Ladybug Ladybug (1963)

William Daniels playing a teacher 30 years before
he played one on television on Boy Meets World

"...a picture dedicated to life"

That's the tagline to this haunting anti-war film, which attempted to express on film how people were feeling about nuclear war at the time. The setting is a rural school that has frequent duck-and-cover drills. One day an alarm goes off; its color-coded light indicates a nuclear attack within an hour. The principal dismisses all of the children per protocol, even though no one is sure whether it's a malfunction or the real thing. The concept makes for a good, thrilling drama.

William Daniels, one of my favorite actors, plays the straight laced principal convincingly. Nancy Marchand is one of the teachers who is assigned to walk the pupils home, breaking her heels in the process. Along the way, one her music students says to another, "I'm a Soprano", which is kind of funny to a modern viewer who might be familiar with Ms. Marchand's work on the television show The Sopranos.

Estelle Parsons assures her frightened daughter that
if there really was going to be a nuclear attack,
they'd hear announcements on the radio.

In the meantime, the principal and the other school employees frantically try to connect with someone via the one telephone line in the building, but they keep getting busy signals (there was no voice mail back then) They also have no way of communicating any status updates with the other teachers who have left to walk the children home. This movie should really make you appreciate your cell phone, among other things.

The main focus of the film is on how the children react. As one child goes home, she's frightened to death; her down-to-earth mother (Estelle Parsons) tries to calm her senses. It's sad to see the little girl run to her room and hide under the bed with her fish in the fishbowl. Another group of students stick together in a shelter and argue amongst each other about war.

This film serves as another interesting time capsule of this period in history.

I didn't know what the title meant until I looked it up and found it was the title of a nursery rhyme which I was never familiar with it during my school days in the 1980s. I did recognize the monkey doll in one of the rooms to be Curious George; I did read and loved all those books.