Cinema: The New Pictures, Mar. 21, 1955

Blackboard Jungle (M-G-M). "Don't be a hero," says the old teacher (Louis Calhern) to the new teacher (Glenn Ford), "and never turn your back to the class." Ford, an idealistic young man who hopes, as a teacher, to "shape minds, sculpt lives," looks puzzled. He knows that North Manual High School is "the garbage can of the educational system" of the big U.S. city he lives in, but is the situation really as bad as all that? He finds out that it is.

In his black hole of a school room, jampacked with 35 surly inmates, Teacher Ford spends all his energies...

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