Blackboard Jungle (

1955

)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A lone hero comes to a lawless place, initially he is treated as an outsider but gradually he gains the trust of the locals and unites them against the dangerous criminals who have come to dominate their society. Hell, it even ends with a prolonged star-down/showdown between the main hero and the main villain and involves a deadly weapon. Yup, this movie is essentially a Western except with the heroes’ spurs and gun swapped out for Oxfords and chalkboard eraser. Indeed, the biggest complaints I have about this movie would have been nullified had it been more like the most popular of its contemporary Westerns. After all, few of the Westerns I’ve seen have been so tedious or so preachy! Still, despite the weaknesses of the script this film would go on to inspire a whole sub-genre of heroic teacher films, films like Class of 1984 (1982), Dangerous Minds (1995), and Dead Poets Society (1989), as well as clever genre deconstructions like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Obviously, the irrational reverence for teachers and teaching I mentioned in my review of Wake in Fright (1971) has a long history. I have to wonder how much of it was planned propaganda by the NEA and how much of it was just an accident of history.

But Blackboard Jungle isn’t just a genre initiator, it’s also the member of a proud genre of existing exploitation films: Juvenile Delinquent films. Consequently, to understand Blackboard Jungle, you’ll need to understand the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency. Now, teenagers committing crimes was hardly a novel occurrence in the 1950s, as far as I can tell as long as there have been teenagers and criminals there have been teenage criminals. However, you wouldn’t know that just by looking at the media coverage of juvenile delinquency in the 1950s. Part of it was no doubt due to the simple mathematics of the situation, the copious screwing and desperate marriages of WWII had given rise to a vast mob of children in the form of the baby boom. More children naturally meant more children criminals. Accompanying this new wave of children criminals was a corresponding wave of media coverage, particularly in the form of television. Now, every housewife in the nation had reports of delinquency beamed into her house in the form of the nightly news. But the mass fear of juvenile delinquency owed as much to the culture of the United States in the 1950s as it did to logistics and technology. Americans of the 1950s were uniquely focused on family. The proper role of a woman in the 1950s was a mother, and any extraneous jobs or hobbies were regarded as betrayals of this overriding biological imperative. Contrary to popular opinion and feminist thought, men fared little better under this system, being obliged to work and commute long hours in order to provide their family with all the little luxuries. An adult that didn’t have children was regarded as a real weirdo, and adults that did have children were all but obliged to devote their whole lives to their upbringing. Such people were naturally sensitive to news about children and teens who had turned to crime and violence.

There was obviously a market for Juvenile Delinquent films, the earlier So Young, So Bad (1950) had already proven that. But that was a small independent production that could afford to tweak a few noses, and since MGM had sunk more than a million dollars into Blackboard Jungle they were expecting nothing short of a hit. Consequently the film devotes its entire runtime to the relationship between the students and their new English teacher, Richard Dadier (who the students immediately begin calling Daddy-o). If any these kids have parents, the film isn’t about to show them to us. Obviously, director Richard Brooks is afraid of offending the delicate sensibilities of the suburban family set. But not showing the family life of juvenile delinquents is a little like making a Frankenstein movie with no mad scientist, we’re left wondering where the hell did this rampaging monster come from anyway. Now obviously, MGM wasn’t about to actively antagonize the lucrative teenage market either, but these kids weren’t exactly likely to come in for the hour and half lecture they’d created. So, in a marketing ploy as cynical as it was effective, MGM slapped a rock-and-roll soundtrack onto their picture. I’ll confess, the title song “Rock Around the Clock” is a catchy bit of early rock music, and actually helps to make the whole film a good deal more palatable.

Finally, those familiar with the genre will notice something a bit odd about North Manual Trades High School itself. Unlike earlier Juvenile Delinquent exploitation films like Girl Gang (1954) and So Young, So Bad (1950), or later films like Girls Town (1959) and High School Confidential (1958), Blackboard Jungle is set in an all-boys school. While this denies us the amusement of seeing a movie try to pass off the ludicrously well-endowed Mamie Van Doren as a high school student, it once again protects the audience’s sensibilities. Americans of the 1950s may be sensitive to teenage criminals, but they were extremely sensitive to female teenage criminals. That’s exactly why cheapies like The Violent Years (1956) focus almost exclusively on girls, and why Blackboard Jungle with its copious budget had to limit itself to male Juvenile Delinquents. With so much money on the line, it’s best not to call down the ire of The American Legion or another such collection of busy-bodies. Amusingly, this propriety doesn’t stop Blackboard Jungle from making a pedophilia joke: at one point one of Dadier’s peers wishes he was teaching at a girl’s school, to which another teacher replies: “Think of those twenty year jail sentences.” Just another example of how you could get away with just about anything in 1950s Hollywood so long as you did it quietly enough.

At first, Dadier makes good progress with his students even going so far as to befriend the unofficial class president George Miller (a very young Sidney Poitier). He still draws the ire of gang-leader Artie West and his flunkies but the criminals are content to just treat their new teacher with the customary disdain and disrespect rather than single Dadier out for any special harassment. This all changes when Dadier saves his fellow teacher, Miss Hammond, from being raped by one of her students. In addition to making all of his students regard him as a narc, the perpetrator turns out to be a friend of West, so West has his gang jump Dadier after work and rough him up a bit. West is not content to stop at that though, he wants Dadier to quit his job and will go to any extent necessary to drive the teacher out of North Manual Trades High School. When the initial beating fails to discourage him, West turns his attention to Dadier’s young wife and implies that Dadier is having an affair. When even this fails to force Dadier out of the classroom, West decides the best way to settle this is to pull a switchblade on his English teacher in the middle of class. It’s not a bad plan; I’ve yet to see a teacher be able to lecture when he’s disemboweled.

Now, this being the 1950s, you couldn’t show sin and depravity (particularly in official institutions) without making it explicitly clear that this was the exception rather than the rule. So, when Dadier is losing heart he pays a visit to his old teacher at college who takes him on a tour of glittering suburban school. Here the children are polite and well behaved, the teachers passionate and capable, and the school itself splendidly well supplied. We are told point blank that the vast majority of schools in America are just like this one. In case this wasn’t obvious enough a message, the film also begins with a text-crawl that informs viewers “We, in the United States, are fortunate to have a school system that is a tribute to our communities and to our faith in American youth.”

Blackboard Jungle suffers from a serious case of Having Your Cake and Eating It Too Syndrome. It wants to be a preening moral fable and a sordid exploitation film at the same time. As a result, it steers clear of the most lurid and unpleasant aspects of its topic for fear of offending its audience and the result is just a boring lecture with an unexpectedly funky soundtrack. Perhaps this film would have had more impact to the sheltered audiences of 1955, who had somehow missed the deluge of other better and more obscene Juvenile Delinquent films. But to me, it just plays like a preachy after school special, or an episode of 7th Heaven. Committing a bit more to being “The most startling picture in years” like its poster promised, would probably have made Blackboard Jungle a more memorable film. As it stands, it is only of interest for historic reasons rather than aesthetic ones.

Speaking of historic reasons to be interested in this film, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the seminal event in American education that immediately preceded the release of this movie: The Brown Vs. Board of Education ruling that made racial educational segregation illegal. Now obviously, a full discussion of the Supreme Court case and its fallout on American history is beyond the scope of this review, but it suffices to say that the notion of mix-racial schools was one that would weigh heavily on the minds of the filmmakers and audience. Blackboard Jungle is quietly in favor of the ruling, and the film shows its approval with a degree of skill and discretion that seems out of place in an otherwise shrill and preachy movie. The most visible non-white character is George Miller, and his portrayal is almost universally positive. George is beloved and respected by his peers, holds down a reputable job as a mechanic in addition to attending school, and even has a beautiful singing voice. He comes around to Dadier’s way of thinking pretty quickly, but despite that he’s no teacher’s pet; George makes Dadier work hard for his approval. George would be a credit to any school he was in, you’d be a fool to want to keep him out of your class. Tellingly, the worst thugs in Dadier’s class are all from white ethnic groups (mostly Irish and Italian) and consequently cannot be removed by any policy of racial segregation. I suspect the pro-integration agenda of Blackboard Jungle is part of the reason why the school is not a co-educational one. Despite the audience’s obvious sympathy and support of George, the sight of a black boy within handholding distance of a white girl would probably trigger all the darkest thoughts of their racist imaginations.