To Sir, with Love (1967) on Netflix
Mark Thackeray, an engineer from British Guiana, takes an interim teaching post in London's East End. His unruly class, led by Bert Denham and Pamela Dare, drove the last teacher out.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.6/1022,237 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mark Thackeray comes to London from British Guiana with an engineering qualification and eighteen months of unsuccessful job hunting behind him. He takes an interim teaching post with Class 12 at North Quay Secondary School in the East End, though he has no teaching experience. The pupils were turned away by other schools, and Bert Denham and Pamela Dare lead a group that treats the classroom as its own, wearing down teachers with vandalism and pranks. After losing his temper over something burned in the classroom stove, Thackeray drops the textbooks and sets rules: lessons on subjects the pupils choose, and the way they address one another: Sir or Mr. Thackeray for him, Miss for the girls, surnames for the boys. Denham keeps baiting him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about To Sir, with Love (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sidney Poitier took only a $30,000 fee for the film plus 10% of the gross box office; the movie became such a hit that Columbia calculated it would owe him payments for an estimated 80 years and had to revise the deal.
- Before filming, Columbia wanted either a rape or a big fight put into the story, but Poitier's agent Martin Baum and the film-makers refused, holding out on the grounds that this was a gentle story.
- E.R. Braithwaite, whose autobiographical novel inspired the film, loathed the adaptation because it left out the novel's interracial relationship, even though it provided him with some financial security from royalties.
- Lulu's title song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in the autumn of 1967 and ultimately was the best-selling single in the US that year.
- The title song was left out of the nominations for Best Original Song at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968, angering James Clavell and Lulu's manager Marion Massey, who raised a formal objection to the exclusion, but to no avail.
- The headmaster of the school where author Braithwaite taught, St George-in-the-East Central School in Wapping, would not let the production film there; the spire of the church beside it is visible when Sir walks up Reardon Street.
