Blackboard Jungle

Blackboard Jungle, released in 1955 from MGM, was something of a watershed film. It was the first to use rock and roll music on the soundtrack, with Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock blasting as the opening credits unspooled. At the time, this was pretty incendiary stuff, and eventually they had to remove it from the film, because kids started dancing in the aisles when it played in theaters. To contemplate that is pretty amazing, since the song ended up being the theme for Happy Days, an innocuous slice of nostalgia, and to today's kids Rock Around the Clock might as well be White Christmas.

As I mentioned in my post about The Ten-Cent Plague, juvenile delinquency was a big issue in the forties and fifties, and Blackboard Jungle addresses it. Before the film begins we are treated to some sociology that though the film is fiction, the problem is real. Then we are introduced to Glenn Ford as an idealistic teacher. He's new at North Manual High School, a boys' trade school. The place has a reputation for disciplinary problems, though the principal refuses to acknowledge it. He meets some of the teachers, like Louis Calhern, who views the school as a "garbage can" and warns Ford never to turn his back on his students. True enough, at the opening assembly the boys are unruly, and seem to be led by Vic Morrow.

Ford does his best, and takes an interest in Sidney Poitier, who is another thug but is obviously more intelligent that the rest. He has a diverse class, with a Puerto Rican kid, a Jew, and an Italian. They are completely uninterested in learning, and one night they catch him and a colleague (Richard Kiley) in an alley and beat them up. Ford keeps coming back, though, passing up an offer to teach at a prep school with obedient students.

It's only when the kids interfere with Ford's home life, sending threatening letters to his wife (Anne Francis) that he strikes back, and the film ends with the bad apples being punished and a peace with those kids who he has seemed to reach, including Poitier.

Directed by Richard Brooks, based on a novel by Evan Hunter, Blackboard Jungle was sensational in its day but can't help but feel dated now, in an age where inner-city schools have metal detectors. I don't doubt that juvenile delinquency was a problem back then, but it seems candy-coated compared to the Crips and the Bloods. It isn't helped that the story creaks along with some ham-fisted foreshadowing. When Kiley mentions he's bringing his rare record collection to class (some of his records "could never be replaced") we know what will happen. Also, the subplot involving Francis, who is pregnant and has her doubts about Ford's fidelity, is mawkishly soap-opera-ish.

The film is an interesting time capsule of another era. There are also some interesting faces in the cast: look for a young Paul Mazursky and Jamie Farr (then billed as Jameel Farah). Poitier, who was already in his early thirties but could still pass for a high-school kid, would of course go on to play an idealistic teacher twelve years later, in To Sir, With Love.