Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Sandy Dennis | ... | Sylvia Barrett | |
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Patrick Bedford | ... | Paul Barringer |
Eileen Heckart | ... | Henrietta Pastorfield | |
Ruth White | ... | Beatrice Schacter | |
Jean Stapleton | ... | Sadie Finch | |
Sorrell Booke | ... | Dr. Bester | |
Roy Poole | ... | Mr. McHabe | |
Florence Stanley | ... | Ella Friedenberg | |
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Vinnette Carroll | ... | The Mother |
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Janice Mars | ... | Miss Gordon |
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Loretta Leversee | ... | Social Studies Teacher |
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John Callahan | ||
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Denis Fay | ||
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Otto Lomax | ||
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Martha Greenhouse | ... | Alberta Kagan |
Sylvia Barrett is a rookie teacher at New York's inner-city Calvin Coolidge High: her lit classes are overcrowded, a window is broken, there's no chalk, books arrive late. The administration is concerned mainly with forms and rules (there's an up and a down staircase); bells ring at the wrong time. Nevertheless, she tries. How she handles the chaos and her despair in her first semester makes up the film: a promising student drops out, another sleeps through class, a girl with a crush on a male teacher gets suicidal, and a bright but troublesome student misunderstands Sylvia's reaching out. A discussion of Dickens, parents' night, and a mock trial highlight the term. Can she make it? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Rivals "To Sir, With Love" (released around the same time) as the best teacher film of all time. The difference: Sandy Dennis.
Dennis was one of those actors they don't make anymore (or at least don't showcase in Hollywood in 2007). She was strange, quirky, not conventionally pretty and she had that quality a lot of new female teachers have-that deer in the headlights look that makes the viewer root for her to make it "work" with those tough students.
The story is strong with some good subplots with the troubled students. It is dated but I would say the same issues facing Dennis here face contemporary teachers.
I take Dennis to Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society" anyday.