Up the Down Staircase is a 1967 drama film about the first, trying assignment for a young, idealistic teacher played by Sandy Dennis. Robert Mulligan directed the film and Tad Mosel wrote the screenplay adaptation of the novel of the same name by Bel Kaufman. The film's title is a reference to the staircases inside a public, overcrowded New York City high school with a number of troubled students. Sylvia Barrett, fresh out of graduate school, has just been hired to teach English to the teens in this place. Many are undisciplined, a few are hanging with gangs. Not everyone is agreeable with... Sylvia's quiet approach to the situation, but she intends to get the teens to become good students and get them into real learning. Sandy Dennis took the role of Sylvia Barrett after winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This was her first and only film with producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan. It was filmed in the Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem at Haaren High School now housing a building on the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
more
| Release date: | July 19, 1967 |
| Directed by: | Robert Mulligan |
| Runtime: | 124 Minutes |
| Producer: | Alan J. Pakula |
| Editor: | Folmar Blangsted |
| Music by: | Fred Karlin |
| Cinematography: | Joseph F. Coffey |
| Screenplay by: | Tad Mosel |
| Adapted from: | Up the Down Staircase |