Welcome to the second part of my film & media adventures. Continuing with my ASU course about the burgeoning teen market for films about themselves in the 1950s, this is what I wrote:
However, the single most dramatic change which had the most lasting impact towards creating the new, youth centered culture of 1950s America was the explosive appearance of the Rock & Roll music scene which along with Dean’s stunning performance in Rebel Without A Cause quickly influenced and changed adolescent film portrayals overnight. The first film to feature this new music that the April, 1955 issue of Life magazine referred to as the new “frenzied teenage music craze” (as described from the aforementioned book The Fifties: The Way We Really Were) that was creating “a big fuss” (Pg. 291). The magazine was rather confused about this new phenomenon and adopted an ambivalent attitude towards it – much like the rest of adult America.
Nevertheless, it would be the old-school Hollywood studio of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which would produce Blackboard Jungle (1955) as the first major film production to seriously delve into both the festering issue of juvenile delinquency at an inner city high school and briefly feature one of the very first songs of the exciting new trend in the picture’s opening sequence: “Rock Around The Clock” by Bill Haley & The Comets. While Blackboard Jungle attracted huge teen audiences and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year -it did not contain a single outstanding construction of teen male youth which would capture the public imagination the way James Dean did later that year in Rebel Without A Cause. Of course, the trappings of juvenile rebellion in Rebel were more attention grabbing and memorable as the main teen protagonist came from a good, middle-class family – and that made such defiance all the more intriguing and puzzling.
In Blackboard Jungle the constructions of delinquency were more graphic and violent than anything that came before (especially considering the restrictions on violent content due to the Production Code) such as a female teacher almost being raped in the high school library, two other teachers attacked and beaten off school property, school gang members consuming alcohol in a dark alley, vandalism of private property, general classroom mayhem, and a climactic knife fight between a teacher and a student – that had not been depicted with realistic detail in any previous mainstream Hollywood productions. The large ensemble cast of youth rebels in Blackboard Jungle played to sobering effect by Vic Morrow, Sidney Poitier, Jamie Farr, and others is a racially and ethnically diverse grouping of the poor and underprivileged from broken or violent urban ghetto homes – just the types most associated with (and expected to be) juvenile delinquents in the first place.
In this sense Blackboard Jungle can be viewed as predictable and does not break new ground cinematically as these tropes are largely extensions or updated versions of the B film teenage gangs – like the “Dead End Kids” or “Bowery Boys” from the 1930s and 40s touched on earlier. Still, the Blackboard Jungle gangsters are more memorable because of the fusion of rock music with with the contentious narrative (this bizarre new music was felt by many authority figures to be a prime contributor to the rabble rousing caused by teens…real or imagined) – and because of all the social, political, and media focus on delinquency in the post-war era. At least the film was outstanding for casting an African-American (Sydney Poitier) in a lead role (which ultimately became a sympathetic character) – even though it was initially as one of the juvenile antagonists up against the English teacher and nominal star of the film (Glenn Ford). However, it was not until the arrival of Elvis Presley on the popular entertainment scene that rock & roll meshed with cinema in a profound manner.
In his massive, scholarly work The Fifties Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstam zeroes in on this phenomenon clearly as the Rock & Roll culture was unforgettably portrayed onscreen by the highly charismatic, truly original Elvis Presley — and as Halberstam tells it: “A new generation of Americans was breaking away from the habits of its and defining itself by its music.” (Pg. 473) Without a doubt, Presley represented a complete break with everything that came before in mass entertainment and he would certainly become the most outstanding icon of the time, representing the beginnings of rock & roll – a stunning synthesis of jazz, rhythm & blues, pop, and other elements that he would bring together onscreen in a most indelible way even though the music bracketed the opening and closing credits of Blackboard Jungle some two and a half years prior to Presley’s rock & roll showcase in Jailhouse Rock (1957).
Despite the fact that rock & roll was first established with popular acts like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley & The Comets, etc. – it was not until the arrival of Elvis onscreen, on both The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 with his astonishing swivel hip gyrations, flamboyant attire, and electrifying sexual magnetism – that the music took off like a rocket. That momentum was smoothly maintained in Presley’s starring showcase Jailhouse Rock. The basic story of Jailhouse is not particularly unique, being a fairly standard tale of a young, naive musician Vince Everett (Presley) trying to navigate the treachery of show business to become a big success. However, Presley’s good looks and insolent demeanor worked very well in this type of narrative. With his turn as Vince Everett in Jailhouse Rock we have our most titillating – and dangerously magnetic teen male construction.
This goes beyond the vague angst and rebellion of Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause or the destructive teen males who are convinced that society has dealt them a bad hand in Blackboard Jungle. However, although there are not any depictions of a family life, there are implications that Everett has come from a disadvantaged and probably lower-class background. In this respect he’s much like the high school hoodlums of Blackboard Jungle. With Everett we have a young man who has served hard time for manslaughter because he tried to defend a woman’s honor from a predatory, drunken lout at a local roadhouse. This is the first of numerous indications throughout Jailhouse Rock that Everett is a hot-tempered young man who has problems with authority, is likely anti-social, and labors under selfish, materialistic pathology as well.
Eventually, though, as most Hollywood product insists on a happy, conform-with-traditional-morality type of ending…Jailhouse Rock heads straight into the realm of the predictable when Vince finds “true love” with the long-suffering young woman who helps launch his career, realizes a more balanced view of money and dons a mantle of typical 1950s-style respectability. In any case, despite the narrative’s outcome – the music is definitely the driving force of Jailhouse Rock and the title song and dance sequence in the simulated cell-block is easily the most memorable sequence of the picture.
This is what Elvis was most famous for – and the wild sexual energy it exuded pushed Jailhouse Rock into the top ten box office hits of 1957. Though Presley had already been featured in two successful dramatic roles prior to Jailhouse – this was the film which forged the seminal, unforgettable fusion of rock music and the cinema to iconic effect. Along with the teen favorites of Rebel Without A Cause and Blackboard Jungle discussed earlier, Presley’s electrifying performance in Jailhouse Rock finally solidified the new teen-oriented market that remains so vital to Hollywood today.
Look for the finale, Part 3 next week!
