E-Mail This Article to a Friend 1, 2, 3 o’clock . . . Rockin’ ’50s style at the Brattle BY GERALD PEARY

Is rock and roll still with us because, 50 years ago, Hollywood director Richard Brooks suggested that a boogie-woogie 45 that had racked up modest sales a year earlier be the themesong for his MGM film The Blackboard Jungle? "I can’t stand this goddamn record," complained the producer, Dore Schary. Johnny Green, MGM’s music director, agreed: "This record is no good!" Fortunately, Brooks prevailed.

The Blackboard Jungle jitterbugs to life because of what’s going down during the credits on the soundtrack: "One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock ROCK, five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock ROCK!" Check this out with your grandparents: because of the movie, Bill Haley and the Comets’ "Rock Around the Clock" sold two million copies on Decca Records and became, says one pop historian, "the Marseillaise of rock." On the eve of Elvis, the spitcurled Haley reigned as rock’s temporary king. The song also spawned the first rocksploitation movie, Rock Around the Clock (1956), a bijou hit with a new ’50s demographic group called "teenagers." Gabba-gabba-hey! Rock and roll was here to stay!

Half a century later, Rock Around the Clock and Blackboard Jungle are united as a July 13-14 double bill at the Brattle. Made on the cheap, Rock Around the Clock has the myth behind the song: how DJ Alan Freed (he plays himself) discovered Haley and the Comets, a fledgling rockabilly act, and transformed them into powerhouse stars. The film was directed by nobody Fred F. Sears, who monitored the thin dialogue, leaving time in the 77-minute flick for nine numbers by Haley and the Comets including the masterly "See You Later, Alligator." A bonus: the ebullient Platters crooning "Only You" and "The Great Pretender."

The Blackboard Jungle, from the popular novel by Evan Hunter, is a still-impressive tale of a World War II veteran, Rick Dadier (Glenn Ford), who gets his first teaching job in an inner-city all-male high school overrun with disciplinary problems, the worst of whom are (another new ’50s term) "juvenile delinquents." Can Rick remain an idealist when so many of his ruffian students hate learning and are hostile to any teacher? In the film’s most painful scene, Rick’s jazz-loving colleague (Richard Kiley) sees his rare 78s smashed to pieces by smirking students. Down with Stan Kenton and Bix! So much for high modernism!

But yes/sí/oui to multiculturalism. Decades ahead of other films, The Blackboard Jungle placed Rick’s English teacher in a class with white guys, black guys, and Puerto Ricans; and just two years after Brown v. Tennessee, we have racial issues on the table. Rick himself lectures on the inappropriateness of the word "nigger," but then he slips himself, mumbling, "Why you black . . . " It’s an amazing moment: a white liberal Hollywood hero is shown as having suppressed racial antagonisms.

The major black character in The Blackboard Jungle is Miller: Rick tells him he’s the smartest kid in the class, and everyone, including the white students, looks up to him. Sidney Poitier plays Miller as a cat who grooves to his own beat and has his own agenda. The Birth of the Cool!

Gerald Peary | gpeary@geraldpeary.com