182. THE BAD SEED, 1956
- Jay Jacobson
- 22 minutes ago
- 18 min read
An unforgettably chilling and intensely fun study of evil
Pretty eight year old “Rhoda” has blonde pigtails, wears tutu-type dresses, can do a perfect curtsy, and happily skips about in tap shoes. But there’s something off about her, and it’s enough to give her mother a nervous breakdown in this week’s electrifying emotional thriller, “The Bad Seed”. Nominated for four Academy Awards, it was Warner Brothers' second highest grossing film of 1957, and watching it on TV as a kid, it instantly became one of my early favorites. Suspense is hardly ever this fun, and rarely as evil.
"The Bad Seed" conjures an unsettling world that completely grips you as it delves into the psychology of evil. What makes it such a rare gem is the way the performances often veer into extremes while remaining believable. That tension creates a unique blend of fun and nail-biting suspense, making you want to laugh and gasp at the same time. This quality positions it as a precursor to the horror-thriller films that followed, helping establish the Grande Guignol sub-genre (see my post on "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" for more on that genre). It's no wonder “The Bad Seed” endures as a cult classic.
“The Bad Seed” is full surprises, so if you want to experience it fresh, I suggest watching it before reading on. While I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, discussing it at all means revealing some surprises. So if you’d rather not know anything, now’s the time to stop reading, watch the film, and return here after you’ve seen it.
"The Bad Seed” primarily takes place at the Tidewater Arms, a small apartment complex where “Kenneth Penmark”, his wife “Christine”, and their daughter “Rhoda” reside. They are very friendly with their landlady, “Monica Breedlove”, who lives upstairs, has a fascination with psychology, and is especially fond of “Rhoda”.
Some say “Rhoda” is a perfect little lady, others say she’s spoiled. The Tidewater’s handyman, “Leroy”, calls her “Miss Uppity”, and “Monica” says she’s a "natural little girl” who knows what she wants and asks for it. “Rhoda” is very smart, very adult, can hack out “Au Claire de la Lune” on the piano, and keeps her most cherished possessions in a treasure drawer.
“Kenneth”, a military man, departs for several weeks of work in Washington, D.C. the very day “Rhoda” attends her school’s lakeside picnic. The picnic abruptly ends when her classmate, “Claude Daigle,” drowns in the lake. After visits from the school’s headmistress (“Miss Fern”) and “Claude’s” grieving mother (“Hortense”), “Christine” begins to suspect that her beloved daughter may have played some role in his death.
What follows is a spellbinding blend of melodrama, horror, and humor that probes whether evil is born or made, and tests the limits of a mother’s love. Brimming with twists, suspense, cold-blooded murder, and psychological torment, it’s a powerhouse of shockingly gripping entertainment you’ll never forget.
“The Bad Seed” began as a 1954 novel by William March, which was immediately adapted into a hit Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson that opened at the end of 1954 and ran for 334 performances. One of the people who saw it was Hollywood film director Mervyn LeRoy. Completely taken by it, he told the head of Warner Brothers he wanted to direct a film version.
Because the tone and subject matter of “The Bad Seed” was considered unfilmable by the Motion Picture Production Code office, studios were warned that any adaptation would be denied approval and blocked from release (more on that in the TO READ AFTER VIEWING section below). Undeterred, LeRoy worked with screenwriter John Lee Mahin to revise the story so the Code office would green light it. They succeeded.
LeRoy kept as close as he could to the Broadway production, stylistically preserving its theatricality (even ending the film with onscreen stage bows from the main cast), lending it a heightened sense of reality that intensifies the subject matter and gives the film its unique and arresting tone. As LeRoy told Dick Kleiner in the book “Mervyn LeRoy: Take One”, he thought this film “would be fun — scary fun, but fun”. He was right.
While the play took place entirely in one living room, LeRoy unfolds the film's action across more than half a dozen locations. Even so, he keeps the focus firmly on the characters with an unobtrusive directing style that favors long shots showing the overall action, inserting medium and close-ups at key moments, with graceful camera moves to track characters as they stand, sit, or cross a room — always knowing exactly how and when to emphasize what matters most.
An example is when “Monica” gives “Rhoda” a necklace. LeRoy makes this dialogue-driven scene visually engaging by using an extended shot of “Christine”in a close-up as she sits in the foreground and pours tea with “Rhoda” and “Monica” in the background. This staging allows us to simultaneously watch “Rhoda” and “Monica” interact, while placing our focus squarely on “Christine’s” reactions and growing concern about “Rhoda”. It's this type of dynamic direction that helps make this film so exciting.
One of Hollywood’s giants, Mervyn LeRoy doesn’t often get the recognition he deserves today. His gift at storytelling, making audiences feel, and creating crowd pleasing movies produced numerous classic and landmark films, and he also launched many movie star's careers. Because of his “invisible” directing style (tailored to each of his films), he's become rather unappreciated today. Born in San Francisco, with an early interest in vaudeville, after his parents’ divorce, LeRoy lived with his father and survived the 1906 earthquake, though his father’s business was lost. By twelve, he was a newspaper boy, at fourteen he began appearing onstage, and at fifteen won a Charlie Chaplin imitation contest that led him to vaudeville. When his successful vaudeville duo abruptly ended, he turned to his cousin Jesse L. Lasky (co-founder of what became Paramount) for a job. Lasky gave him a recommendation letter to his Hollywood location, so in 1919, LeRoy headed West. Starting in the wardrobe department at Famous Players–Lasky, LeRoy worked his way up to tinting silent film scenes, operating cameras, acting, and writing comedy gags before directing his first feature, 1927’s “No Place to Go”, a hit that launched his career.
In 1930, LeRoy found himself at Warner Brothers where he became one of the studio’s top directors, delivering landmarks like “Little Caesar”, “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang”, “Gold Diggers of 1933", and “They Won’t Forget”. By 1936 he was also producing, and in 1938 he moved to MGM as head of production while continuing to direct and produce (among the MGM films he produced was “The Wizard of Oz”). He returned to Warners in the mid-1950s, and later worked at other studios before retiring in 1968. In forty-one-years, he directed seventy-nine films across genres, including “Three on a Match”, “Tugboat Annie”, “Waterloo Bridge”, “Johnny Eager”, “Madame Curie”, “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”, “Little Women”, “Quo Vadis”, "Mister Roberts”, “Gypsy", and “Random Harvest” (which earned him his only Best Director Oscar nomination). He produced nearly thirty films, including the 1945 short “The House I Live In” (which won him an honorary Academy Award), and in 1976, he received the Academy’s Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his body of work. Along the way, he helped launch the careers of Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Jane Wyman, Robert Mitchum, Sophia Loren, Loretta Young, and others. Married three times, LeRoy died in 1987 at age 86.
“The Bad Seed’s” cinematography is gorgeous, and that’s because of the expertise of industry heavy hitter Harold Rosson (billed as Hal). His depth-filled compositions are magnificent, often framed by someone in the foreground (such as "Christine" pouring tea as mentioned above), and his lighting is crisp, clean and intriguing, keeping things bright for such a dark tale, getting progressively darker as we reach the climax. Like LeRoy, Rosson’s work perfectly serves the story rather than dominating it, and it earned him a Best Cinematography Academy Award nomination, the fourth in his illustrious career. He shot a myriad of top classics, and you can read more about Hal Rosson in my "Bombshell" post. Just click on the title to open the post.
There were no movie stars in “The Bad Seed”, as LeRoy opted to import six of the main Broadway actors to reprise their roles in the film. As LeRoy told Kleiner, he cast unknowns “at a time when it was fashionable to pepper the marquee with big movie names for their box-office value. It just seemed to me that was a silly policy. I thought it made more sense, especially in this case, to use people who were ideally cast, who had had time to temper their roles, who were genuine actors and not merely screen personalities. So we had them all come over from New York”.
LeRoy told the actors to repeat what they did on stage and not alter their performances for the screen, only occasionally having them tone it down. As a result, the performances are often over the top with a heightened sense of theatricality. But because they ring so emotionally true, they work, giving the film an irresistible edge and a striking sense that the amplified world inside “The Bad Seed” is real.
That’s certainly applies to Nancy Kelly, who reprises her Tony Award–winning role as “Christine”, a woman of kindness and compassion suddenly thrust into devastating emotional angst. It’s a tour de force of raw emotion as we trace “Christine’s” shift from a loving, mildly concerned mother to someone unraveling at the seams. She clutches the wall, hits tables and doors, and even punches her own stomach at one point, but Kelly makes it all plausible. She begins chatting naturally at “Monica’s” luncheon about her aversion to violence and her love for her famous father (a writer of crime and horror stories), cordially engaging with everyone while hinting at "Christine's" inner turmoil. She reveals great vulnerability in her living room exchange with “Miss Fern”, immense empathy toward “Hortense”, and later, facing terrifying realizations in her harrowing scene with her father, Kelly’s honesty is both chilling and deeply moving. Her scenes with “Rhoda” are sensational, even when she’s stern, for we always believe they are mother and daughter. Though often larger-than-life, Kelly’s portrayal never loses its truth — even when it veers towards camp. It’s a performance you can’t help but want to watch over and over, and one that earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.
Nancy Kelly was born in Massachusetts to a New York ticket broker father and an actress-model mother. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to New York where she began modeling as an infant and quickly became one of the city’s most successful child models (a 1929 issue of The Film Daily noted “Nancy has been referred to as ‘the most photographed child in America’”). Alongside modeling, she acted on stage, made her screen debut at age five in 1926’s “The Untamed Lady”, and by ten, was appearing on Broadway in 1931’s “Give Me Yesterday”. She also performed on radio, notably as the first ingénue of the popular “The March of Time” program. In 1938, Kelly’s Hollywood career began with “Submarine Patrol”, after which she played the female lead in 26 films through 1946 (both A and B movies), including “Jesse James”, “Stanley and Livingstone”, “He Married His Wife”, "Frontier Marshal”, “Scotland Yard”, and “Tarzan’s Desert Mystery”.
In 1949 Kelly returned to Broadway in “The Big Knife”, followed by two more plays while beginning television work in 1950. Then came her greatest stage success in 1954 with “The Bad Seed”, earning a Best Actress Tony Award and a Sarah Siddons Award for its Chicago run. The film version was made shortly after, and though it brought Kelly her greatest movie fame and only Oscar nomination, it was her final film. Thereafter, she focused on television and theater, earning an Emmy nomination for a 1956 “Studio One” episode, and a a second Sarah Siddons Award in 1963 after replacing Uta Hagen on Broadway and in Chicago as “Martha” in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”. Over the course of fifty years, Kelly appeared in 34 films and 22 TV shows, ending with the 1977 TV movie “Murder at the World Series”. She was married three times (including to actor Edmund O’Brien and cinematographer Fred Jackman Jr.). Her brother was actor Jack Kelly, and sister was actress Carol Kelly. Nancy Kelly died in 1995 at the age of 73.
Patty McCormack is outstanding as “Rhoda Penmark”, “Christine’s” daughter, turning from sweet to evil in a second and remaining convincing all the while. She excels at layering "Rhoda's" emotions, adding many nuances under her words. I love her in the living room scene with “Miss Fern”, passive aggressively bragging about winning a book at Sunday school, then doing a perfect curtsy before saying “Goodbye Miss Fern” with a phenomenally mocking attitude. Watch McCormack closely and you’ll also catch plenty of fun character touches, like her slight wince when “Monica” hugs her, or after "LeRoy" complains about never having school picnics, the quick flick she gives him as she retorts, “I don’t care what you didn’t have”. It’s an incredibly sophisticated performance for anyone, let alone a ten year old. LeRoy called it “one of the finest performances by a child actor ever put on film”, and it earned McCormack Best Supporting Actress Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and an iconic place in cinema.
Though billed in “The Bad Seed” as "Introducing Patty McCormack", New York City-born Patty McCormack's career began before this film. She started modeling at the age of four, and at six, had bit parts in two 1951 movies, "Two Gals and a Guy" and "Here Comes the Groom”. While trying to get rid of her lisp, McCormack's teacher told her about a Broadway show in need of a little girl in the cast. McCormack auditioned, got the part, and made her Broadway debut in 1953's "Touchstone". Steady TV work followed, including a recurring role as "Ingeborg" in the series "Mama" (based on "I Remember Mama"). Then came the Broadway version of "The Bad Seed". She was eight years old at the time and ten when she made the film. Though she worked steadily after “The Bad Seed”, her performance left such a mark, she was often cast in similar roles. A notable role that followed was as Helen Keller in the original 1957 "Playhouse 90" episode "The Miracle Worker", directed by Arthur Penn. McCormack was soon one of the standout child actors of the 1950s.
McCormack played child roles, then teenagers, and finally adults (eventually billed as Patricia McCormack). To date, she’s acted in approximately 35 films and more than 130 TV shows, videos, and shorts. Her other films include "Frost/Nixon", "The Master", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "All Mine to Give", "Bug", "Mommy", "The Young Runaways”, and "Kathy O’”. The bulk of her career was spent on television, including starring in the series "Peck's Bad Girl" and "The Best of Everything", and recurring roles in "The Ropers", "Dallas", "The Sopranos", "General Hospital”, and "Have you Met Miss Jones”. She also appeared as "Dr. March" in a 2018 TV movie version of "The Bad Seed” and its sequel, 2022's "The Bad Seed Returns”. McCormack continues to work today, most recently starring in the upcoming film "Stop Time". She was married and divorced once. As of this writing, Patty McCormack is 80 years old.
Also reprising his role from Broadway is Henry Jones, who plays ”Leroy Jessup”, the Tidewater’s handyman who “Monica” calls “a schizophrenic with paranoid overtones”. He loves to prod “Rhoda”, who he says is almost as smart and just as mean as he is, and the two are always at odds with one another. Jones is wonderful in the part, displaying a joyous deviousness that is both alarming and funny, as when talking to “Rhoda” about the electric chair, when talking to himself while pruning the flowers, or how he keeps wetting “Rhoda’s” shoes. Jones’s voice is also heard as the announcer reporting the Fern School tragedy on the radio.
A familiar face to moviegoers, New Jersey–born, Philadelphia–raised Henry Jones began on stage, debuting on Broadway in 1931’s “She Lived Next to the Firehouse”. He returned in 1939’s “Hamlet” and went on to appear in 17 more Broadway shows through 1960, including the originals of “My Sister Eileen”, “The Solid Gold Cadillac”, “Sunrise at Campobello” (Tony win for Best Featured Actor), “Advise and Consent”, and “The Bad Seed”. His film debut was a bit part in 1943’s “This Is the Army”, and before this film, he already logged 27 TV shows, three shorts, and the feature, “The Lady Says No”. Over the next five decades, Jones amassed more than 200 credits, mostly on TV. His notable films include “3:10 to Yuma”, “The Grifters”, “Dick Tracy”, “9 to 5”, as the bike salesman in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the coroner in “Vertigo”, and “Henry Rufus” in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?”. His TV work includes classics like “Route 66”, “Bewitched”, “Lost in Space”, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, “Gunsmoke”, “Night Gallery”, “Coach”, “Empty Nest”, and five episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”. He had recurring roles in “Falcon Crest", “These Are the Days”, "The Six Million Dollar Man”, and starred in “Phyllis”. Married twice and widowed once, Henry Jones died in 1999 at age 86.
Another of “The Bad Seed’s” tour de force performances comes from Eileen Heckart as “Hortense Daigle”, the drowned boy’s mother. Always inebriated, she explains “It's a pleasure to stay drunk when your little boy's been killed”. Hearing that “Rhoda” was the last one to see him alive, she keeps coming to the “Penmark’s” home to try and get answers and see if “Rhoda” can remember anything about her son's last few moments.
Stealing every scene she’s in, Heckart blends tears, rage, kindness, and humor into a heartbreakingly funny portrait of a woman in despair. With quick emotional shifts and striking physicality, she inhabits the role so authentically that she vanishes completely into it. Heckart also plays drunk better than anyone I’ve ever seen, due in part to growing up with an alcoholic mother. As she said in a 1980 interview: “I had a model... And it's interesting, because women don't really observe drunken women — when they see people drunk they turn away. They don't really watch it. But if you were forced to live with it in a situation... things rubbed off on me that I didn't even think about, they were just there". Her outstanding performance earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe statue.
After college, Ohio-born Eileen Heckart moved to New York City, studied acting at the American Theatre Wing, and embarked on an acting career. After serving as an understudy in two Broadway shows and appearing in four more, her break came playing "Rosemary Sydney" in the original 1953 Broadway production of “Picnic", which earned her a Theatre World Award. The Broadway version of "The Bad Seed” followed. Heckart had been working in television since 1950, and in 1956, appeared in four films: her film debut in "Miracle in the Rain”; “Somebody Up There Likes Me” opposite Paul Newman; “The Bad Seed”; and “Bus Stop” opposite Marilyn Monroe. From this point on, Heckart kept busy in film, TV, and stage, appearing just over 100 films and TV shows through 1998. She followed her Oscar nomination for “The Bad Seed” with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for 1972’s "Butterflies Are Free” — another role she originated on Broadway. Her seventeen films include "Up the Down Staircase", "No Way to Treat a Lady", "Miracle in the Rain", "The First Wives Club", "Heartbreak Ridge", and "Burnt Offerings".
Heckart’s extensive TV career earned her seven Emmy nominations (for shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, “The Cosby Show”, and her portrayals of Eleanor Roosevelt in “Backstairs at the White House” and “F.D.R.: The Last Year”), with a win for a 1993 episode of “Love & War”. She also earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for “One Life to Live”. Though most of her work was on TV, theater was her passion, as she told The Columbus Dispatch: “You do television to make money so you can afford to act in the theater”. She appeared in 22 Broadway shows, including original productions of “A View From the Bridge”, “A Memory of Two Mondays”, “Barefoot in the Park”, and "And Things That Go Bump in the Night”. She earned three Tony nominations, and in 2000, was awarded the Tony Honor for Excellence in Theatre. Heckart married her college sweetheart, with whom she shared a 53-year marriage until his death. They had three children, including son Luke Yankee, who wrote the 2006 biography “Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart” and the 2004 play “Marilyn, Mom, and Me”. Eileen Heckart died in 2001 at age 82.
Evelyn Varden shines as “Monica Breedlove”, the “Penmarks’” upstairs landlady who admits, “I have no life of my own, so I need other people’s”. Cheerful and well-meaning, she believes in vitamins, met Sigmund Freud, is obsessed with anything psychological, and rings the doorbell before barging in. Fantastic at radiating warmth and heartfelt emotion with spot-on comic timing, Varden brings levity to this dark story. Watch how delightfully funny she is when playfully urging “Christine” to free-associate her thoughts. Yet “Monica” isn’t all smiles, for Varden gives her a harder edge, snapping at “Leroy” and offering genuine concern for “Christine”. Varden also reprised her role from the original Broadway show.
Born in Cherokee territory in Oklahoma (she was part Cherokee), Evelyn Varden debuted on Broadway at seventeen in 1910’s “The Next Egg”, and over the years appeared in 28 Broadway shows, including original productions of “Our Town” and “Present Laughter”, concluding with “The Bad Seed”. In the 1940s, Varden also worked in radio, and at 56, made her film debut in 1948’s “Pinky”, launching a brief but memorable career as a film and TV character actress. She appeared in 18 TV shows and 14 films, including the movies “Désirée”, “Hilda Crane”, “Phone Call from a Stranger”, and “Athena”, and she is perhaps best remembered (along with “The Bad Seed”) for playing “Icey Spoon” in “Night of the Hunter”. Her final acting role aired posthumously in the 1960 TV movie “Cradle Song”, opposite Judith Anderson. She was married twice, first to prolific film actor Charles Coleman. Shortly after making her London stage debut in 1957's “Roar Like a Dove” (earning Best Supporting Performance honors from the National British press), Evelyn Varden became ill and died in 1958 for reasons unknown at age 65.
Classic movie and TV watchers will recognize many actors in "The Bad Seed", so I’ll quickly point out a few, starting with William Hopper who plays "Col. Kenneth Penmark”, “Rhoda’s” father and “Christine’s” husband. The son of gossip columnist and actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper appeared in over 130 films and TV shows, most famously costarring as "Paul Drake" in TV's "Perry Mason”. His films include "Stagecoach", "The Maltese Falcon", "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and as Natalie Wood's father in "Rebel Without a Cause”.
Paul Fix plays "Richard Bravo”, “Christine’s” father. Fix was in over 300 films and TV shows, best known as "Marshal Micah Torrance" on the TV series "The Rifleman”. His movies include "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Red River", "Giant", "Johnny Guitar”, "Zabriskie Point", "Blood Alley", "After the Thin Man", "Scarface", and "Reckless", to name a few.
Jesse White plays "Emory Wages”, “Monica’s” brother. White appeared in over 180 films and TV shows, including "Harvey", "Gentleman's Agreement", "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”, "Marjorie Morningstar", "Designing Woman”, and found fame as the Maytag repairman in TV commercials from 1967 to 1988.
Frank Cady plays "Henry Daigle”, father of the drowned boy. Cady appeared in over 100 films and TV shows, including the movies "Father of the Bride", "D.O.A.", "The Asphalt Jungle", and as the neighbor on the fire escape in "Rear Window". He most famously played "Sam Drucker" in three classic TV series — "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Petticoat Junction", and "Green Acres”.
Shelley Fabares was an extra, playing one of the picnic children. Fabares appeared in over 90 films and TV shows to date, and is most famous for playing Donna Reed's daughter in the hit TV series "The Donna Reed Show" and her twice Emmy-nominated role as "Christine Armstrong-Fox” in the hit series “Coach". As of this writing, Fabares is 81 years old.
In addition to Kelly, McCormack, Jones, Heckart, and Varden, Joan Croydon was brought from the Broadway production to reprise her role in this film, where she perfectly plays "Miss Fern". It is Croydon's only film appearance.
A mention must be made of “The Bad Seed’s” exquisite score by one of cinema’s greatest composers, Alex North. His sparse music shifts from eerie to moving to thrilling, always perfectly timed and just as powerful in its silences — beautifully heightening the film’s emotions. Read more about Alex North in my post on “Streetcar Named Desire”.
Despite mixed reviews, “The Bad Seed” was a major box-office hit. A 1985 TV movie version was made, another was made for Lifetime TV in 2018, followed by a 2022 Lifetime sequel titled "The Bad Seed Returns" (McCormack appears in both Lifetime versions).
This week’s film is thrilling, engrossing, and unforgettable. Enjoy “The Bad Seed”!
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TO READ AFTER VIEWING (contains spoilers):
The topic of a murdering psychopathic child was novel at the time, and the Broadway play’s ending with “Christine” dying and “Rhoda” remaining alive was not Motion Picture Production Code friendly (see my "Red Dust" post for more on the Code). The censors told LeRoy that if he made the film version, he’d have to change the ending to keep in line with the Code’s rule that crime doesn’t pay. To avoid the film being blocked from US theaters, the ending was changed to keep “Christine” alive and kill “Rhoda”.
The spanking at the very end of the film was thought to be added to help lighten the horrific shock of the movie. Today, seeing the spanking is almost as shocking as the film. Oh how times have changed.
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