Let's be realistic.

Absolutely Brilliant!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

****SPOILERS**** Making an outer-city or rural "Blackboard Jungle" there's Harrison High new history teacher Neil Hendry played by a very youthful looking-looking more like one of his students then a 31 year old teacher- Dick Clark getting involved with a number of his students off campus that almost gets him canned or fired from his job. Among those that Hendry takes an interest in is troubled student Griff Rimer,Michael Callan, who as we soon see has more troubles going for or against him then even Hendry can imagine.This all comes to a climax when Griff gets involved in a wear-house robbery with his mentor and father figure the local supermarket butcher Chris, Rudy Bond, and his fellow crook local gang banger Patcher, Chris Robinson, that goes wrong with Griff, the getaway driver, taking off in all the confusion. If that's not bad enough later Griff is confronted by another troubled student Buddy McCalla, Warren Berlinger, who's mad at him for taking his girl Anne Gregor, Tueadsy Weld, away from him despite his cave man tactics to win her back. As the two troubled youths have it out, in a wild fist fight, with each other in the school stairway.This leads both boys being suspended from school with added trouble on Griff's part in that the knife wielding Patcher is now after him for leaving him and his his friend Butcher Chris high and dry at the robbery site! ***SPOLIERS***Dick Clark's first dramatic role has him play more or less what he's in real life a role model to America's youth not in just showing them how to behave like adults but providing them with rock & roll music as well as entertainers live on stage. We get to see guitarist Duane Eddy and his Rebels as well as singer James Darren do their thing, sing and play music, live on stage halfway through the film. We also get to see that adults like Griff's mom and Butcher Chris are no better or even far worse then the troubled students in the movie. If fact their the very reason that most of the students have the serious troubles that they find themselves in and are suffering from!

At the time this movie came out, the generation emerging from the late Fifty's into the early Sixty's, didn't have any desires different than the previous generation. Since the turn of the 19th century parents became more and more lax or permissive you might say (for whatever reasons). The main difference, to me, was the way in which those teens behaved & expressed themselves. More and more, kids wanted to have fun but found that "Fun", doing different things. My formative years experienced dire warnings of "bad associations, trouble making rebels, leather jacket kids were no good, combing your hair with in a jelly roll style was for delinquents and so on." So I tended to be careful but respectful of others. "Because They're Young" was a successful attempt to capture the "atmosphere" the "Ambiance" of the era. Being Hollywood, over dramatization was and is not uncommon. Yet the sense of being "young" (after all these years) isn't a lost cause. It will always be very much alive and well. All it will ever really need is for older folks to empathize, sympathize and not forget that "Because They're Young" was them too, once upon a time.

Another movie I'd love to see released on video/DVD that's been too long neglected is "BECAUSE THEY'RE YOUNG" (Columbia, 1960) starring Dick Clark of American Bandstand with Duane Eddy and his Rockin' Rebels, and Bobby Rydell on the soundtrack. Oh yes, that cool blonde hottie Tuesday Weld was in there too. Too bad it was in black & white, but they were doing a retake on "BLACKBOARD JUNGLE" (MGM, 1955) so it had to be, and look like a B-movie. I know I'm dating myself, but I did see this movie in the theaters when it was released in May-June 1960. It was the coolest, man. I mean like I really dug it the most, at age 13. I was into Edd 'Kookie' Byrnes' jive talk, rock'n'roll, and hip beatnik jazz so Maynard G. Krebs was my buddy on TV. And DIck Clark was a swingin' hipster on American Bandstand, WFIL-TV in Philly, broadcast on ABC-TV network nationwide. I watched it every afternoon after coming home from school, along with reruns of "Adventures of SUPERMAN", "Topper", and "Ramar of the Jungle"! Dick Clark really clicked for teens and kids in this movie, I remember everyone thought he did a great job with his first acting role. In retrospect, not having seen this movie since the early '70s when it was shown on TV one Saturday afternoon, I can't really judge it as an adult, but I fondly remember it being kind of a dark, melodramatic sort of "American Graffiti" movie experience. I would love to see it again after all these years! Please, Sony Pictures, put this one on your DVD-to-do list!!! I'd love to see an interview with Dick Clark about this movie. I wonder if he's up to that challenge now?

Yes- I was a teenager when this movie came out. Actually, I was lucky enough to have danced on Dick Clark's American Bandstand on and off in 1962 at WFIL TV studios in Philadelphia. Seeing this movie really helps "take me back" to those carefree days of youth. Of course, the movie shows some problems among a few of the kids, but my enjoyment of it lies in identifying with the happy-go-lucky majority. These are the kids seen dancing, laughing and just enjoying themselves in being a teenager in 1960.