TO SIR, WITH LOVE
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
A dozen Sidney Poitier movies are being shown by TCM today and tonight, including such crucially important Poitier films as 1958’s The Defiant Ones (at 10 p.m. ET) and 1967’s In the Heat of the Night (midnight ET). But to me – and apparently to TCM, which reserves the lead-off prime-time slot for another movie Poitier made in that busy year of 1967 – the highlight is To Sir, with Love, in which he stars as a substitute teacher challenged by a class of rowdy high-school students in London’s East End (the same lower-class, rough-and-tumble neighborhood mined for decades in England’s Eastenders soap opera). James Clavell, who published his novel Shogun a decade later, wrote the screenplay adaptation. It’s a sentimental film, ultimately, but also a very effective one, and includes memorable turns from the supporting cast, especially the young women around Poitier’s Mark Thackeray. Suzy Kendall plays the fellow young teacher offering moral support, and the initially resistant, ultimately respectful students include Jury Geeson and Lulu. Lulu gets to sing the movie’s title song, in the movie (it was a #1 hit for her that year) – in a scene that, when I was 13, made me want to be a teacher. Then came the movie All the President’s Men, when I was 22, and that film cemented my desire to become a journalist. In time, I became both. Thanks, Sir…