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For other uses, see To Sir, with Love (disambiguation). To Sir, with Love (1967) is a British film starring Sidney Poitier that deals with social issues, especially racism, in an inner city school, which was written and directed by James Clavell and based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by E. R. Braithwaite. To Sir, with Love may refer to: To Sir, with Love, a 1967 British film starring Sidney Poitier, adapted from the 1959 novel To Sir, with Love (book), a 1959 novel by E. R. Braithwaite To Sir, with Love (song), the theme song to the 1967 film, originally performed by...
Image File history File links To_sir_original. ...
James Clavell, born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell (10 October 1924 – 7 September 1994) was a British novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II hero and POW. Clavell is best known for his epic Asian Saga series of novels and their televised adaptations, along with such films as The Great Escape...
E. R. Braithwaite photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1962 Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. ...
Sir Sidney Poitier KBE, (IPA pronunciation: ) (born February 20, 1927), is an Academy Award-winning Bahamian American actor, film director, and activist. ...
Judith Amanda Geeson (born September 10, 1948) is an English actress. ...
Suzy Kendall (born Frieda Harrison, 1 January 1944, Belper, Derbyshire, England), is a British actress best known for her film roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ...
Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, OBE, (born 3 November 1948 in Lennoxtown, Stirlingshire), best known by her stage name Lulu, is a Scottish singer, songwriter, actor, model, and television personality who has been successful in the entertainment business from the 1960s through the 2000s. ...
Ron Grainer (August 11, 1922 - February 21, 1981) was an Australian-born composer who worked for most of his professional career in the United Kingdom. ...
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is the 165th day of the year (166th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Lauren steiger, born in 1992 at Royal Womens hospital started acting and modelling at the age of 2 and is now currently 15 working in Milan on the catwalks. ...
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The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
Lauren steiger, born in 1992 at Royal Womens hospital started acting and modelling at the age of 2 and is now currently 15 working in Milan on the catwalks. ...
Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971). ...
Sir Sidney Poitier KBE, (IPA pronunciation: ) (born February 20, 1927), is an Academy Award-winning Bahamian American actor, film director, and activist. ...
The term inner-city is often applied to the poorer parts at the centre of a major city. ...
James Clavell, born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell (10 October 1924 – 7 September 1994) was a British novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II hero and POW. Clavell is best known for his epic Asian Saga series of novels and their televised adaptations, along with such films as The Great Escape...
E. R. Braithwaite photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1962 Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (born 1922) is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people. ...
The film's title song "To Sir, with Love", sung by Lulu, reached number one in the U.S. pop charts. The movie ranked number 27 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies. A television movie sequel, To Sir, with Love II, was released in 1996. To Sir, with Love is the theme from the 1967 film To Sir, with Love. ...
Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, OBE, (born 3 November 1948 in Lennoxtown, Stirlingshire), best known by her stage name Lulu, is a Scottish singer, songwriter, actor, model, and television personality who has been successful in the entertainment business from the 1960s through the 2000s. ...
The hit parade is the list of songs most popular at any given time. ...
Entertainment Weekly (sometimes abbreviated EW) is a magazine published by Time Inc. ...
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To Sir, with Love II (1996) is an American television movie, a sequel to a British 1967 film. ...
Cultural impact
The film is in a now-established genre in which an idealistic teacher is confronted with a class of cynical teenagers, disengaged from conventional schooling. The first such film was Blackboard Jungle in 1955 -- in which, incidentally, Poitier played a disruptive pupil. The present film makes a departure in that it sets Poitier, a black teacher, in a predominantly white London school. The film touches on racial issues but concentrates on the usual tropes of teenage angst and inspirational leadership. The film portrays a sanitised and fictional Swinging London. Issues of sexual infatuation between a pupil and teacher were rather less sensitive in the 1960s than they were to become in the 21st century, as evidenced by the rather provocative strapline A story as fresh as the girls in their minis. Blackboard Jungle is a 1955 social commentary film about teachers in an inner-city school. ...
This article does not cite its references or sources. ...
This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...
Swinging London is a catchall term applied to a variety of dynamic cultural trends in the United Kingdom (centred in London) in the second half of the 1960s. ...
The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ...
20XX redirects here. ...
A strapline is an advertising slogan used as a secondary sentence attached to a brand name. ...
A woman modelling a miniskirt The miniskirt (often hyphenated as mini-skirt) is a skirt with a hemline well above the knees (generally 20 cm - about 8 inches - or more above knee level). ...
Subsequent films that explored the inspirational teacher drama theme include: The Principal (1987), Stand and Deliver (1988), Lean on Me and Dead Poets Society (both in 1989), Dangerous Minds (1995), Music of the Heart (1999), Take the Lead (2006), and Freedom Writers (2007), as well as Sister Act 2. The Principal is a 1987 film starring James Belushi and Louis Gossett, Jr. ...
For other uses, see Stand and Deliver (disambiguation). ...
Lean on Me is a 1989 biographical-drama film written by Michael Schiffer, directed by John G. Avildsen and starring Morgan Freeman. ...
Dead Poets Society is an Academy Award-winning 1989 film, directed by Peter Weir. ...
Dangerous Minds is a 1995 drama film based on a biography written by, and about the life of, LouAnne Johnson that tells the true story of a retired Marine who leaves her career to become an English teacher at a well-off high school attended by bused-in students from...
Music of the Heart is a 1999 dramatic film. ...
This article or section contains a plot summary that is overly long. ...
For other uses of Freedom Writers, see Freedom Writers (disambiguation). ...
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit is a 1993 movie starring the singer Whoopi Goldberg, and directed by Bill Duke. ...
Plot summary Braithwaite's name is changed to Mark Thackeray, from Guyana, and the novel's early 1950s setting is changed to the film's present time. Although he holds a college degree in engineering, Thackeray can't find work in London where he lives. Ostensibly, this is because there are no openings, and because he's overqualified for anything less; Thackeray, however, suspects (correctly) that nobody will hire him because he's black. Finally, he lands a job teaching at a high school in the slums. On his first day, Thackeray is warned about the punkish and unteachable students who got their latest professor (the man Thackeray has been hired to replace) to leave the school in resignation.
Thackeray's class keeps getting disrupted by the students' letting their desks slam shut, switching chairs in the middle of lessons, walking in and out of the room without ever saying a word, passing around pornographic magazines in mid-lessons, and the like. (One student, portrayed by Michael Des Barres in his acting debut, even wears sunglasses right in the classroom; Thackeray keeps taking them off for him). Thackeray shrewdly presumes all of these things are being done just to make him lose control of himself. Soon enough, he does just that upon finding his students burning a tampon in the classroom's wood-stove. Abandoning his previous vow never to do so under any circumstances, Thackeray flies into a rage and orders all the boys out of the classroom. Then he bellows at the girls about keeping certain things private, and what he thinks of women who fail to keep those things private. Finally, Thackeray slams out of the classroom and retreats to the school's faculty office; he's more furious with himself than with his students, because he allowed them to get the better of him. At the same time, the youngsters he's been trying to teach are impressed by the fact that he didn't use dirty language with them, as did Thackeray's predecessor. Thackeray's is proving a much harder spirit to break than their last teacher's. Michael Des Barres as Murdoc Michael Des Barres (born 24 January 1948) is an English actor and rock singer. ...
Thackeray completely changes his approach to these youngsters' education. He starts by throwing the textbooks into the wastebasket, since the students never use them anyhow. He then sets up an open discussion, during which the students may ask about anything they feel the need to know. Thackeray explains to his students that they will soon enter the world of adulthood, where they must stand or fall on their own. He hopes to prepare them for higher education... and also for careers, matrimony and/or parenting. Thackeray also urges his students to address each other as "Sir," or "Miss," although he himself also answers to "Mr. Thackeray." (The youngsters had previously called him "Governor," "Mate," and worse.) When some of the kids point out that they've grown up alongside each other and are already on familiar terms, Thackeray responds by saying that such gives all of them the right to be called "Sir" or "Miss." Sure enough, the entire class quickly comes to know Thackeray as "Sir."
At one point, an out-of-shape boy named Buckley is ordered by the gym teacher Mr. Bell to jump a hurdle, something everyone knows the boy is unable to do. When the boy falls and breaks the hurdle, another student named Potter (Christopher Chittell) angrily grabs a piece of broken wood and threatens to attack the teacher with it. Thackeray is called and stops the fight. Although he condemns the teacher's use of the fat student as a "whipping boy", Thackeray also insists that the students should control their anger; he points out that serious damage could have been done, had a gun or knife been used instead of broken wood. Soon afterward, Bert Denham ( Christian Roberts) - the ringleader of Thackeray's students - challenges Thackeray to an impromptu boxing match in the gym. Since Thackeray was a Golden Gloves contender, he should be a worthy opponent. Indeed, Thackeray soon gets the upper hand by knocking the wind out of Denham with a single hook to the body. Thackeray helps Denham up and offers to help prepare him for a job as a boxing instructor for the juniors. Denham is surprised that Thackeray stopped after one blow, since the boy was clearly attempting to injure his teacher. Thackeray, however, informs Denham that responding in kind would have accomplished nothing for either of them...turning even this putatively negative event into a lesson about civility. Christopher John Chittell (born 19 May 1948, Aldershot, Hampshire) is an English actor. ...
Golden Gloves The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the United States. ...
Later, a half-black student's mother dies of an illness. Although Thackeray's class buys a funeral wreath, they are afraid to personally deliver it, since everyone would gossip if a white person went into a black person's house. Fellow student Pamela Dare (Judy Geeson), who greatly admires Thackeray by this point, bravely offers to take the wreath. Thackeray, shortly afterwards, meets Pamela's mother - who tells him that Pamela is always out late at night. She asks him to find out where her daughter goes. When questioned, the girl insists that she is only visiting her grandmother. Yet Pamela refuses to tell her mother this; she feels bitter towards her mother for entertaining gentlemen friends in the family home. When Thackeray tries to convince Pamela to forgive her mother, the girl feels betrayed and angrily renounces her agreement to bring the funeral wreath. Later, however, she realizes that he was right. When Thackeray goes to pay respects at the funeral, Pamela and Thackeray's entire class are there to deliver the wreath. Judith Amanda Geeson (born September 10, 1948) is an English actress. ...
Thackeray stresses the importance of self-respect to his students; if they don't care about themselves, they're never going to care about anybody. Accordingly, he takes them on a field trip to the nearby Victoria & Albert Museum. The school opposes this, anticipating a riot. There is none. All of Thackeray's students conduct themselves the way he has treated them: like young adults. The Cromwell Road entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum viewed from Thurloe Square The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) is on Cromwell Road in Kensington, West London. ...
A day later, Thackeray receives a job offer from a local engineering company. After due consideration, he plans to resign from the school following the graduation of the senior class he's been teaching.
The time has come for the students' farewell party. There, the faculty says they'll miss him a lot; after all, Thackeray has accomplished so much with those youngsters in so little time, a feat none of the other teachers dreamed possible. A "Ladies' Choice" dance is announced, and Pamela calls Thackeray to the floor for a vigorous dance. Thackeray, for once, sets aside the distinct separations between himself and the students.
Then Denham, once Thackeray's greatest nemesis, calls for attention; he announces that the class has something special for Thackeray. The class gathers, regarding Thackeray reverentially, as student Barbara Pegg (Lulu in her first film role) performs a song she has written with him in mind: "To Sir, With Love." Another student, Miss Wong (Lynne Sue Moon) presents Thackeray with a gift from the class: a small, wrapped box. Although not one to show emotion easily, Thackeray is deeply moved and fights back tears. With very few words, he returns to the classroom with his gift: a large folding card, signed by each of the students, and a loving cup. Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, OBE, (born 3 November 1948 in Lennoxtown, Stirlingshire), best known by her stage name Lulu, is a Scottish singer, songwriter, actor, model, and television personality who has been successful in the entertainment business from the 1960s through the 2000s. ...
As the card and cup lie before him on the desk, Thackeray ponders his gift and its significance. A boy and girl tumultuously enter. Gleefully arrogant, they pick up Thackeray's gift and examine it without being invited. The boy finally slams the cup down; tauntingly, he informs Thackeray that they will be "...in your bleedin' class next year." The two exit in the same manner as they entered. Thackeray winces as they slam the door behind them.
Thackeray rises pensively, his thoughts on this fresh assault unclear. Retrieving the envelope containing an offer for the engineering job he had sought, Thackeray struggles inwardly with this new conflict. Then, having made his decision, he tears up and discards the letter. His work here is not yet done.
Quotes - Moira's mother: (on double-decker bus, gesturing at Thackeray) I wouldn't mind having this lot in my stocking for Christmas.
- Pamela Dare: Do you two...?(sways hips suggestively)
(Students laugh) Image File history File links Edit-copy_purple. ...
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- Pamela Dare: Do you two shake?
- Pamela Dare: (after cleaning off Thackeray's desk) Don't worry about your desk. I'll clean it every day.
- Thackeray: No, it's no problem.
- Pamela Dare: It's all right. A woman's work is never done.
- Theo Weston (fellow teacher, to Thackeray): Ah, so you're the new lamb for the slaughter - or should I say, black sheep?
(Thackray's verbal lashing at the girls upon their burning of the tampon in the woodstove...) - Thackeray: I am sick of your foul language, your crude behavior and your sluttish manner. There are certain things a decent woman keeps private, and only a filthy slut would have done this ... and those who stood by and encouraged her are just as bad. I don't care who's responsible - you're all to blame. Now, I am going to leave this room for five minutes by which time that disgusting object had better be removed and the windows opened to clear away the stench. If you must play these filthy games, DO THEM IN YOUR HOMES! - and not in my classroom!
- Denham: Eh, Sir, would you mind boxing with me? Sapiano's wrenched his wrist and looked devilish.
- Thackeray: I think you'd better forget about that for today.
- Denham: I don't mind having a punch-out with you.
- Ingram: Lucky punch yesterday.
- Denham (whirling, furiously): Yeah? Well, you got eyes in the back o' your 'ead, that's what. Ol' Chimney Sweep coulda taken me down with one hand behind his back and you know it!
- Denham: How many times did you hit me?
- Thackeray: Once. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I guess I just lost my temper.
- Denham: You could have taken me right there. I’ve had it in for you since the beginning of school. I was meaning to hurt you.
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