"Family Movie Guide"

Catherine C. Edwards, Editor

Parents Magazine, 1949

 

(The first paragraph is from the middle of the pictures mentioned.)

 

The Boy with Green Hair is the Parents' Magazine medal film for January, 1949.  It's star, twelve-year-old Dean Stockwell, has won the Parents' Magazine Annual Juvenile acting award for his extraordinarily sensitive performance.  Above, orphan Dean finds a home with Pat O'Brien.  At right, Dean discovers that his hair has turned green.  Below, Dean with Margaret O'Brien in The Secret Garden (MGM) and with Lionel Barrymore in Down To The Sea In Ships (20th C-Fox).

 

Without competition life is suppose to lack spice.  But when you are choosing the best juvenile actor of the year and one youngster stand out so impressively that there isn't even a second or third choice, let alone a competing first, we found it strangely pleasant and not dull at all. That's how it was with Dean Stockwell who has been given the Parents' Magazine Annual Award as the most talented juvenile actor of 1948.  Dean has won the award for his performance in The Boy with Green Hair, in which he appears in every scene and carries both the leading role and the narration.  But, had there been runners-up, Dean would have taken second place for his role in Gentlemen's Agreement and third place for his work in Deep Waters.  That's how fine an actor he is.

 

What kind of boy is he?  Well, directors say that he is wonderfully intelligent and casual and as easy to work with as an adult, which isn't always true of child stars.  And he is a natural actor who needs very little direction on which to build a characterization.

 

The news that Dean and Margaret O'Brien, who won the Parents' Magazine juvenile acting award in 1943, are to be teamed in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden is one of the really exciting film prospects for 1949.  The story, you will recall, is about two unhappy youngsters, the boy a victim of self-imposed invalidism, the girl a fretful neglected orphan, who finds health and joy in a walled garden.  Dean is also to make Down To The Sea In Ships where he will be working with veteran Lionel Barrymore.

 

The End

 

 

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