A morality tale with a happy ending. Glenn Ford finds a job as a teacher at a vocational high school, a veteran who is happily married to Anne Francis. The student body is all male, and, man, are they hostile and rambunctious. The other teachers hate the students and the students reciprocate. Ford is Rick Dadier, pronounced "Da-di-yay," and the kids have a field day with "Daddy-yo." (The movie is dated in many ways, most of them superficial.) And when he's writing his name on the board, a baseball sails past his head and chips some over-sized flakes out of the board.
None of the students is cooperative or pleasant in any way. Ford identifies Sidney Poitier as the gang leader but he's wrong. It's really Vic Morrow, the slouching negativist with the villainous face who's behind most of what goes wrong.
Ford and his teacher friend, Richard Kiley, are clobbered at night in an alley. Ford is out of school for a week. Kiley quits after the kids destroy his precious 15-year collection of old records. Ford's wife receives poison pen letters and gives birth prematurely.
Finally, Ford begins to reach the students, partly by showing a cartoon about Jack and the Beanstalk, partly by stimulating them with Socratic questions about justice, violence, and tolerance. After a violent showdown with Morrow and one other malignant adolescent, it's clear that Ford has won not only the hearts of his students, but those of his fellow teachers as well.
This was a pop sensation when it was released. Bill Haley and the Comets sing "Rock Around the Clock" and it was on all the AM pop music stations. If Elvis had his ducktail haircut, Bill Haley had a comma-shaped curl on his forehead. (It didn't fly.) The story is schematic almost to the point of pain, but there had never been anything quite like it before and it resonated with the public. The dialog has a "hell" in it, still unusual for the time. It also uses the N word and, if I'm not mistaken, the F word, cut off by the honk of a horn. All very daring stuff.
Paul Mazursky, the director responsible for several modernist movies later, plays an idiot student who saves Ford's life in the climax by pinning the miscreant to the blackboard with the lance-like point of a large American flag. The symbolism howls.
It all gets extra points for originality. Evan Hunter, on whose novel this is based, was born Sal Lombino and some have claimed he changed his name because publishers were prejudiced against Italian-American writers. Nonsense. Publishers will kill for the opportunity to publish anything that seems like a good seller, and "Blackboard Jungle" fit the bill. Gay Talese suggests that Sal became Evan because reading and writing aren't highly valued skills for a man in an Italian-American household. Talese himself grew up in a home with no newspapers or magazines on the shelves. In any case, Lombino later adopted half a dozen aliases, including Ed McBain, best known for his Third Precinct policiers.
The movie is enjoyable in itself but has added interest because of its historical value.
None of the students is cooperative or pleasant in any way. Ford identifies Sidney Poitier as the gang leader but he's wrong. It's really Vic Morrow, the slouching negativist with the villainous face who's behind most of what goes wrong.
Ford and his teacher friend, Richard Kiley, are clobbered at night in an alley. Ford is out of school for a week. Kiley quits after the kids destroy his precious 15-year collection of old records. Ford's wife receives poison pen letters and gives birth prematurely.
Finally, Ford begins to reach the students, partly by showing a cartoon about Jack and the Beanstalk, partly by stimulating them with Socratic questions about justice, violence, and tolerance. After a violent showdown with Morrow and one other malignant adolescent, it's clear that Ford has won not only the hearts of his students, but those of his fellow teachers as well.
This was a pop sensation when it was released. Bill Haley and the Comets sing "Rock Around the Clock" and it was on all the AM pop music stations. If Elvis had his ducktail haircut, Bill Haley had a comma-shaped curl on his forehead. (It didn't fly.) The story is schematic almost to the point of pain, but there had never been anything quite like it before and it resonated with the public. The dialog has a "hell" in it, still unusual for the time. It also uses the N word and, if I'm not mistaken, the F word, cut off by the honk of a horn. All very daring stuff.
Paul Mazursky, the director responsible for several modernist movies later, plays an idiot student who saves Ford's life in the climax by pinning the miscreant to the blackboard with the lance-like point of a large American flag. The symbolism howls.
It all gets extra points for originality. Evan Hunter, on whose novel this is based, was born Sal Lombino and some have claimed he changed his name because publishers were prejudiced against Italian-American writers. Nonsense. Publishers will kill for the opportunity to publish anything that seems like a good seller, and "Blackboard Jungle" fit the bill. Gay Talese suggests that Sal became Evan because reading and writing aren't highly valued skills for a man in an Italian-American household. Talese himself grew up in a home with no newspapers or magazines on the shelves. In any case, Lombino later adopted half a dozen aliases, including Ed McBain, best known for his Third Precinct policiers.
The movie is enjoyable in itself but has added interest because of its historical value.