Follicle Phobia

  

 

A few days ago actor Dean Stockwell died at the age of 85. At this point he's probably best known for playing Al Calavicci, holographic sidekick to Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) in the late 1980s-early '90s time-travel TV series Quantum Leap. Another well-know role of his was Mafia chieftain Tony the Tiger in the 1988 film comedy Married to the Mob (I'm tempted to say he was g-r-r-reat in it, but I'll control myself.) He also was seen to good effect in the '80s movies Paris, Texas, To Live and Die in LA, and Blue Velvet. This was during his "comeback" period. Stockwell had originally been a child actor in the 1940s, seen to good effect back then in such popular and well-regarded films as Anchors Away, The Green Years, Gentleman's Agreement, and Song of the Thin Man. Since I'm a bit pressed on time--hey, it's the middle of the workweek as I write this--I want to focus on, and recommend, one particular film that he made back when he was just a kid, 1948's The Boy with Green Hair, directed by Joseph Losey.

Police pick up a bald-headed little boy, a runaway, and turn him over to a child psychiatrist played by Robert Ryan (then on the cusp of movie stardom.) This becomes the film's framing device as the boy, a war orphan named Peter Fry, tells his story in flashback. After being passed along a series of disinterested relatives, Peter ends up in a small town under the friendly guardianship of a retired actor named Gramp (Pat O'Brien.) There's finally some stability in young Peter's life, though the cares of the world is brought home to him when his school takes up the cause of war orphans, his classmates not realizing there's one in their midst. Peter's also troubled when he overhears adults talk about a new war that's on its way (as we know now, that war turned out to be cold.) One day after taking a bath, Peter is drying himself with a towel, looks up in the mirror, and to his surprise sees his hair is technicolor green! The town doctor has no explanation. The kids all make fun of him. That sounds bad, and it is, but at least they see a lighter side to the situation. Not so the adults, who are plainly freaked out about the whole thing. Peter makes the first of two attempts at running away from home. In a clearing in the woods he comes across some mystical war orphans that he had earlier seen on a poster. The orphans tell him his hair has turned green for a reason, to remind the world that war is especially bad for children. Rather than question the connection, Peter returns home, intent on being a child prophet. Well, anyone who knows the Bible, or has at least seen a Cecil B. DeMille movie, knows that prophets don't have the easiest time of it. The kids again make fun and bully him, while the townspeople bring intense pressure on Gramp to take the kid to a barber, which brings us back to the present day, as the bald-headed boy finishes his story. The child psychiatrist, quite understanding (and a tad amused) tells Peter that if you have something to say, you say it, no matter the consequences. Gramp turns up at the police station to take the boy home, but not before the psychiatrist advises him the youth's message is an important one, no matter what his hair color.

The Boy with Green Hair flopped at the box office, but by the 1960s had developed a cult following, which it still has today. It's not a perfect film. The antiwar message is a bit heavy-handed, and at times seems awkwardly shoehorned into the story being told. However, grown people treating an innocent little boy like the Frankenstein monster can still send shivers down the spine, as much as any movie that does have the Frankenstein monster in it. Though made in the late 1940s, The Boy with Green Hair eerily prophesizes the conformity that would come to characterize the 1950s, and the pushback against anything that threatened the status quo. And as we've seen recently in this Proud Boy era, the pushbacks and backlashes against anything that smacks of difference continues. Whether young Dean Stockwell was cognizant of the film's themes when he made it might seem unlikely, but as an adult he did drop out for a while to pursue the hippie lifestyle, and most that knew him after he dropped back in attests that he nevertheless remained very iconoclastic. So maybe the film did affect him. It's a stellar performance, especially coming from such a young actor.