much emotion and depth to a potentially flat character. A booming rock'n'roll soundtrack and top-flight performances dominate Brooks' outstanding winner. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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.

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.