More understandable are the ghostly children that Peter encounters in a forest clearing. Peter Fry’s grandfather appears in a barely-motivated dream sequence that looks like something out of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. The fantasy element here is sometimes awkwardly introduced. In the film version of Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, similar fantasy sequences interrupt a realistic tale about a farm boy. A prominent precursor was Val Lewton’s child psychology-conscious The Curse of the Cat People its child star Ann Carter has a small but important part here. In 1948, few movies identified with a child’s point of view, mixing reality with fantasy. The Boy With Green Hair is an engagingly child-like parable. But everyone else demands that he shave it off. Isolated and confused, Peter experiences a fantastic encounter that reveals the meaning of his hair color, and why he needs to show it proudly. Gramp Fry defends Peter’s right to be different, but neighbors and authority figures insist that the offending hair be cut off. Girls stay away because his green hair might be ‘catching.’ The milkman worries that his customers might think his milk is responsible. Being different causes Peter to be ostracized by his fellow students. The hue practically glows, and it won’t wash out. He learns that his parents are dead, and that he is a war orphan himself his schoolmates poke fun at him.īut then Peter’s hair unaccountably turns bright green overnight. He reacts emotionally to his school’s promotion for aid to European war orphans, mainly a display of photos of war orphans. Rather humorless and suspicious, Peter likes his new teacher (Barbara Hale). He eventually ended up with Gramp Fry (Pat O’Brien), an ex- Vaudevillian and magician. When war trapped his parents overseas, Peter was shunted between aunts and uncles. Evans gently goads the bald boy into telling his story. Young runaway Peter Fry sits in a courtroom as the friendly Doctor Evans (Robert Ryan) tries to get him to open up. Its star is the 12 year-old Dean Stockwell, already a pro actor with ten films on his resume. Unlike Losey’s American noir thrillers, 1948’s The Boy With Green Hair takes the form of a children’s movie. Losey’s The Prowler is a direct attack on the capitalist system, in which a crooked cop murders to get a piece of the American Pie and ‘make money while he sleeps.’ But Losey’s first directing effort is a curious mix of fantasy and pro-tolerance lectures, wrapped in a parable commenting on the nation’s willingness to demonize citizens that dare to stray from conformist politics. His The Lawless is a scathingly accurate indictment of racial inequality and mob hysteria in a California farming town, a show that would now be slandered as a ‘hate America’ movie. Joseph Losey directed four more Hollywood pictures and then fled to England before he could be subpoena’ed by the HUAC. Losey himself said that he kept the word ‘Peace’ out of production meetings, because it had become synonymous with ‘Communist.’ The film Losey directed ended up a major liberal statement of the time - its pro-peace and anti-conformism message comes in the guise of a child psychology drama. His first feature film was produced just as the infamous officially began years of unofficial blacklisting clouds of political division were gathering. Joseph Losey began his career as a Hollywood leftist already associated with progressives like Charles Laughton. Produced by Stephen Ames (and Adrian Scott & Dore Schary, uncredited) Written by Ben Barzman, Alfred Lewis Levitt Nilsson, Dale Robertson, William Smith, Russ Tamblyn.Īrt Director: Albert S. Hinds, Regis Toomey, Charles Meredith, David Clarke, Billy Sheffield, John Calkins, Teddy Infuhr, Dwayne Hickman, Peter Brocco, Ann Carter, Anna Q. Starring: Robert Ryan, Pat O’Brien, Dean Stockwell, Barbara Hale, Richard Lyon, Walter Catlett, Samuel S. Available at MovieZyng / Street Date / 21.99 With Robert Ryan, Pat O’Brien and Barbara Hale co-star.ġ948 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. The odd ‘Franz Kafka-lite’ tale takes place in a Sesame Street– like small town, where childhood fantasy and atom age fears intersect. Young Dean Stockwell is excellent as the serious, puzzled boy whose hair turns bright green overnight, making him socially suspect. Joseph Losey’s first feature is an anomaly - a million-dollar Technicolor semi-fantasy about tolerance, anti-conformism and pacifist activism, made just as Hollywood was commencing a purge of liberal writers and directors.
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