The Bad Seed

In 1956, Warner Bros. brought the most evil child short of the Anti-Christ to screen in the person of Rhoda Penmark, a murderous moppet so cold she could practice her piano lessons methodically while her latest victim was burning to death in the basement below. As embodied by eleven-year-old Patty McCormack, Rhoda was a character with no precedent in film history (so much so that the censors tried to keep her off the screen). Her distinct presence coupled with the intensely emotional playing of the film's adult stars have made The Bad Seed (now on DVD from Warner Video) a cult favorite, with contemporary audiences see-sawing between laughter at the histrionics and stunned disbelief at Rhoda's evil ways. Rhoda Penmark was the brainchild of writer William Archibald, who drew on the '50s debate over whether or not evil and mental illness were hereditary to paint his portrait of a child unconsciously following in the footsteps of her serial killer grandmother. Playwright Maxwell Anderson, best known for such historical verse tragedies as Anne of the Thousand Days and Elizabeth the Queen, turned the story into a hit play that won Nancy Kelly Broadway's Tony Award for playing Rhoda's mother and started McCormack on the road to becoming a household name. Originally director-writer Billy Wilder wanted to make the film version as an independent production, but he ran into trouble when he submitted the script to the industry's own self-censorship organization, the Production Code Administration. One of the Production Code's rules forbade "Pictures dealing with criminal activities, in which minors participate , or to which minors are related." Although juvenile delinquency had been a film subject since the '30s, when the Dead End Kids first hit the screen, Rhoda's criminal doings and the script's extended discussion of heredity were considered too strong for the screen. The implication that she wasn't really responsible for her crimes because she was, as the title suggested, a bad seed, was deemed a bad influence on the youth of America. Wilder dropped the project, only to learn that Warner Bros. had gotten approval for the material simply by offering to create a new ending in which Rhoda would be punished for her crimes. The real difference, in his view, was that Warners was a big studio while he was just an independent producer, a conclusion that led to his decision to ignore the Production Code when choosing properties in the future. Ironically, the film he chose to make instead of the The Bad Seed, The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), would be released by Warners. Warner Bros. gave producer-director Mervyn LeRoy the chance to bring The Bad Seed to the screen. Initially, they objected to his plan to cast the play's leading players -- including Kelly, McCormack, Eileen Heckart and Henry Jones -- in place of established box-office names like Bette Davis, who had expressed an interest in the film's leading role. He also decided to stick closely to Anderson's original screenplay, working with cinematographer Harold Rosson to open the film up primarily by moving the camera around. The choice paid off by visually isolating and trapping Rhoda's mother as she discovered her little girl was a cold-hearted killer. LeRoy also decided to use a theatrical curtain call at the film's end. He recorded a voiceover introducing the film's cast and, as had been the case when the play was performed, followed the bows by having Kelly take McCormack over her knee for a good spanking. After the horror of the film's subject matter, this served to let '50s audiences off-the-hook, while adding to the film's word-of-mouth appeal. In another move to appease the censors, Warner Bros. added an "adults only" tag to the film's advertising. As a result, the film became one of their biggest hits of the year, grossing $4.1 million (an impressive figure for the time) and landing in the year's top 20 at the box office. The film also landed Oscar® nominations for Rosson, Kelly, McCormack and Heckart, with the latter winning the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. Over time, The Bad Seed has continued to wield its influence. It was re-made in Turkey in the '60s, then turned into a mediocre television movie starring Blair Brown in 1985. Australian singer-actor Nick Cave even named his band, The Bad Seeds, for it. None of the re-makes ever came up with a young actress who could match McCormack. Unfortunately, the child actress never came up with a performance that could match her turn as Rhoda. Although still active in the business, McCormack never got to capitalize on her child stardom. She moved into troubled teen roles in the '60s -- most ludicrously in 1968's The Mini-Skirt Mob -- moved into the soaps and currently plays character roles. Her most notable later assignments include two low-budget thrillers, Mommy (1995) and Mommy II: Mommy's Day (1997) in which she plays a character who could easily be a grown-up Rhoda, a mother who murders anyone who makes her daughter unhappy. The Warner Video DVD of The Bad Seed looks just fine - the image is sharp and the audio is crystal clear with Alex North's dramatic score an added plus. The extras include a short interview with Patty McCormack entitled "Enfant Terrible" and a running commentary by the actress and playwright/actor Charles Busch which is a much more straightforward affair than you'd imagine. After all, by today's standards, the film is much closer to pure camp than serious drama but neither commentator makes this distinction obvious. For more information about The Bad Seed, visit Warner Video. To order The Bad Seed, go to TCM Shopping. by Frank Miller

TCM REMEMBERS EILEEN HECKART, DAVID SWIFT & PAUL LANDRES Eileen Heckart, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Butterflies Are Free (1972), died December 31st at the age of 82. Heckart was born in 1919 in Columbus, Ohio and became interested in acting while in college. She moved to NYC in 1942, married her college boyfriend the following year (a marriage that lasted until his death in 1995) and started acting on stage. Soon she was appearing in live dramatic TV such as The Philco Television Playhouse and Studio One. Her first feature film appearance was as a waitress in Bus Stop (1956) but it was her role as a grieving mother in the following year's The Bad Seed that really attracted notice and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Heckart spent more time on Broadway and TV, making only occasional film appearances in Heller in Pink Tights (1960), No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986). She won one Emmy and was nominated for five others. TCM REMEMBERS DAVID SWIFT, 1919-2001 Director David Swift died December 31st at the age of 82. Swift was best-known for the 1967 film version of the Broadway musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (he also appears in a cameo), Good Neighbor Sam (1964) starring Jack Lemmon and The Parent Trap (1961), all of which he also co-wrote. Swift was born in Minnesota but moved to California in the early 30s so he could work for Disney as an assistant animator, contributing to a string of classics from Dumbo (1941) to Fantasia (1940) to Snow White (1937). Swift also worked with madcap animator Tex Avery at MGM. He later became a TV and radio comedy writer and by the 1950s was directing episodes of TV series like Wagon Train, The Rifleman, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90 and others. Swift also created Mr. Peepers (1952), one of TV's first hit series and a multiple Emmy nominee. Swift's first feature film was Pollyanna (1960) for which he recorded a DVD commentary last year. Swift twice received Writers Guild nominations for work on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and The Parent Trap. TCM REMEMBERS PAUL LANDRES, 1912-2001 Prolific B-movie director Paul Landres died December 26th at the age of 89. Landres was born in New York City in 1912 but his family soon moved to Los Angeles where he grew up. He spent a couple of years attending UCLA before becoming an assistant editor at Universal in the 1931. He became a full editor in 1937, working on such films as Pittsburgh (1942) and I Shot Jesse James (1949). His first directorial effort was 1949's Grand Canyon but he soon became fast and reliable, alternating B-movies with TV episodes.. His best known films are Go, Johnny, Go! (1958) with appearances by Chuck Berry and Jackie Wilson, the moody The Return of Dracula (1958) and the 1957 cult favorite The Vampire. His TV credits run to some 350 episodes for such series as Adam 12, Bonanza, Death Valley Days and numerous others. Landres was co-founder in 1950 of the honorary society American Cinema Editors. BUDD BOETTICHER 1916-2001 When director Budd Boetticher died on November 29th, American film lost another master. Though not a household name, Boetticher made crisp, tightly wound movies with more substance and emotional depth than was apparent at first glance. Instead of a flashy style, Boetticher preferred one imaginatively simple and almost elegant at times. Because of this approach films like The Tall T (1957), Decision at Sundown (1957), The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951) and Ride Lonesome (1960) have withstood the test of time while more blatantly ambitious films now seem like period pieces. Budd was born Oscar Boetticher in Chicago on July 29th, 1916. With a father who sold hardware, Boetticher didn't come from a particularly artistic background. In college he boxed and played football before graduating and heading to Mexico to follow what's surely one of the most unusual ways to enter the film industry: as a professional matador. That's what led an old friend to get Boetticher hired as a bullfighting advisor on the 1941 version of Blood and Sand. Boetticher quickly took other small jobs in Hollywood before becoming an assistant director for films like Cover Girl. In 1944, he directed his first film, the Boston Blackie entry One Mysterious Night. Boetticher made a series of other B-movies, like the underrated film noir Behind Locked Doors (1948), through the rest of the decade. Boetticher really hit his stride in the 50s when he began to get higher profile assignments, including the semi-autobiographical The Bullfighter and the Lady in 1951 which resulted in Boetticher's only Oscar nomination, for Best Writing. Sam Peckinpah later said he saw the film ten times. Other highlights of this period include Seminole (1953) (one of the first Hollywood films sympathetic to American Indians), the stylishly tight thriller The Killer Is Loose (1956) and the minor classic Horizons West (1952). In the late 50s, Boetticher also started directing TV episodes of series like Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip. In 1956, Boetticher started a string of films that really established his reputation. These six Westerns starring Randolph Scott are known as the Ranown films after the production company named after Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown. Actually the first, Seven Men from Now (1956), was produced by a different company but all of them fit together, pushing the idea of the lone cowboy seeking revenge into new territory. The sharp Decision at Sundown twists Western cliche into one of the bleakest endings to slip through the Hollywood gates. The Tall T examines the genre's violent tendencies while Ride Lonesome and Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) have titles appropriate to their Beckett-like stories. The final film, Comanche Station, appeared in 1960. That was the same year Boetticher made one of the best gangster films, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, before watching everything fall apart. He and his wife decided to make a documentary about the famous matador Carlos Arruza and headed to Mexico. There Boetticher saw Arruza and much of the film crew die in an accident, almost died himself from an illness, separated from and divorced his wife (Debra Paget), and then spent time in various jails and even briefly a mental institution. This harrowing experience left him bankrupt but he still managed to complete the film, Arruza (1968), which gathered acclaim from the few who've been able to see it. Boetticher managed to make just one more film, My Kingdom For... (1985), a self-reflexive documentary about raising Andalusian horses. He also made a cameo appearance in the Mel Gibson-Kurt Russell suspense thriller, Tequila Sunrise (1988). He died from complications from surgery at the age of 85. By Lang Thompson