Girls, Can We Summon Up As Much Hysteria As Nancy Kelly In "The Bad Seed??????????????"

                             Especially with the holiday season coming up, hysteria is just lying beneath the surface, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   But think of poor Nancy Kelly.  From the first moment she is on screen, one can sense hysteria underneath it all.  But it really explodes into full blown reality when the radio announcer says a child at the Fern Day School has drowned, she drops the glass she is holding, and runs screaming to Monica, played by Evelyn Varden.  What a moment, and I am sorry I could not capture that for you.

                            How many times have those out there felt like dropping the glass????????  And how many have????????????

                          Of course, Nancy/ Christine Penmark was dealing with something her upbringing and the 1950's had simply not prepared her for--raising a homicidal child!!!!!!!!!!!  My mother was simply not prepared for raising a theatrical child, and while she did get hysterical at times, she never rose to the level of Nancy Kelly.  Because I would never kill anyone.  Though I have thought about it.

                           I think "The Bad Seed" would make the perfect Mother's Day movie.  It is emblematic of what all mothers are fraught with, during the course of childrearing.  I still say my mother and I, when I was a child, could have played it on Broadway.

                           But no one generated as much hysteria as Nancy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                          I love when her father reassures her Rhoda is a perfectly fine and sound little girl, and she answers, But is she father, IS SHE????????????????????

                          It does not get more hysterical than that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                          And isn't it amazing how endless are the ways to write about "The Bad Seed?"