Girls, Let's Talk About Nancy Kelly In "The Bad Seed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

                                       Lord knows "The Bad Seed" has been mentioned on here numerous times,  but a rather recent viewing has caused me to take a closer look at Nancy Kelly in it.

                                        Several years before Veronica Cartwright, in her 1961 performance as Rosalie Wells in "The Children's Hour," certified her position as Queen  Of  Hysterics for  the next forty  or  more  years, there was  Nancy Kelly, on stage--1954--and screen--1956--as Christine Penmark  in "The Bad Seed."  She won  a TONY Award for it  onstage,  and an Oscar nomination for  the film verssion.  But she never made a  career of it,  like Veronica.  Maybe she  didn't have  to.

                                          But,  anyway, girls,  she is  SO  much fun!  And,  darlings,  she is  SO  Fifties.  Even before things start, her dress and movements  suggest  such forthcoming Fifties anguish.    My mother herself  had blouses,  sweaters, and sheets with initials sewn on them--I am  telling you,  this was  SO  Fifties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          However, the  fun really begins at Monica's (Evelyn Varden) Fabulous Fifties Luncheon, when the drowning of the boy is announced on  the radio, and Nancy Kelly, on stage cue, drops the glass, and runs to Monica, calling her name out hysterically.  This is just the first in a series of histrionics that defy credulity, for never,  for a single scene,  is Nancy Kelly relaxed  in  this movie.

                                            How about  when she  pounds her uterus, as she  referes  to "that evil  woman,  my mother?"  Or  when she  screams out  to her father,  of Rhoda's  so-called  perfection, "IS she, father,  IS she?"  And when  she  realizes she  is a "Denker," and  chokes on the word?

                                              Nothing like this has ever  been seen like this, stage  or screen,  before  or  since.  No doubt, it never will  again.  And though her monlogue  over  Rhoda's supposedly dying body is tame,  compared  to  the  rest,  it wreaks of  anguish. Culminating  in that resounding  gun shot  aficionados  know  is  coming.

                                                   You have to hand  it  to  Nancy Kelly. She  and  Patty dance a marvelous dramatic  pas  de  deux  throughout  the  entire  film.

                                                      Now,  if only I could learn  to drop  my drinking  glass,  on cue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                     Oh, and  don't  forget drinking  with the  coffee  pot, the stunning  wardrobe, and that line they left  out from the play, "I suppose I could go about the dreary business of trying  to make  my face presentable...it happens every morning!"

                                        Don't I know it,  girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!