Admission $4.50, Single or Double Admission

In the good old days when such schools were merely a jungle and not yet a wasteland, The Blackboard Jungle was one of the most sensational and controversial films of the decade. It is set in a New York vocational school where random acts of violence and blatant disregard for authority are the curriculum. Glenn Ford is a grim-faced bwana surrounded by restless youth, including Vic Morrow as a Brando sound-alike who wields a knife instead of an apple for Teacher, and Sidney Poitier as an unwitting teacher's pet who embodies all the tensions of his precarious position. Unlike another key, youth-culture picture released the same year, Rebel Without a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle never really asks why, it only purports to show what; and so as social criticism it misses the jungle for the trees. But it was a film to be reckoned with, not only because it brought to the screen a mixture of blacks, hispanics and whites that Hollywood's high schools preferred to ignore; but with a throbbing rock'n'roll soundtrack, it boldly suggested that delinquency can be fun, and that America's kids were fast becoming an alien-nation.