What better way to celebrate the end of the school year than with a movie marathon about students, educators and success.
By PHILIP BOOTH
Published May 8, 2003
In real life, teachers don't get the respect they deserve. They aren't paid or valued enough for the work they do.
On the big screen, though, in movies like The Emperor's Club, just released on home video, educators are treated as larger than life, if still not immune to the failings of mere mortals.
Here are some memorable films about teachers:
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) - Robert Donat took home an Oscar for his affecting performance as the title character in this MGM classic about an aging Latin teacher and former headmaster at a boys school reflecting on his long career. Greer Garson, making her screen debut, plays Mrs. Chips. Three decades later, director Herbert Ross made his debut with a musical adaptation of the beloved James Hilton novel; Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark co-starred in that generally panned 1969 remake.
Stand and Deliver (1988) - Underappreciated underachievers from East Los Angeles are instructed in the wonders of mathematics, and driven to pass the A.P. calculus test, through the efforts of their determined teacher (Edward James Olmos, never better). The drama, based on a true story, also features Lou Diamond Phillips and Andy Garcia.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) - Maggie Smith won over audiences, and landed her first Academy Award, as a highly theatrical but free-spirited and earnest teacher of girls in 1930s Edinburgh. The film was adapted from the play based on Muriel Spark's novel.
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) - Stephen Herek (Rock Star), taking a cue or two from Goodbye, Mr. Chips, occasionally veers into sentimentality for this story of an aspiring composer who becomes a high-school music teacher and gives up his other ambitions. Richard Dreyfuss is terrific in the title role, and the cast includes Glenne Headly, Olympia Dukakis, William H. Macy and Jay Thomas.
The Blackboard Jungle (1955) - Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock is heard on the opening credits of this melodrama about an idealistic English teacher (Glenn Ford) and his tense standoff with school toughs, including gang leader Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. Richard Kiley plays a hassled math teacher, and Jamie Farr and Paul Mazursky are members of the youth gang.
To Sir, With Love (1967) - Poitier, 12 years after Blackboard, switched from student to teacher. He's a rookie educator, a former engineer, who goes the extra mile for a class of rowdy students in London's East End. And who could resist the hit title song, by Lulu?
Up the Down Staircase (1967) - A first-time English literature teacher (Sandy Dennis) attempts to rise above the chaos - overcrowding, substandard facilities, late-arriving books - at an inner-city school in New York. Also stars Eileen Heckart and Jean Stapleton.
Lean on Me (1989) - Morgan Freeman plays real-life New Jersey high school principal Joe Clark, a tough talker with a baseball hat, a bullhorn and a real heart for his kids under that crusty exterior. John Avildsen (Rocky) directed.
Dead Poets Society (1989) - Robin Williams plays an inspirational teacher at a stuffy New England prep school circa 1959. Among his students are a Robert Sean Leonard (suffering from parental interference) and Ethan Hawke (suffering from parental neglect).
Dangerous Minds (1995) - Yet another determined educator has a go at teaching, in yet another tough school, in this somewhat cheesy story of a former marine (would you believe Michelle Pfeiffer?) fighting for the needs of the kids she's come to love. With George Dzundza and Courtney B. Vance.
Conrack (1974) - Pat Conroy's autobiographical novel The Water is Wide is translated to the big screen, with Jon Voight as the good-hearted teacher assigned to a group of illiterate children on an island off the coast of South Carolina.
Also worth noting: The Corn is Green (1945), with Bette Davis, remade in 1979 as a George Cukor-directed television film with Katharine Hepburn; Teachers (1984), directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Nick Nolte, JoBeth Williams, Judd Hirsch and Ralph Macchio; and The Man Without a Face (1993), starring and directed by Mel Gibson (his directorial debut).
