Vic Morrow (front, left) and Sidney Pottier (back, right in next row) were the two major student adversaries in “Blackboard Jungle,” 1955.
When the movie “Blackboard Jungle” was released during my 1955 junior year at St. Thomas High School in Houston, a bunch of us went downtown to the Loews State Theater to check it out. When it started, it cranked up something that felt bigger than a movie to our tired little dull and sheltered ears. It felt like a movie that had been made for our generation – and not like the kind of movie that had been censored by our parents before we were allowed to watch it.
That may be no big deal in 2014, but it was a major change for my generation. We were still working most of the time to escape the frightened censorship of “rock and roll” that some adult groups and social institutions were attempting as measures to protect us in the name of law and order.
We preferred Little Richard to Perry Como, Chuck Berry to Bing Crosby, and Fats Domino to Liberace.
“Blackboard Jungle” opened with a rock and roll bang with that famous anthem by Bill Haley and the Comets:
“ONE, TWO, THREE O’CLOCK, FOUR O’CLOCK, ROCK!
“FIVE, SIX, SEVEN O’CLOCK, EIGHT O’CLOCK, ROCK!
“NINE, TEN, ELEVEN O’CLOCK, TWELVE O’CLOCK ROCK!
“WE’RE GONNA ROCK – AROUND – THE CLOCK TONIGHT! …”
We were out of our seats, all of us, bopping in the aisles that fast. This was our music, being played at us, to us, and for us. Not a sniff of censorship or “Reefer Madness” to it at all. And it even grabbed us into watching the movie and its story of kids our age battling to survive in a school of little hope, tough gangs, and worn out teachers who couldn’t wait for the end of the day in the short run and full retirement in the long run.
Glenn Ford played the idealistic teacher who tried to change things by winning over support from the school’s baddest rep guy, young Sidney Pottier, while a young Vic Morrow played the thug kid who tried to undermine any change attempted at great cost to all in the process. I think that many of us came out of the movie with a deeper appreciation for how good we had life compared to others – and for some us an initial awareness that working in some way to make things better may be a good way to go in life.
And, for all of us, the idea that rock and roll was now here to stay almost led to the informal canonization of Billy Haley and the Comets as the official messengers of that great truth.
In spite of this powerful force, Ms Claire Booth Luce, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, succeeded in having “Blackboard Jungle” withdrawn from the Venice Film Festival because she felt “it presented an untrue view of American life and gave a bad idea of America.” Producer Dore Schary responded with a counter protest of his own, saying, “I feel the Johnston Office (the U.S. Motion Pictures Association) should file a protest of its own against the withdrawal of “Blackboard Jungle.”
Didn’t happen.
Schary further stated that “I have asked Arthur Loew of our distributing organization of New York to make representation against this (forced withdrawal) as a very unfair and prejudicial action.”
Nothing budged the ban.
…. Pacific Stars and Stripes, August 29, 1955, Page 9.
Nothing changed the Luce-forced withdrawal of “Blackboard Jungle” from the Venice Film Festival in 1955. The majority political culture wasn’t ready for art and film to portray America’s neglected subjects of racial and economic class inequality in 1955, in spite of Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954, but other messages were coming beyond this one. And these would not be ignored by the kind of reasoning that Ms. Luce applied in her case against the “Blackboard Jungle.”
The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 29, 2014 at 8:04 pm |
You are too young for me, though I was a fan of Bill Haley & the Comets!
Do most of today’s movies teach us anything except the futuristic possibilities and more wars? I don’t go to very many movies anymore—–too many weird ones for me! Do I sound like the Claire Booth Luce of today?
January 29, 2014 at 10:39 pm |
Shirley Virdon,
You are way too in touch with the great American heartland to ever be confused with Ms. Luce, but you’re right about me. – Back in 1955, I was still a young pup.
January 31, 2014 at 9:12 pm |
Blackboard Jungle and Bill Haley still get air play; Claire Booth Luce doesn’t. So who won that tiff?
In my opinion the Internet will end censorship and dictatorships. Maybe not in my lifetime, but you cannot keep knowledge and freedom bottled up when people see how they’re restricted compared to “relatively” free societies. Of course, in America it will require keeping creationists from censoring our textbooks.
It’s amazing some people can even feed themselves.