Blackboard Jungle (1955)

Glenn Ford is a teacher, sent to a boys' high school in a bad neighborhood. After a disastrous first day, he's temped to leave and try and find work in another area. But, as he and his pregnant wife Anne Francis know, there's no position available anywhere else. If there were, he would have gone there in the first place. So, as his fellow teachers Louis Calhern, Margaret Hayes, and Richard Kiley, advise him, he just has to keep his head down and survive the school year. They're not teaching boys who have dreams of college, a career, or a lustrous life; their students are hoodlums who get in daily fights and bring knives to class.Glenn Ford was such a prolific actor and made memorable classics in several genres, but Blackboard Jungle is one of his most iconic roles. He's naturally sincere and passionate and delivers his lines so convincingly it's as if he thought of them on the spot instead of reciting Richard Brooks's script. When he tries to help the lost-cause students, you're inspired, when he singles out one of the kids to try and get an ally in the classroom, you see the same potential, and when he finally looses his temper, you're similarly enraged.While there have been dozens of remakes throughout the decades about a do-good-er teacher who is sent to a school in the slums and tries to make a difference, Blackboard Jungle was the first. It was particularly gritty for its time, but even now it's still extremely suspenseful and hard to watch. As if the boundary-pushing subject matter wasn't reason enough to make this classic famous, it propelled Sidney Poitier to stardom. It wasn't his first movie, but the film was nominated for four Oscars and became very famous. In case you've never seen this film and naturally assumed Sidney was cast as the noble teacher because of his famous classic To Sir, with Love, which is one of the more famous remakes in the genre, he's actually one of the unruly students! So if you've only seen him in strictly good-guy roles, you might want to rent this one and see him in a different part.Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to gritty violence I wouldn't let my kids watch it. Also, there may or may not be a rape scene.

Juvenile Deliqnency is always a good movie subject because you can do so much with it. In this movie, they went all out showing armed robbery, assault, gangs, drinking, mayhem, attempted rape and even what appears to be attempted murder. Of course New York city is the prime area for all this and the 50's times make it real enough. Being a non-conformist and a rebel was considered cool, a badge of honor and the way to be. The problem was that if you got too good at it you didn't graduate so the kids pushed it to the limit to get away with as much as they could within limits. Here, some teachers, a school principal and others take a stand and try to turn it around. One man does an exceptional job of it but at a cost which turned out to be worth it but could just as easily taken his life. At some point in the movie, one of the wayward kids says something like this when talking to a teacher after school: out here, this is my classroom and I can flunk you for real which has a chilling affect of realism. Reaching children of any age takes skill and commitment and the this movie makes that point and then some. Enjoy the supporting cast. Good snack movie and of course with a tasty drink. I never cared much for school because I didn't understand what was required or why. The school of life appealed to me more...enjoy

. . . as rookie English instructor Richard "Rick" Dadier is assaulted multiple times by the switchblade-toting gangsters who control his all-male home room class of 35 throughout most of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. In addition to seriously wounding Rick twice, these young ruffians terrorize his pregnant wife, nearly toppling a car atop her in one of this film's first scenes. The audience has to watch this story unfold with bated breath, wondering if the hardened hooligans will go all Charlie Manson on the expectant Anne, and slash the baby from her tummy. Even after Rick and his milquetoast fellow rookie teacher Joshua are severely beaten in an alley by their students after school, Rick stubbornly refuses to enter his classroom "packing." A U.S. Navy veteran certified to teach under the G.I. Bill, Rick apparently ducked out of firearms training during Boot Camp. This tale is based upon "actual events" that took place MORE THAN 50 YEARS AGO! Today's headlines prove that schools are deadlier than ever now. That's why every American secondary level classroom needs to be equipped with a semi-automatic "Smart Gun," in the form of a Bushmaster with built-in Biogenic safeguards insuring that only the teacher can use it.

Richard Brooks directed this drama that stars Glenn Ford as Richard Dadier, a new English teacher at North Manual High for unruly boys that is determined to succeed at his new job, which he takes quite seriously, despite the cynical principal(played by Louis Calhern) who has little hope of his success. Richard Kiley plays another new teacher whose efforts to educate the boys with his jazz records ends disastrously. The boys(played by Sidney Poitier, Vic Morrow, Jamie Farr, and Paul Mazursky, among others) give Dadier a hard time, though gradually are won over, except for Morrow, who proves uninterested and determined to become a criminal... Landmark film spawned a whole sub-genre of juvenile delinquency films, but remains a prescient and truthful film about generational disconnect and the need to educate youth, even as times change, yet still remain the same.