Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 11

Fifties Juvenile Delinquency Films

ing the issue of crime due to Kefauver's investigations into the influence of the
media upon crime in the United States. Another factor involved the changing audi
ences for films. As teenagers began to emerge as the new audience for movies,
many teen-oriented films were produced. As James Gilbert points out, the film
industry was in economic danger in the Fifties, “Production of feature films dropped
between 1949 and 1956 by about 25 percent. Several major studios went out of
business” (174-175). Additionally, the Hays Code’s iron fist was weakening and
taboo issues such as drug use were being allowed to find their way into approved
film scripts. By 1956 a revised code appeared allowing mention of drug use, abor
tion, and prostitution (Gilbert 176). The ID film brought together the elements of
a teen-oriented movie, previously taboo subject matter, and, theoretically at least,
social consciousness that would please the government officials investigating
Hollywood’s influence on young minds.
The Blackboard Jungle (1955) indicated the trend in the treatment of delin
quency that the decade’s films would follow.^ The film, based on Evan Hunter’s
novel, chronicles the experiences of Richard Dadier, a World-War II veteran who
gets his first teaching Job at North Manual Trades High School. Dadier is unpre
pared for the lack of discipline at the school. On his first day at work he saves a
female teacher, Lois Hammond, from rape and narrowly escapes a baseball thrown
at his head in the classroom. On his second day of work, he and another teacher get
beaten up in an alley near the school by some of the students. Dadier’s pregnant
wife, Anne, urges him to leave the school and take a safer Job, but he is determined
to stick it out. He tries to win over Gregory Miller, a black student with a high IQ,
and finally succeeds through a Christmas pageant that Miller works on with Dadier.
Meanwhile, Anne has been receiving anonymous letters telling of a supposed af
fair that Dadier is having. The strain brought on by the letters leads to her deliver
ing a premature baby that almost dies. Dadier returns after the Christmas break
and has a showdown with Artie West, the student who has been behind the beating,
and the harassment of Anne. West slices Dadier’s