Bad Seed, The (1956) starring Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack & Eileen Heckart

Little Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) will do anything to attain material goods. However, would this sweet and proper young girl resort to murder to get what she wants? The Bad Seed (1956) sets this thriller in the suburbs and explores the age-old questions of the effects of nurture and nature on behavior and how they relate to the criminal mind (indeed, the methods and tone of voice that Rhoda uses to blackmail and scheme could fit into an old gangster film).

When a boy at Rhoda’s school mysteriously drowns and the “perfect little lady” begins to behave in tell-tale ways, Christine Penmark (Nancy Kelly) begins to suspect her daughter of murder. Should she turn her child over to the police? Should she handle it herself?

Eileen Heckart, as the drowned boy’s distraught mother Mrs. Daigle, practically steals the show with only two scenes. Mrs. Daigle has decided to drink away her sorrows and arrives at the Penmark’s upper middle class residence to talk to the little girl who she heard was the last to see her son. Class issues arrive with Mrs. Diagle, who at one time worked in a beauty parlor and was frowned upon as “that frumpy blonde” by her son’s teacher. In her constant inebriated state, Mrs. Daigle remains remarkably lucid. The overwrought mother finds clues, questions, investigates and speaks her mind when no one else seems able or willing to discover what really happened on the forbidden wharf.

Seed is based on Maxwell Anderson’s 1954 Broadway hit of the same name, and employs all , except one, of the play’s principal actors. The film received a few Oscar nominations, including a nod for the young Patty McCormack.

Despite the amusing broad acting which garners the Camp classification that this film gets today, Seed tackles serious questions of behavior, heredity, childrearing and class warfare that can resonate with people in any era. It is really the story of two families who each lose their only child: one to drowning and one to a chilling psychosis.

Release Date: September 12, 1956

Studio: Warner Brothers

Screenwriter: John Lee Mahin

Director: Mervyn LeRoy.

Cast: Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones, Eileen Heckart, Evelyn Varden