In 2007, Kwame Kwei-Armah starred in a dramatisation for BBC Radio 4.Īs Braithwaite admitted that year when accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Guyana Cultural Association in New York: “I feel fortunate that this piece of work I did 50 years ago is still well and alive. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/RexĪ television film version followed in 1974, with a US high school teacher on an exchange to London, and in 1996 Poitier starred in To Sir, With Love II, a television sequel to the original film, in which Thackeray retires from his London post only to take one up at an inner-city school in Chicago. Sidney Poitier and Judy Geeson in To Sir, With Love. Though Braithwaite found this version rather sentimental – he said, “the movie made it look like fun and games” – the story’s popularity persisted for the rest of his life, making his name as a literary figure. The white colleague with whom Thackeray falls in love was played by Suzy Kendall, and the screenwriter and director, James Clavell, transposed the setting to the swinging 60s.
The real impact of To Sir came when it was made into a feature film in 1967, with a title song sung by a young Lulu, who also appeared as one of the students. His experiences there provided the basis for his second novel, Paid Servant (1962). While writing the book, Braithwaite became a London county council social worker (1958-60), finding foster homes for non-white children. Braithwaite helps his students become more articulate and they soften his patrician manner. However, at the point where he is ready to despair of them, the entire class attends the funeral, and love and respect are seen to prevail over discrimination. The teacher turns the situation round through thrashing one of the students in a boxing match, then declining to make him grovel, through encouraging discussion and organising a museum visit, and by challenging the students’ reluctance to deliver a condolence wreath when the mother of one of them dies, because her husband is black. To Sir, With Love, 1967, starring Sidney Poitier as Mark Thackeray (in the book the teacher is called Ricky Braithwaite)
0 kommentar(er)
