Tom Brown's Schooldays is a 1951 British drama film, directed by Gordon Parry, produced by Brian Desmond Hurst, and starring John Howard Davies, Robert Newton and James Hayter.

Tom’s arrival at the school and the early scenes at Rugby (particularly the charmingly handled sing-song) give rise to hopes that the director might pull off this almost impossible subject.

After this, however, the script fatally compromises: the boring scenes chronicling Doctor Arnold’s struggle to improve the school (his part is written as that of a lonely, single-minded reformer with none of the traditional severity), and the awkwardly tacked-on serminising at the end, spoil the robust, Boy’s Own Paper feeling of the opening without substituting a new one.

Robert Newton is, by contrast, surprisingly subdued, while John Charlesworth and Glyn Dearman play naturally and well among a large cast of self-conscious boys.

[4] Time Out approved the "solidly carpentered third screen version of Thomas Hughes' famous Rugby story – atmospherically shot on location in the old school itself.