Tony Maietta:
 Hello, I'm film historian Tony Maietta

Brad Shreve:
 And I'm Brad Shreve, who's just a guy who likes movies. 

Tony Maietta:
 We discuss movies and television from Hollywood's golden age. We go behind the scenes and share our opinions too. 

Brad Shreve:
 And, of course, being the average guy, my opinions are the ones that matter,

Tony Maietta: 
 as does your self-delusion. Welcome to Going Hollywood. 

Brad Shreve:
Come on, Tony, it's time to record. Let's go.

Tony Maietta:
Brad, have you got anything to drink in the house? Any little thing will do. I prefer bourbon, but any little thing will do.

Brad Shreve:
Well, if I was a middle-aged mongoloid from Memphis, I never thought he would have showed up drunk.

Tony Maietta:
I think I was playing more to the second row of the balcony than Eileen Hecker does. Any little thing will do. I prefer bourbon, but anyway. Oh God, I love this movie. Brad, I can't believe. Well, I can believe you wanted to do the Bad Seed, but I just. I think it's so funny that we're talking about the Bad Seed to kick off our October ish scare air quotes. Scary Movie month.

Brad Shreve:
Yes. And let you folks know we are doing a Halloween month, but not your traditional. You won't see old Universal monsters or Creature from the Black Lagoon or the Exorcist. We have a different month and as you can see, the Bad Seed is one of them. We're going to launch off with that.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, we're taking, we're taking scary, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively this month. The way I like to. I like it best.

Brad Shreve:
And you know what I love about this movie is I was absolutely shocked that I remembered absolutely nothing, nothing. And I saw it not that long ago, so it was like watching it all over again and was just as deliciously terrible as it has been in the past. I loved every second of this bad, bad film.

Tony Maietta:
I am not surprised at all. Because you never remember any. I do. You. You never remember anything that you. We talk about. It's so funny. I'm like, I forgot this movie completely.

Tony Maietta:
I'm like really? The whole thing. You did know that she was a psychopath, right?

Brad Shreve:
I knew that she was a psychopath. I actually thought there were more people murdered and beyond that, I. I didn't remember the ending. Yeah, I know there's plenty to talk about with. Regarding all that and the, you know, the troubles they had trying to get the, get the play on the. On the screen and. Yeah, you know, it's really funny. I remember.

Brad Shreve:
I remember the dumbest things and I remember stuff from like when I was knee high to a boll weevil and. But I can't remember things that are more current. I don' what it is.

Tony Maietta:
All I can say is, oh, Rhoda. But before the iconic Ms. Morgenstern, there was another Rhoda who captured the public's imagination and not a self deprecating, humorous Jewish girl from New York. I'm speaking of the murderous nine year old psychopath named Rhoda Penmark from our movie of today, the Bad Seed from Warner Brothers in 1956.

Brad Shreve:
One thing that really hit me when I was watching this movie, I'm like, I would think after this film that Rhoda would be a name that kind of is off limits. Like, not many people name their kid Damien anymore. There are some, but. So I kept thinking, why did they name her Rhoda?

Tony Maietta:
But anyway, Valerie Harper grabbed it and took it back, brought it back into. Back from the brink.

Brad Shreve:
I'm glad Rhoda never put Mary into a basement and lit her on fire. So.

Tony Maietta:
No, but you know who that was. You realize who that was, right? Henry Jones.

Brad Shreve:
Yes.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, he was Phyllis's. On the TV show Phyllis. He played Phyllis's father-in-law, kind of Lars's mother's second husband, Henry. Anyway, we're getting way into the wheelchair, way into the weeds. Yes, Henry Jones. Anyway. Yes, the Bad Seed. I love the fact that you want to do this movie because I love this movie.

Tony Maietta:
I just. It just boggles my mind. I just watch this movie and I shake my head and I just go, mervyn Leroy, what the hell were you thinking? I just, it's such a mystery to me why he made this movie this way. It's just, you know, his other films aren't. Aren't like this. They're not. We're basically watching. When we watch the Bad Seed, we are literally watching a film to play.

Tony Maietta:
Everything about this movie is the play, including the performances, as I said, Eileen Heckart, God knows, Nancy Kelly playing to the back row of the balcony. Even though they're in a movie. And I just don't know what he was thinking. It's like his other films that he makes, which are based on plays like Gypsy. He did Gypsy, like no Time for Sergeants. They're not like this. But this is literally like you're sitting down in the theater and watching a play.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah, I had to deep dive into some of this because it just didn't make sense to me because Evelyn Varden was considered great in her acting. I'm like, oh my God, this woman's awful. The same thing with Henry Jones. And then when I looked and found out that they were actually comic relief in the play, but they played it serious. In the movie, I'm like, well, there's part of the problem.

Tony Maietta:
Well, I mean, you always play Comic Relief seriously. But I think that. No, I think the problem is, Brad, I don't think they're giving bad performances. They're giving theater performances. Yes, they're giving theater performances in a movie. And it's very, very difficult. The subtlety is gone. Now, I don't think we're gonna disagree too much about this.

Tony Maietta:
I think we both think it's a fun, campy movie. But it's almost like Mervyn Leroy intended that. So I think that's a. To me, that's a big mystery, because I don't think these are bad performances. I think they're theatrical performances in this movie. Eileen Heckart. I adore Eileen Heckart. God bless her.

Tony Maietta:
I love me Eileen Heckart. She was a wonderful actress, and she is. It's interesting because she's walking the fine line between comic and seriousness. Her comedy is rooted in reality. This is a woman whose son, her only child just died. And she's making us laugh, but not. We're not laughing at her. We're kind of laughing with her.

Tony Maietta:
It's very strange. It's very strange. So I'm interested that we'll talk about this. To get into this and talk about exactly what the fuck Mervyn leroy was doing when he directed this film.

Brad Shreve:
You know, and speaking of Eileen Eckhart, I've got to talk about Frank Caddy for a minute, who, you know, obviously from Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and Beverly Hill Bellies had such a great role, and he was so wooden. I mean, they only gave him a few lines, and his role was wooden. It wasn't his fault. But I'm like, this guy's lucky he had a job after this. It was just, you know, his whole job was just to stand there silently watching her and. And mumble a few lines. It just.

Tony Maietta:
It. No, it's crazy. It's crazy. They're all. Yeah, it's just such a strange way. Wonderful film. It's truly like you fell through the looking glass, and you're just like, where the hell did I land? Nancy Kelly, who plays Christine Penmark. Let's tell them a little bit about what.

Tony Maietta:
Maybe we should say what the Bad Seed is about, because maybe some people have no idea what it is we've been jabbering on about for the past 10 minutes. Do you want to tell them a little bit about what the Bad Seed is about?

Brad Shreve:
Well, sure. I wish I looked up the IMDb explanation. I haven't been doing that lately, but I can tell pretty easily it is about young lady who is sweet as sugar and loves to have a basket of kisses and. But there just doesn't seem something right about this young lady. And her mother is like, question it. And in the end she turns out to be a murderous little monster who. Who kills a little boy for a medal that she thought she should win and then kills hired hand for.

Tony Maietta:
Well, she's a psychopath, basically.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah, she's a psychopath. She feels. Story of a psychopath and she feels absolutely nothing. Nothing.

Tony Maietta:
That's a psychopath.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah, she's.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, it's basically the story of a mother's realization that her daughter is a murderer. A relentlessly, unapologetically psychopathic murderer. And that is some pretty tough subject matter. And as you can imagine. Should I go into the background about it already now just to get us up to date about it or what do you think?

Brad Shreve:
Yes. Let me just add that the reason she is called the Bad Seed is because the mother finds out that her mother, the grandmother, because the mother was adopted. And she learns in the process of this was it two hour film? I really expected it to be less than 90 minutes. I was surprised how long it was. She learns that her mother basically the. The nasty little girl's grandmother was also a serial killer. So that's why she is a bad seed. She inherited this.

Brad Shreve:
I guess it skips generations.

Tony Maietta:
It's. Well, it's. Yeah, it's interesting because. Although somebody said, well, it doesn't skip a generation because of what happens in the end. But that's a different kind of killing. It is. It is a long movie. And I, you know, I've never.

Tony Maietta:
I have seen theatrical productions of the Bad Seed, but they've all been parodies. I don't know that this play can be presented on stage anymore. Straight. I think everybody's always going to laugh because of this movie and because of the connotations that come with it. But I don't believe Mervyn leroy cut a scene. I mean, it is a long movie because I think he filmed every damn scene that's in the play. And the play is based on a book. The book, 1954 book Horror novel by William March called the Bad Seed.

Tony Maietta:
And it was nominated for a 1955 National Book Award for Fiction. So I can imagine it's a pretty terrifying book. I might like to read it sometime. It seems kind of interesting. But that very same year it was turned into a play. And the play opened in 1954. And it ran for 334 performances. And the play, the adaption, was written by Maxwell Anderson, who is a very heavy writer.

Tony Maietta:
He sometimes writes verse. I mean, he's a very. He wrote Elizabeth the Queen. I mean, this was. This. He also wrote a play called what Price Glory? So he's a very serious, very accomplished writer. And the play. What's interesting about the play is that the play had.

Tony Maietta:
Basically, the major characters in this movie were all in the play. We're talking about Nancy Kelly, we're talking about Patty McCormick. We are talking about Eileen Heckert, Henry Jones, Evelyn Varden. They all reprise their roles because the play was on the heels of. I'm sorry, the film was on the heels of the play so fast, you know, and good for Patty McCormick, because if it had been a couple of years later, she would have been too old to play this part.

Brad Shreve:
Mm.

Tony Maietta:
So do we. Do we want to talk a little bit about. I want to talk about the production of the play and the problems it ran. It ran into with, you know, with our friends at the Production Code Administration. Because you can imagine this is 1956, and this is a movie about a murderous child. So what do you think that meant?

Brad Shreve:
And it's the Production Code that really is the catalyst for making this film as campy as it is.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
Or much of it, especially the ending.

Tony Maietta:
I think. You know, I think that that was maybe something Mervyn leroy had in mind. I think he. I think he kind of. This is a theory. This is my theory, is that he made it this way to kind of remove the audience 1 degree from the story, to make it more palatable. That makes sense. Particularly 1956 audiences and to get it past the Production Code.

Tony Maietta:
Because if you're saying this is a play, then you're already removing it one degree from reality.

Tony Maietta:
So that's.

Tony Maietta:
That's my theory.

Tony Maietta:
I don't know if it's true, but that's what I'm saying. So after the success of the book, Jeffrey Sherlock, who was the head of the Production Code administration at this time, sent a letter to all the studios, said, you will not make this into a movie. There ain't no way this is gonna get. This is gonna happen. There's just no way. He wrote to all of them, told them this. And Mervyn leroy, who we talked about briefly way back last year, he was the producer of the wizard of Oz. He was kind of the second coming at MGM after Thalberg died.

Tony Maietta:
They thought Mervyn leroy, because he had been a big, big success at Warner Brothers as a director. Anyway, he said he had a way to do this and he was going to do it. So he presented his approach to the Production Code Administration, and they agreed. They said, all right, if you make this film this way, the way you're presenting it to us, you can do it. Now, I don't want to go into the way he presented it, because I think we're going to talk about that in this podcast. But that's how the film was able. That's how they were able to film this basically unfilmable property, was to make these changes, which we're going to talk about, and also to put an adults only warning on the film's advertisements. Don't tell people the shocking end of the.

Tony Maietta:
Of this story. So the film got approved and it was made.

Brad Shreve:
And what's funny is that, you know, they were told, don't make this movie yet. Warner Brothers was in a bidding war for this film and paid, what, $300,000. Which I couldn't figure out why this movie had a $1 million budget, because 90% of this film takes place in one set. It's just like a play. But then when I learned that 300,000 was just to get the rights to this film, it made a little more sense.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, it was a big hit. I mean, it was a talk of Broadway. Patsy Kelly won a Patsy Kelly. I call her Patsy Kelly. Nancy Kelly. Patsy Kelly's from Rosemary's Baby. Sorry. Classic Hollywood brain bump.

Tony Maietta:
Nancy Kelly won a Tony Award for On Broadway. And so they brought back the entire cast. And like I said, thank God, Patty McCormick. It was really fast because she didn't grow too old for it. Although kind of like Jan Hadzlick in Annie Mame, I feel like she's. I mean, she's brilliant. Don't get me wrong. I can't imagine anybody else but Patty McCormick in this, but I think she's just a little too old.

Tony Maietta:
I think it'd be so much more frightening if she was a little younger. But anyway, that's neither here nor there, that supposition. And as Elaine Stritch said, that supposition. Fuck it. So let's talk.

Brad Shreve:
Well, you know, it's like. It's like in the movies when they show a newborn baby that looks like it's two years old. What are you gonna.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And Patty McCormick. I mean, how can you top this performance? It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. So what are we gonna talk about, Brad? We told the story about what happened. I would like to talk about your reaction to this, since you don't remember seeing it and you said you laughed and you had a great old time. So this is a story about a child who's a murderer.

Tony Maietta:
Why do you think, what is it about it that makes it funny to you? I think that's what we need to talk about with the Bad Seed. What is it that makes it funny?

Brad Shreve:
Well, you know, like so many films like this, such as Mommy Dearest and Valley of the Dolls, etc, etc, it's so over the top. The lines, the presentation. I remember the story being silly. I didn't remember the, you know, and you pointed out it wasn't the actor's fault, it was the script and the direction. But I didn't remember how absurd everybody was. It was, it was like they were all playing it for laps, but playing it seriously for laughs.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
Which we know is the. Is the best kind of humor.

Tony Maietta:
It is. But you know, here's the thing. Those two movies you mentioned, Mommy Dearest and Valley of the Dolls, they were not intentionally funny. The filmmakers did not set out to say this is going to be funny. They were very serious when they made these films. It's just that for one reason or another, some of something went off the rails in these films and they. We look at them funny. I don't think that's the way with the Bad Seed.

Tony Maietta:
There are very funny moments in this play. There are some very funny lines. Besides that, though, I really feel like that was Mervyn leroy's intent to make this almost a funny horror film. This is the way I'm. I'm looking at. I'm thinking, I can't think of any other way this is being made, presented this way.

Brad Shreve:
And I think you're probably right. I like to believe that wasn't the case because it's more fun, of course, that this was a train wreck. But no, I think you're probably right. It seems it makes more sense that that was the case. He said, I'm just gonna have fun with this.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. Tina, Bring Me the Axe was not intended to be a funny line. Okay. It was intended to be a very serious, horrifying line. But, but why would I tell you and get killed? Or, you know, well, ain't we swank. I think, really, I think there's so much humor in this. It's one of the brilliant things that happen in this film and it's one of the things that makes this film brilliant to me. And yes, it is.

Tony Maietta:
It's that four letter word that we always are throwing around all the time that nobody really knows what it is until you see it. I'm not saying it's not porn. It's camp. This film is camp with a Camp with a capital C. And not only that, it's gay camp. The gays love. Well, most gays of a certain age, I guess. I don't know about the young kids love this movie.

Tony Maietta:
I tell you, I saw. As I said, I've seen parodies of this in. Rhoda, as you can imagine, is always played by a big drag queen with the pigtails. I mean, in every. Every line is milked for its utmost dramatic intent. Even more than it is in this movie, if you can imagine, they're more over the top than Nancy Kelly in this movie.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. You know, Patty McCormick, who played Rhoda, I believe she's in her 80s now. One thing I really regret. This was probably. This was decades ago. They played this movie at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.

Tony Maietta:
Yes, I know.

Brad Shreve:
I heard she was there, and I didn't make it. I lived about 80 miles outside of San Francisco at the time. And I was so upset. I so wanted to see it, and I couldn't make it. And I would have given anything to see what she had to say and watch that movie with that. That crowd of gays.

Tony Maietta:
You know, it's funny. Patty McCormick, God bless her, yes. Still alive. She very much like Patty Duke, really distanced herself, as Patty Duke distanced herself from Valley of the Dolls and then later embraced it at the Castro Theater, by the way. P.S. patty McCormick, the same thing. She distanced herself from this for a very long time until she realized the perverse joy this film and her performance gave to people. And then she embraced it, you know, God love her.

Tony Maietta:
And she embraces it to this, to this day. It's what's so funny. If only Faye Dunaway could get that stick out of her butt and realize it with Mommie Dearest, she'd have a whole new career. She would just be that. But I think the reason that this movie is camp, camp, camp with a capital C and gay camp is. Is because. And I heard Charles Bush say this, that she's just Rhoda, the character of Rhoda, she's just so hard. She's like a gangster in pigtails.

Tony Maietta:
She's like Jimmy Cagney in Pig. I mean, she plays it that way. The thing she says when she's talking to Leroy, give me back my shoes. And she has that finger pointed at him. It's like, Jimmy Cagney. I mean, it's hysterical. You're like, this is a little gangster. If she could pull out a gun and shoot, she will.

Tony Maietta:
And that's why you always have the big drag queens playing Rhoda, you know, and Nancy Kelly. Nancy Kelly's so theatrical, so stylized. She was a grand dame of theater. And you. And you see in her acting, it's not naturalism, it's studied naturalism. It's someone saying, look how natural I am. Don't you believe how real I am? I mean, she has some moments where. There's this one moment where she realizes that Rhoda is doing this.

Tony Maietta:
And she takes her fist. I don't know if you remember this. And she starts beating her stomach. And, like, in horror, like she's beating her ovaries. This came out of me. I mean, she's so. Lady Macbeth has nothing on Christine Penmark in this movie. So funny.

Brad Shreve:
And you know something else that made me laugh a lot was Rhoda is so phony and so transparent in her phoniness. And it's like nobody notices. It's like Evelyn Varden, Monica Breedlove. Her character just thinks Rhoda is the most lovely, wonderful child. So intelligent. And so, you know, she goes on and on and on. I'm like, oh, come on, woman. You.

Brad Shreve:
You seem intelligent in every other way. Or at least, heck, just how stupid are you?

Tony Maietta:
Nobody gets that.

Brad Shreve:
How kind are you?

Tony Maietta:
No, nobody gets that. And, you know, you really hope that. You know, at the end of the movie when Rhoda talks about the parakeets and how Monica promised her the parakeet, how long do they live? Oh, they don't live as long as people. And then she says that she's going to go sunbathing on the roof with Monica. You're like, oh, good. That woman cannot fall off that roof fast.

Brad Shreve:
I know. I wish the movie was 15 minutes longer just for that reason. I did have her have that happen. And then Rhoda run to the. Run to the doc after that. So.

Tony Maietta:
So in the plot, what happens is, is that Rhoda. There's a. There's. They're having a school picnic, and Claude Daigle, one of Rhoda's school friends. Friends, air quotes. Has won the penmanship medal, which Rhoda.

Brad Shreve:
A very important character who we never see.

Tony Maietta:
We never see. We never see. But Rhoda deserved that penship medal because she clearly has the best penmanship. But she didn't get it. And then after the picnic, we hear on the radio, Claude ends up dead, floating in the lake. And that's when it all begins to unwind for poor Christine Denmark. And the fabulous Eileen Heckert plays Hortense Daigle, who is Claude's mother. And she has two.

Tony Maietta:
This is such a play. She has a scene in the first act and she has a scene in the second act. And in both scenes she's drunk off her ass. And she comes in, she's distressed, she's distraught. She's lost her only child and she's been drinking. I may be a little drunk. Excuse me. But she wants to talk to Rhoda because she wants to know, where is that medal? And how did Claude get that peculiar crescent shaped mark on his forehead? But she doesn't get to see Rhoda until the very end.

Tony Maietta:
And it's so funny because Eileen Heckart, she's. As I said, there are such moments of such comedy, but the comedy is rooted in this drama, in this real. In this tragedy of her son. Because we realize this is a woman who's lost her son and yet we laugh at her. And it's the most disconcerting kind of a thing when you realize what's really going on in the plot of this story and the fact that we're laughing at her. But that's. That's part of the problem of this. I don't know if it's a problem, but that's part of the juice of this movie is the fact that we're laughing at these very interesting situations, which should be tragic, but for some reason we're laughing at because of how they're presented.

Tony Maietta:
Right.

Brad Shreve:
Here's the other thing about Heckart that, like you, I think she's wonderful. I think she's one of the best character actresses that have been out there. She's always fun to watch. But like many actors, it is really hard to play drunk. And to me, she was awful at it, which made everything she did and say even more ridiculous.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, I don't. Yeah, well, it's hard. Yeah. She's a very. So I wonder, though. Though I was gonna say she's a very stereotypical drunk, but maybe she set the pattern. She didn't. Obviously.

Tony Maietta:
There'd been a lot of drunks before that. An incredibly hard thing to do. I'm not gonna be as harsh with you because she is giving a theater performance. She's giving a theater performance. Thank you, Mervyn Leroy. She is giving a theater performance in a film. If. If she was directed differently and directed to be a real drunk, I have no doubt this is a brilliant actress.

Tony Maietta:
She's an Oscar winner. She won an Oscar for Butterflies are free in 1972. There's something that's just inherently funny in Heckert. She brings it to every role. Like we say all the time, actors bring their own qualities to whatever role they play, whether they're playing a grieving mother or whether they're playing Mary Richards Aunt Florida Flow on the Mary Tyler Moore show, which she did. And Lou Grant, Eileen Heckart brings that to the table. So I don't know. I feel like.

Tony Maietta:
I feel like any other actress would have been so much worse because Heckert dips into the la. Does humor, and she dips into the tragedy almost sometimes at the same time. And you're like, what? I just laughed and now I don't know. It's an incredible performance giving, given the constriction that she had. I don't find anything interesting about Nancy Kelly's performance. I'm sorry, I don't. She's just over the top, period, in her husky voice, beating her ovaries, slapping her hand on the table. How about when she takes that shoe? When she finally discovers the Rhoda's trying to burn the shoes.

Tony Maietta:
Give me my shoes. She burns the shoes and she smashes that shoe on the table until it. She's so over the top, it's just too much.

Brad Shreve:
And that is what I found interesting about her, is that she just was so ridiculous that I enjoyed her on the screen. But, yeah, she wasn't all that interesting otherwise.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
I have to sidetrack us for just a second because this is a piece of trivia I love.

Tony Maietta:
Okay.

Brad Shreve:
Eileen Eckhart, other than Ed Asner himself, is. Lou Grant is the only Mary Tyler Moore character that made the transition from the Mary Tyler Moore show to Lou Grant playing Mary's aunt.

Tony Maietta:
Isn't that funny based on Mary Tyler Moore's real aunt, by the way, I think we talked about that a bit during one of our Mary Tyler Moore episodes. We talked about that. Yeah. No, she's brilliant. Brilliant. What did you think of the actor playing Colonel Kenneth Penmark? One William Hopper.

Brad Shreve:
First of all, I gotta ask, is. Is he related to Dennis Hopper?

Tony Maietta:
No, he's related to another Hopper, though.

Brad Shreve:
Oh. Oh.

Tony Maietta:
Hedda Hopper is Hedda Hopper's son. Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I didn't know that. I kind of was, like, debating if he was Dennis, and I thought he has a touch of Dennis Hopper, but not a lot. So I was just tossing that out there. Never thought about Hedda Hopper, and he was okay. I mean, he just Was kind of a wooden character. There wasn't much to his character, but he wasn't given much to do, you know?

Tony Maietta:
No, I know, exactly. It's a pretty thankless role. It's a pretty thankless role. And he was a handsome guy. He was a very handsome guy. He did a lot of tv. But I mean, he's so deadpan. He's another one who's fooled by, what would you give me for a basket full of kisses? Well, I think I'd have to give you a basket full of hugs.

Tony Maietta:
And you're just like, oh, my God, can't you see this girl's a psychopath?

Brad Shreve:
And I was disturbed when she hugged him and talked about how big and strong he was. And then just like, oh, not even get into that.

Tony Maietta:
Let's not even get into that kind of thing. Oy vey. It's just so funny, you know, so. So this film, some of the funnier things in this film. And as I said, I saw this. I've seen a couple productions of this film as a play and a couple of the productions, like they did with Valley of the Dolls, they just basically read the script, the film script, and they're reading it straight. But because it's so ridiculous, it gets huge laughs. Also because we're thinking about the movie and Patty McCormick said that Mervyn Leroy told them he wanted their theatrical performances.

Tony Maietta:
It's not a question of him being a bad director, clearly. I just mentioned some films he directed that were not bad films. He wanted this. That's why I'm saying, Marvin Merlot, what the hell were you thinking? He wanted this. He wanted them to take their stage performances and put them in front of a camera and actually build on them. And it's. It's kind of interesting because, as I said, I think it might be a way that he thought he was going to get this past the production Code and was going, well, he did get it past the production code. Get it more palatable to audiences if they put this removed at once and made it so theatrical that we just didn't take it seriously.

Tony Maietta:
Which unfortunately kind of damages the theme of the book and the theme of the play. But I also love the psychological discussions in this and Freud. I'm like, you're sitting here talking about psychology and you have a social. A psychopath little girl right down the hall playing whatever that damn song is. She's always playing on the piano, and it totally goes over their head. But I love the whole discussions of Freud and psychology because. And you think about this this was 56, 57, you know, not long after the Kinsey report in 48 and 53. So, I mean.

Tony Maietta:
And Freud was big. I mean, he was just really beginning to make a mark in America in the 50s. So the whole idea of this psychological discussion they're having and the whole idea of what a bad seed could be, because I don't know if you knew this, Brad, but in that era, we kind of think of nature versus nurture now. And we know because there have been chromosomes discovered that show that some things are genetic. Hello, being gay, genetic. So it's like some things in life are genetic. It's not the atmosphere you're born in. But in this time, the idea of there being a bad seed of a genetic thing being passed down through the blood or passed down through a family was not accepted.

Tony Maietta:
It was not the way we think of it today, which is. And they talk about this in the movie. That can't happen. That can't happen. It's nurture, not nature. And, hello, that's been misproven.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. I mean, it tends to be true of personality and mental illness in general that the understanding that so much of that is hereditary. You know, I have bipolar disorder, and bipolar disorder is considered hereditary now, or expected to be, I guess we should say, you know, and that's. That's the norm now. But that was not acceptable at the time. You know, it just. You were a bad person. That's just plain and simple.

Brad Shreve:
And there's no other way around that. You know, I hate to say this to those that love Psycho, because I absolutely love Psycho. But psychiatrists have a real issue with the movie Psycho. And the psychiatric community has real issues with this film as well. Not that the nature versus nurture debate isn't justified, but it is a little bit simplistic in this film, and that's in it. But it did give the public interest in the whole concept, which is good.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, well, it was probably one of the first, if not the first time this idea was presented. So we're looking at it, you know, a scrim of 70 years. And it just looks. But I mean, it looks silly 60 years ago, too. I think it looks silly 50 years ago. I think in the 70s, people were like, what is this mess? That scene?

Brad Shreve:
But it was also done better in Trading Places.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, but, you know, despite the fact that we're sitting here saying this, you know, this film, I don't want to get into the stats yet because there's a lot more I want to say about the movie. But, you know, this film did get three Academy Award nominations, including. Can't believe that Nancy Kelly got an Oscar nomination as best actress, which you're just like, what? And of course, I'm sorry, it got four. It got best actress. It got two supporting. One for Heckart, I think well deserved.

Tony Maietta:
And one for Patty McCormick on the fence. And one for best cinematography. Harold Rossin. Beautiful cinematics. Beautiful cinematography by Harold Rossin. This play is beautifully shot. This play. See, I called it a play because it's filmed like a play.

Tony Maietta:
All these big. I mean, everything is in long shot. There are. I don't think there are any close ups. I don't remember maybe one or two. Nothing. There's a very few close ups. All long shots, all long scenes.

Tony Maietta:
Because it's film like a play. I'm gonna beat that in to death. And it also has a beautiful Alex North, a very sparse, but a beautiful Alex north score. Alex north also scored Streetcar Named Desire, Virginia Woolf, Cleopatra. So there were some definite. This film has some pedigree, even though. Even though it is a. We're sitting here laughing about it and.

Brad Shreve:
Making fun of it and, you know, nothing was more. The whole film, you could tell, was. Was a play. But nothing was clearer to me than Henry Jones's character, Leroy Jessup. The j.

Tony Maietta:
Tell us about Leroy. Who was Leroy?

Brad Shreve:
Leroy is one of the. He may be the most over the top character. And I was happy when I read that he was comic relief in the. The. In the play because he was so ridiculous in this movie. Just this sneering, taunting. Rhoda, you. You're bad seed.

Brad Shreve:
You know, that kind of.

Tony Maietta:
You know, you just know. He's kind of like Ernest T. Bass in the end.

Brad Shreve:
Yes.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, the character, like, it's like an Ernest T. Bass kind of. That kind of like remedial, like a lot smarter than you think he is. Comes off as kind of a buffoon, but it's. It's. Yeah, it's kind of like a.

Brad Shreve:
But his murder. When we see Rhoda go downstairs with the matches and we know that he's been sleeping on straw, so you pretty much know what's gonna happen.

Tony Maietta:
Excelsior. He's been sleeping on the Excelsior.

Brad Shreve:
Excelsior, yes. And I had forgotten been called. I remember years ago it was called Excelsior, and I'd forgotten. And at first I was confused and I'm like, ah, I do remember that now. But, you know, they did show the guys trying to open the door to the cellar, but for the most Part like, after they. You saw the guys banging on the cellar. All you saw then was Nancy Kelly looking out and just saying, you hear him screaming. And you just watch her face.

Brad Shreve:
And then she goes, oh, he stopped moving. And you get with. So play like, because we didn't see him. I mean, today, that would have been a very grotesque film. It would have been very. It would hurt this film, or maybe it would have helped this film, depending on how you want to look at. Was priceless to me because it was. Let's not show.

Brad Shreve:
Let's just have her tell us what's happening. This man's burned to death and dying, and we're just watching her face as she's distraught.

Tony Maietta:
What's the play?

Brad Shreve:
Evelyn Arden is just like, oh, oh, what is best will happen? Or I don't know what her words were, but something of that nature.

Tony Maietta:
It's the play. I think Patty McCormick. Patty McCormick said in the play, actually, Nancy Kelly's back was to the audience, but she's still emoting. Let's just say it right now. Nancy Kelly doesn't chew the scenery. She masticates it. She rolls it around in her mouth. She swallows it, she regurgitates it, and then she eats it again.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, this woman is unbelievable in this scene. And when that happens, when Leroy's been taunted, first of all, hello, stupid. If you think she's a murderer, why are you taunting her? He's been taunting Rhoda and taunting Rhoda, and they have the funniest, funniest exchanges because she does not take his shit. There is no screen with Leroy. She is little James Cagney with Leroy, she will just let him have it. And he has been taunting her and taunting her. And when he trips her up, no, he hits the nerve with when he talks about her shoes, because he says he has her shoes. And that sets her off.

Tony Maietta:
So bye, bye, Leroy. Yes. He's trapped in the basement. And she grabs some matches when she's out to get a popsicle and she lights it on fire. And that's when it finally occurs to Christine Penmark. I got to do something about this kid. This kid keeps killing people. And then I love when she starts asking her about some people, people from the past, like that kindly old Mrs.

Tony Maietta:
Post who met a tragic end by slipping on ice.

Brad Shreve:
That is one of the biggest laughs that I had because there was so much exposition. She described, like, as if the girl wasn't there when it happened. She described every detail of what happened, that woman and how she died. So that we would understand. And it was ridiculous.

Tony Maietta:
It's. It's the play. It's giving us this exposition. You know, it's crazy.

Brad Shreve:
Nobody talks that way.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, she gives a long, long speech about it, and I'm not going to do the speech, but it's crazy. And it's because she had. Her name was Mrs. Post, Clara Post had. She promised Rhoda her trinket when she died. So Rhoda's like, all right, I'll make that happen sooner. I want that trinket. And that's what it is.

Tony Maietta:
She didn't slip on the ice. Rhoda slipped on the ice and, oh, fell against Mrs. Post. Oh, so she met the same end as Claude Daigle when wrote, if Rhoda wants something, she's gonna get it. And that's what is so hysterically funny about it. You know, when we're talking about the gay thing here, I thought this was really interesting, and I want to get your opinion on it. Something else that Charles Bush said about Rhoda and why this film is such a gay, iconic camp film is because. Other than the fact, also because she's hard and she's like a.

Tony Maietta:
She's like Jimmy Cagney in Pigtails is that Rhoda is an outsider. Rhoda is the air quotes other. But Rhoda is not a victim. You don't mess with Rhoda Penmark. You don't. She don't take shit from anybody. And one of the reasons why gay men respond to Rhoda, to the character of Rhoda, is because of that. Because she's an outsider, but she's not a victim.

Tony Maietta:
Nobody's going to bully Rhoda Penmark because she'll smack you upside the head with her tap shoe. No, she doesn't take shit from anybody. And I really. I kind of like that analogy. I thought that is interesting because we're always trying to figure out what it is about a certain performer, a certain film that gay people respond to. And I think that's kind of an interesting take. What do you think about that?

Brad Shreve:
You know, I never thought about it, but as you're talking about that, I'm also thinking about the fact that Rhoda lives a lie, and she has to live a lie, and she learns to do it well.

Tony Maietta:
She fools everybody.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. So all part of that whole same thing.

Tony Maietta:
Interesting, interesting.

Brad Shreve:
You might be onto something there. I don't know. I'd have to give it thought. But you might be on the right.

Tony Maietta:
Path, and I like that.

Brad Shreve:
The other thing about the gay, the gay appeal is the women centered drama. I mean, we've seen, of course, Golden Girls was not a drama, but whatever it is, gay men love when women are together.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. And there's no men getting in the way. Except for a handsome man once in a while. Like at Hopper, son, there he is. Okay, fine. He can be in. He can be in.

Brad Shreve:
I think that's because women, when they're together, and this is stereotype, I could be totally off here. They tend to talk very openly, which is what gay men do. And I remember watching this guy, he was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but he was talking to his friends and he's like waving his arms. He's like, I don't understand how straight men can do it because everything's behind him, you know, and they're like, nothing is wrong here. Everything's fine. We don't talk about what's going on. And. And maybe that's part of the appeal.

Brad Shreve:
I don't know. That's kind of a guess.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, it's. Well, you know, it's interesting. It's interesting. It's up for debate. I don't know. I just find it really fascinating that gay men, including myself, you know, really like this movie, find it fun, even though it is what it's about. And I'm looking at these things. I look at this now, watching it for this podcast and seeing it and seeing how it was adapted into this film and the fact that so much of this stuff was intentional.

Tony Maietta:
Some of the, you know, the fact that Mervyn leroy told them to do this. That wonderful scene where Rhoda leaves to go upstairs and she flips her pony, her pigtail back, and the way Patty McCormick scowls and the camera comes in on her face and she's scowling. It's like a freeze frame. It's so funny. So you're like, this has to be on purpose. This has to be on purpose. It's just no other explanation for it.

Brad Shreve:
One last thing I want to say about the whole gay icon thing is, you know, reminds me of being in a bar one night and they were playing Mommy Dearest. They weren't playing all of Mommy Dearest. All they were playing was on repeat.

Tony Maietta:
The slapping.

Brad Shreve:
Yes, the slapping. Over and over and over again. And everybody was laughing hysterically. It was. My stomach hurt, I was laughing so hard. And I thought, would this be as funny at a more traditional straight bar, for lack of better word? I don't know if it would have been.

Tony Maietta:
They never play It. Well, it's. It's. But here's the thing. So in that same scene, and I don't want to go off on a mommy tangent dearest, but I'm on my tangent dearest. On a mommy dearest tangent. But in that scene, that same scene when Faye Dunaway attacks Diana Scarwood and they're wrestling on the floor, why do we see her underwear? That's what makes it camp. That.

Tony Maietta:
That's what makes it funny. She's being strangled by her mother and we're laughing because we can see her little white under. It's just stupid. It's like. Did the director not see that? Now I think Frank Perry, I'm not gonna go to Mommy dearest. I'm not gonna. We'll do that some other time.

Brad Shreve:
Maybe we'll do that another time.

Tony Maietta:
We'll do that another time. But I honestly, like I'm saying, I think this was all intentional on Mervyn Leroy's part. Patty McCormick said it. She said, he told us to do our stage performances and build on them. And that's what we got here, folks. That's what we got here. So the film. Once Christine realizes that her daughter is a murderous.

Tony Maietta:
She figures, I gotta do something about this before she kills me. Before she's, you know. I mean, it's just crazy. How does Christine decide she's going to take care of this situation with her psychopath daughter Brad?

Brad Shreve:
Well, the. Oh, I forget the neighbor's name again. What was it?

Tony Maietta:
Who? Breedlove. Monica.

Brad Shreve:
Yes. Ms. Breedlove just so happens to have brought down two bottles of pills and. Verily. And makes sure that she states clearly. The bottles are clearly marked. Vitamins.

Tony Maietta:
Vitamins and sleeping pills. They're both clearly marked.

Brad Shreve:
Sleeping pills. And they're clearly marked. And so she tells the young lady, Rhoda that she has some new vitamins. And for whatever reason, Rhoda is just excited that she has new vitamins. And she gives Rhoda these. Her vitamins, which we know was from the wrong clearly marked bottle. And it's going to let her drift off as she goes into the back room and shoots herself.

Tony Maietta:
Yep, that's it.

Brad Shreve:
And this is where the play and the movie divert. And this is where I think it's a positive and negative. It's a negative in the. In the sense that I think rota surviving would have been much creepier. It's the negative. No, I'm sorry. The negative is that rota surviving would have been much creepier. The positive is.

Brad Shreve:
We get that absurd lightning end.

Tony Maietta:
Well, another reason why it's camp. Yes. So. So Christine decides she's got to kill her child. But, you know, she can't just kill her child that she's going to kill herself. So she gives Rhoda the sleeping pills. Rhoda falls asleep. She carries her.

Tony Maietta:
I always. I was funny. Why is she giving her the sleeping pills in the living room? Well, so she can pick up the body and carry it into the bedroom. Because we've seen Rhoda in bed before. You know, it's. Again, this is what Mervyn Leroy did. For some reason, he had her give it to her in the living room on the sofa so she could pick her up and dramatically. And Nancy Kelly could dramatically carry her into the bedroom.

Brad Shreve:
Well, it's just like the play, because obviously that play took place in that living room.

Tony Maietta:
It did, but we've already seen Rhoda's bedroom. So that's why I'm saying it doesn't make sense. You know, logically, why would you do that? Because she wants to be able to pick her up and carry her limp body into her bedroom and put her back and then come out. And then she goes into her room, the door closes and we hear a gunshot. Now, as Brad said, this is where the play and the movie diverge. Because one of the things Mervyn Leroy had to do in order to get this film made was agree to change the ending in the play and the book. Same thing up to this point, except. And we find this out later, the next scene is basically the scene that happens in the hospital in the movie, but it's in the house.

Tony Maietta:
Is that the neighbors are talking about how they heard the gunshot and came running down and they found Rhoda at the brink of death and Christine dead, gone. She shot herself in the head.

Brad Shreve:
But the Hays Code. We can't allow the evildoers to get away.

Tony Maietta:
Right? Right. Well, I'm getting there. So, yes, they. They.

Brad Shreve:
I had to get my little thing in there.

Tony Maietta:
Okay, so they were. Rhoda is on the brink of death, but she makes it so in a surprise ending. Ta da. Here's Rhoda. She comes out and she's alive and well and ready to kill some more in the future. And that's where the play in the book ends. Christine dead, Rhoda alive. However, as Brad just said, one of the strictures of the Production Code, crime cannot go unpunished.

Tony Maietta:
So in the movie, Rhoda does indeed survive. The neighbors get down there in time, and they're all in the hospital. And Monica Goes, she says, to Rhoda's father, Hopper had a Hopper son. William Hopper. Don't forget, you have something very important to live for. And at that very moment, guess who's come skipping down the hallway? The bad seed herself. But this is what's different. Christine's not dead either.

Tony Maietta:
Even though she shot herself, we assume point blank in the head, she has somehow managed to survive this. Didn't poor Gloria Beatty. And they shoot horses, don't they?

Tony Maietta:
Didn't survive this, but Nancy Kelly did.

Tony Maietta:
She's hanging on by a thread.

Brad Shreve:
She was so nervous. Her hand was shaking. How's that sound?

Tony Maietta:
She's hanging on by a thread. So they go home and Rhoda's in bed with her, what looks like a Baby Jane doll. I just gotta say, let's make it really camp and have her holding a Baby Jane doll. And that's when she talks about Aunt Monica and the lovebird. I think they're lovebirds or the parakeet. And how long does a bird live? Longer than a person. And that's where Rhoda gets a brilliant idea of who her next victim is going to be. And at that moment, what happens? Brad.

Tony Maietta:
He puts her to bed. He says, sleep tight. The father goes into his room and lies down on his bed. And then what happens?

Brad Shreve:
Can't remember why Rhoda went to the dock.

Tony Maietta:
Because Christine told her she took the pendant. She took Claude's pendant and threw it in the lake. So she gets out of bed, she's like, I can go get that pendant now because my mommy's in the hospital with a severe head injury. My dad's a dope. He won't know I left. So she puts on a little raincoat, her little rain boots, her little rain hat, and goes down to the dock looking for that medal. Looking for that medal.

Brad Shreve:
It's during a storm and during a thunderstorm. And while Rhoda is at the end of this dock, God says, you know what? That poison didn't work. So I'm going to take care of this little bit. Let me take care of this.

Tony Maietta:
God basically says, christine, hold my beer. I'll take care of this. And bye bye, Rhoda. Penmark gone. Finally. Goodbye. Because crime cannot. Crime has to be punished according to the pca.

Tony Maietta:
But Christine comes back. She's not dead. The father gets a phone call that she's she. And of course, she's able to speak to him. And she okay, this is a woman who took a gun and shot herself in the head. And she's got the standard bandage 101 from classic Hollywood. And Bette Davis talked about this. She said, whenever you had any kind of injury in a film, you always had the same bandage.

Tony Maietta:
You had one around your face and one under your chin so it looked like you just had plastic surgery. So we're not really sure, even in the cartoon.

Tony Maietta:
Yes.

Tony Maietta:
We're not really sure if Christine actually shot herself in the head or maybe she got a little nip tuck. But she confesses to Kenneth, to her husband, that she knows she did wrong and she'll have to face the consequences, but at least they'll be together. And that's the end of the bad scene. The film. It is. You have to see it to believe it. It's so great.

Brad Shreve:
And you know what's really sad in all of this? Because we both would have loved to have seen the demise of Monica Breedlove.

Tony Maietta:
Right?

Brad Shreve:
The way the book and the play were written after her mother dies. But she does not. We know that Ms. Breedlove was.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, her days are numbered, baby. Her days are numbered. Yeah, it's so funny, you know, And William Hopper, I mean, he's so deadpan. He's so droll. It's just like, what would you give me for a basket full of kisses? It just makes you want to wretch. But it's so great.

Tony Maietta:
So that's the bad seed, the film. So do you have stats on the movie, Brad?

Brad Shreve:
I most certainly do. But we have missed something that must be talked about.

Tony Maietta:
What? What we miss?

Brad Shreve:
The ending. The curtain call.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, my God.

Tony Maietta:
How the hell did I forget the curtain call?

Brad Shreve:
A few seconds. That adds so much to this one.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. I forgot the curtain call. Yes.

Tony Maietta:
Wow. The curtain call. So again, this is how Mervin Leroy got it past the production code. If I haven't stressed that enough, the curtain call is like, this is a play. What you've just seen didn't really happen. No children died. No creepy hired hands were burned alive. It's all pretend.

Tony Maietta:
And that's how he got it past the production code. You know, and then you always thinking, brad, it's a lot like Jesus Christ Superstar. Because that's what Jewison did with Jesus Christ Superstar. He brought these players on, they performed a play, and then they left. Same exact thing. Isn't that funny?

Brad Shreve:
Well, the thing is, on Jesus Christ Superstar, you didn't see Ted Neely get on the bus. So I was really confused. I thought, is that man really dead? You know, I'm so grateful that this film had it so I could understand it easily.

Tony Maietta:
Well, that's the thing. That's the thing. So they all. They all come out. Literally, the film is over, and you're like, okay, wait, it's not. What's this? I have never seen a curtain call.

Tony Maietta:
In the film before.

Brad Shreve:
I know.

Tony Maietta:
They each come out and the announcement says who they are, and they take their little bow and then they walk off. And then the next person comes in the doorway and takes a bow. It's the funniest thing. It really is putting across that this is a play. Especially what happens at the very, very.

Brad Shreve:
End, before we get to the very, very end.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
There's one thing I thought. Thought was odd. They all. There's the same door, and they all walk to that door, they turn and they do their nod or whatever it is they do, except. And I can't remember the guy's name, the one that played the hired hand, the janitor, Henry Jones. He comes out of a different door or that door with it being shut, and he has, I think, a bucket. And then my memory here. But he comes out differently than everybody else.

Brad Shreve:
It's for variety. And then everybody else is back to the same exact door they wanted something like, he's not good enough to come out that door. He was just the hired hat.

Tony Maietta:
That's it exactly.

Tony Maietta:
Well, then Patty McCormick comes out, does her bow, walks off, and then Nancy Kelly comes out, and I'm surprised she didn't do a grand dam curtsy. She does her bow, but she doesn't go away. She looks over on the sofa, and who does she see sitting on the sofa of the set, Brad? The little girl, Patty McCormick.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
She goes over to her, and she puts her over her knee and starts spanking her.

Brad Shreve:
Yes, she does. Well, I mean, come on. She murdered a couple of people. She has to be spanked.

Tony Maietta:
It's just so funny.

Tony Maietta:
It's like he really is saying, okay.

Tony Maietta:
So everything you've seen is all pretend, folks. So don't get all upset. You know, it's exactly it. And I'm gonna punish this girl. She's got to be spanked. And it's just so. You know, it's so.

Tony Maietta:
It's not really jarring because we've just seen, you know, two hours of incredible overacting and theatrical presentations and all that stuff.

Tony Maietta:
It's just so funny that they. This is what got it past the.

Tony Maietta:
Production code was putting this little.

Brad Shreve:
It's still jarring. It's still jarring. This is gonna be very random. But again, this Is the studio heads being thinking the public is just a bunch of idiots. It makes me think of Mary Tyler Moore when they originally gonna have her be divorced. And this network said no because people will think she's divorced from Dick Van Dyke. They think the public are idiots. Now, granted, many are.

Tony Maietta:
Well, but this is how. This is how Mervyn leroy presented it.

Tony Maietta:
To the Production Code Administration.

Tony Maietta:
And they said, yes, since you're presenting it to us this way, that we've just watched a pretend story, that somehow it would be okay for audiences to.

Tony Maietta:
See it this way.

Tony Maietta:
It just negates everything we've just seen.

Tony Maietta:
Tells us we were watching a play. So it's.

Tony Maietta:
It's so silly. And the fact that she spanks her at the end. I guess they needed a humorous button.

Tony Maietta:
Because we've just seen all this carnage for the past two hours.

Tony Maietta:
It's just. It's so crazy.

Brad Shreve:
I'm sure people in the theaters were in tears and agony thinking about that poor little girl. They killed her on that pier. And they were so relieved at the end.

Tony Maietta:
They were so relieved at the end.

Tony Maietta:
And Patty McCormick does not look happy that she's being swatted by Nancy Kelly.

Brad Shreve:
Well, it looks like a. What?

Tony Maietta:
It does.

Tony Maietta:
It does.

Tony Maietta:
And I'm like, okay, okay, here's some child abuse. Okay, so that's okay. Jeffrey, Sherlock, that's okay. But this whole story before is not so.

Tony Maietta:
This just the twisted minds of the Production Code Administration at that time. So, anyway, well, I believe.

Tony Maietta:
Now I'm trying to think, is there anything else?

Tony Maietta:
No.

Tony Maietta:
That is the Warner Brothers emblem at the end. That's the end of the bad seed. Now, Brad, do you have stats on this movie?

Brad Shreve:
Yes, I do.

Tony Maietta:
Perfect.

Brad Shreve:
The film was budgeted for $1 million, as I said. And when you consider $300,000 was just to buy the play, I get it. Show that it made 4.1 million. Now, these. The numbers I have are very sketchy because it kind of blurred the initial release and the rentals. I believe it made 4 million at the time. And with rentals, and basically today it's earned up to 8 to 9 million. I don't know how accurate that sounds about right.

Tony Maietta:
That sounds about right.

Brad Shreve:
Okay, good.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, it was a big hit. It was one of Warner Brothers biggest, bigger hits for that year. And these actresses went on to some interesting work. This was actually Nancy Kelly's last film. Thank God. Oh, you know, she had been an actress in the 30s and 40s, but this was her greatest success. After this, she went back, she did some tv. She did some theater.

Tony Maietta:
She was in who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She replaced. I think she replaced UTA Hagen briefly. She obviously played Martha because not soon Nancy Kelly's gonna play. And, you know, Patty McCormick said that later in their life they talked about doing a production of Night Mother, which would have been. Have you ever seen Night Mother? Do you know the play Night Mother or the film Night Mother?

Brad Shreve:
Doesn't ring a bell.

Tony Maietta:
Night Mother is about a girl. Girl who kills herself and tells her mother before she does it. So it's a two person play, film. The film is with Cissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft and what's her name? Kathy Bates was in the play. She plays the. The daughter who kills herself. And the mother was played by Sylvia Sidney, who's trying to stop her through the entire play. Anyway, that didn't happen.

Tony Maietta:
That didn't happen. But after this, Patty McCormick went on to play. She was the first Helen Keller in the first production of the Miracle Worker. The first production of the Miracle Worker was on tv. It wasn't a film, it wasn't the play. The TV version was first. And she played Helen Keller in the Miracle Worker. And she went on to do other tv, you know, here and there she did soaps.

Tony Maietta:
She. You see her pop up all the time. But she, as I said, she really tried to distance herself, no wonder from, from playing Rhoda in the bad seat. Until she finally realized how much fun, and I don't really want to say joy, but how much delight this gave many people. And she embraced it. And she, you know, she's still living today. She continues to embrace it, which I think is wonderful. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Brad Shreve:
I think it was just a couple weeks ago I said the same thing about Adam west after he played Batman. He was not happy. And then finally he just like, what the fuck? I'm gonna embrace this.

Tony Maietta:
Why not? You know what I mean? It gives people pleasure, whether it be a perverse fun pleasure. So what? You know, she has the right idea. Patty Duke has the right idea, had the right idea. God rest Patty Duke. These types of things can be a lot of fun and God bless it. So as you can imagine, because this, because this movie, because this play was so controversial and because of the changes, there have been remakes of the this. Did you know that, Brad?

Brad Shreve:
I did know that. I know Rob Lowe was involved in one of them.

Tony Maietta:
I know. Isn't that crazy? Rob Lowe did a Lifetime. Of course it was Lifetime did a Lifetime version of this in which basically he's Lifetime. He's basically Christine Penmark. Yeah, it's a lifetime version of it. He's Christine Penmark in the Rob Lowe version of it, which I think is so funny. So there's a gender switch and at the ending of it is the father and Rhoda. Her name's not Rhoda anymore in this because Rhoda's just a ridiculous name.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, she's iconic as Rhoda, so I don't know why. But anyway, I think her name's Emma in the Rob Lowe version. They have a shootout.

Brad Shreve:
What?

Tony Maietta:
Yes, because he poisons her hot chocolate and she switches them. Because she knows that. Because you don't fool Emma slash Rhoda. And when he wakes up, he wakes up after being. After being drugged and he grabs his gun and he's standing there with the gun. So she doesn't shoot him. She calls 91 1. And whoever, the caretaker of the house or something comes and seeing it, sees him holding the gun on his daughter and he shoots him.

Tony Maietta:
So there you go. That's that. But there was actually a 1985 TV movie. I saw this. I think probably before I saw the film version, I saw the. It was with Blair Brown. And it returned to the original ending where Christine kills Rhoda and kills herself. And then Rhoda's alive at the end.

Tony Maietta:
So that's really interesting. But as you can imagine, there have been a whole lot of other productions of this. Parodies of this. I've seen, as I said, I've seen this so many times parodied in theater. There's a musical parody. There's a musical parody called Ruthless that has shout outs to the Bad Seed. And in the Bad. In Ruthless, the character's last name is Denmark, not Denmark.

Brad Shreve:
I actually would love to see this movie done as a musical itself. No changes. Just make it a musical. I think that would be delicious.

Tony Maietta:
That would be delicious. That would be. Ruthless is pretty funny. I've never. I've never seen Ruthless. I've listened to. To the cd, but I've never. I've actually never seen a production of Ruthless, so.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah, well, maybe, you know, because this movie. This movie has legs. You know, this movie goes on and on and on. It truly is one of the. I think one of the four or five greatest, campiest film right up there with Valley of the Dolls and Mommy Dearest. You cannot have the bad seat up there. That's the way I feel about it.

Brad Shreve:
You know, and something you mentioned was that this was Nancy Kelly's last film and I. That I Understand that, because once she did this, she's like, I can't top that.

Tony Maietta:
You know, she was only 35. Does she look a lot older than 35?

Brad Shreve:
Oh, she does that. That surprised me to hear that. You know, people, it's, you know, we always talk about how people back in the day looked older.

Tony Maietta:
She.

Brad Shreve:
I would have guessed mid to late 40s.

Tony Maietta:
And she definitely aged during the run of this play in this movie. So, Brad, is there anything else you want to say about the Bad Seed or about the podcast or anything else?

Brad Shreve:
As I always end, if you're new to the show, welcome. We're happy and thrilled to have you. Please click Follow or some apps still say subscribe so that you'll know when a new episode comes out and if you've been listening to us for a while. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We love that you're there and come back every week. And if you have the time and you do, right there in front of you, there's a little thing that says rate review. If you're looking, playing your phone, which you probably are, hit that and leave a review and let others know how much you enjoy the show.

Tony Maietta:
Do it. You don't want us to send Rhoda Pen Mark after you do you do it. Follow subscribe. Well, Brad, I guess there's only one thing left to say, and I got a lot of social obligations to take care of, so I'm not gonna say it. Let's not say goodbye. Let's just say au revoir.

Brad Shreve:
No, let's say goodbye.

Tony Maietta:
Well, ain't we swank. Goodbye, everybody.