UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE, 1967’s other ‘teacher-versus-turf’ story earned good grades from most critics and a respectable B-minus at the box office. Its A-game high school rival, released two weeks earlier, remains on the honor roll, not just because To Sir, With Love is blessed with that iconic theme song and a then-fresher setting (East London vs. East Harlem) but because the earnest educator in Sir is the charming and assured Sidney Poitier while his stateside colleague is buried under the walking curriculum of sputters, blinks, twitches and tics wielded by Sandy Dennis.

‘Sylvia Barrett’ (Dennis, 29) starts her educator’s career as the new English teacher at a giant New York City high school, and ultimately, after a siege of scant reward amid continual disruption, even threats, must consider whether to stick it out or abandon ship. And this was before cell phones, social media, drugs and gunfire replaced reading, writing and arithmetic.

Your perpetual student enjoyed this as a 12-year-old (double-billed with The Naked Runner, a major snore), thinking it was “realistic” and accepting the offbeat leading lady (fresh from her Oscar copping turn in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?) as one of the times-are-changing era’s “new, real-person/non glamour actors” (paging The Graduate). But seen anew a few degenerating generations on, despite good work from some in the cast, the set-up comes off as soft-pedaled on the idealized side (no-one ever saw Blackboard Jungle ? the kids, in their dress and how they inter-relate seem more like they belong to the peppy early 50’s rather than the charged mid-60s) and the “look at me being natural!” emoting from Dennis is enough to bring on an anxiety attack. Every time she allows some sliver of truthful behavior break through, she sabotages it with another quirk. Pitiful pretending to be Endearing. Perhaps in life Sandy Dennis was a lovely person, but on screen, beyond her basket case in Virginia Woolf, her most convincing performance came later in 1981’s The Four Seasons, where she was supposed to be  irritating.

Robert Mulligan directed, and the stirred commotion looks authentic (a school sagging under 3,500 distracted pupils, a harried staff and oceans of forms), with the young people mostly played by amateurs, many of them students at the time. Tad Mosel wrote the script (All The Way Home, Dear Heart) off Bel Kaufman’s book. *

The frazzled faculty, cast to type: Patrick Bedford (as a cold jerk), Eileen Heckart, Ruth White, Roy Poole, Jean Stapleton, Florence Stanley, Sorrell Booke, Vinnette Carroll,  Frances Sternhagen, Esther Rolle (uncredited).

The squirming classmates, plucked from the streets: Jeff Howard (coiled bitterness), Ellen O’Mara (crushed dove), Salvatore Rasa (windbag apple polisher), Lew Wallach (class clown), Jose Rodriguez, Candace Culkin, Rutanya Alada, Bud Cort (18, debut).

The best, truest, most painful scene is when Bedford’s uncaring teacher; ‘grades’ the poignant love letter awkward duckling O’Mara has written to him; her silent, crushed reaction has genuine pathos; anyone who’s ever had naïve kindness rewarded by casual cruelty can relate.

Crowds came on, placing it 25th during ’67s “Summer of Love” with a gross of $12,500,000.

* Bel Kaufman’s 368-page 1964 bestseller, based on her own teaching experiences, began as “From a Teacher’s Wastebasket“, a 3½ page short story she did in 1962.  Storytelling was in her blood: she was the granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem. Fifty-one when she wrote the piece that would turn into this popular movie, she passed away in 2014 at the age of 103.

** Ellen O’Mara (1949-2004) deserves recognition, and we include this link from someone who knew her well.   https://wheredidmybraingo.com/ellen/