OVP: The Yearling (1946)

Film: The Yearling (1946)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman, Jr.

Director: Clarence Brown

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Gregory Peck, Actress-Jane Wyman, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Film Editing, Juvenile Oscar-Claude Jarman, Jr.)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our month devoted to Gregory Peck in 1946, about the time that Peck was finishing his first run of fame as a leading man.  Peck was a very quick study in Hollywood.  A back injury during a dance class prevented him from serving in World War II (the studio said it was a rowing accident, as it didn't want its handsome star to be skipping his military duty due to a lesson from Martha Graham), but unlike most stars we'll profile this year, he basically jumped straight into leading roles, and had quick success of it.  Though Days of Glory (his first movie) bombed, The Keys of of the Kingdom was a critical success, and won him his first Oscar nomination on only his second film (he'd lose to Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend).  He'd follow that film with two commercial smash hits-The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson, which was the highest-grossing film of 1945, and the well-regarded Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman, which was a huge hit for United Artists, and made the gorgeous Peck into something of a sex symbol.  This leads to The Yearling, which is our movie today, the film that won Peck his second Oscar nomination and was another big hit for the artist, who had just turned thirty & in the course of two years become one of the most bankable stars in North America.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and is the story of the Baxter family: father Penny (Peck), mother Ora (Wyman), and son Jody (Jarman).  Jody is the only living child they have after the others all died young, and Ora struggles to show affection for Jody for fear that he'll also be taken from her.  They live in a cabin in rural Florida, and try to make by with just each other, though Jody longs for a pet since he doesn't have any siblings.  Eventually, after his father kills a doe, he adopts a young fawn whom he names Flag (due to its tail), and loves it to the point where it's a household pet.  But Ora struggles with it, and eventually it becomes too much of a nuisance, eating up their cash corn crop that they were going to plant to buy a well.  Penny orders Jody to kill the deer, but instead he tells it to leave.  Because it's domesticated, it finds its way back to the farm, and Ora accidentally shoots it, injuring it, and Jody is forced to kill it to put it out of its misery (according to Hollywood legend, a young Maureen Reagan refused to speak to her mom for two weeks after watching the film she was so mad at her shooting the deer).  Jody runs away from the farm, but is eventually found and reunited with his family, including his mother who can now show him love, as she realizes that God won't take her final child away from her, as he has reached the stage of being a "yearling" (a term for a year-old deer who can fend for himself).

If that movie reads as Old Yeller, well, it kind of is.  Though Rawlings' book predates Fred Gipson's novel by nearly twenty years, the story of a boy & his dog has aged better in the public consciousness, and it's hard not to see the direct corollaries between the two.  The difference between the movies is that while the 1957 film became a family classic (and a massive hit) for Disney, it did not command seven Oscar nominations.  There's very little evidence in the annals of the Best Picture that "family" films have any welcome there, and this is one of the few movies of its kind to make the cut.  Given that distinction, it's a pity it's not better.  As a whole, the movie works-it's not a bad movie (evidenced by my 3-star rating above), but it's also not special.  The movie looks terrific because the glowing cinematography (conducted by three men, one of the only times the Cinematography Oscar went to three people for one film) kind of blinds you it's so ravishing, but there's very little there (the titular fawn doesn't even show up until an hour into the movie), and I suspect Oscar got soft for it because MGM sank a fortune into the picture (it cost nearly $4 million, which at the time was an exorbitant amount for a movie), and while it earned it back, I have to imagine the studio pushed for nominations for their large investment.

After Cinematography, though, the film's remaining nominations feel a bit at a loss.  I've never been a fan of Jane Wyman, and while she's better here than she usually is (I think she finds a restraint and the natural makeup look allows more expression in her face), it feels like she's always telegraphing to the audience (we get it, you can't show your children love...you don't have to underline it with every sentence).  Jarman, who won a Juvenile Oscar for this film, is from the "overly-expressive" school of child acting that was the norm in 1940's movies.  The Art Direction was good, but hardly inventive, and the editing...the movie is too long, and occasionally feels like it isn't well-organized (particularly the scenes with Jody's "sweetheart" that come out of nowhere).  As for Peck?  Well, Peck has probably never looked better, his sexy, expressive face & lanky frame a perfect fit for a too-short cabin and dewy camerawork, but he doesn't add much here other than being a stoic figure & a playmate of sorts for Jody.  This isn't his best work, or his best Oscar nomination.

Child Actors and Best Picture

On Thursday of this week we'll see a host of some of the luckiest and happiest people in Hollywood (and an equally large number of people who will be grumbling and firing their agents) as the Oscar nominations will be announced.  In honor of this, we'll be looking at three articles of Oscar trivia heading up to this most blessed of days, starting with our first one today, regarding (as the title would suggest) child actors and Best Picture.

Everyone is aware that it's quite unusual to be nominated before the age of 18 if you're an actor.  In fact, throughout the Academy's entire history only 18 people have done it.  However, it's also quite difficult to land a role in two different Best Picture nominations before you hit 18.  While many well-known actors eventually gain roles in a Best Picture nominee or two, doing so before you've reached adulthood is extremely difficult.  This year, Daniel Huttlestone may well join in on such a list.  Huttlestone, for those who are not having any lights go off when I type that name, played Gavroche in Les Miserables two years ago and is now Jack in Into the Woods, which is right at the edge of many people's Best Picture predictions.  Were he to do this, he would join a very select group of people who have accomplished such a feat.

I will note that the list below of ten actors that have done this is probably not conclusive, but it's the best I could do after a massive search through the chasms of Wikipedia.  If you know any other actors, please share them in the comments and you will have both my gratitude and cited credit after I edit the post to include your factoid.  Until then, however, here are ten actors that have all had two Best Picture nominees released before they turned eighteen (in alphabetical order).

Freddie Bartholomew (1924-1992)

First Best Picture: David Copperfield (1935), where he played the title character
Second Best Picture: Captains Courageous (1937), where he played Harvey Cheyne and somehow got top-billing over Spencer Tracy
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 4812 days (13 years, 2 months, 3 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: No, despite the Juvenile Oscar being an option at the time and him being arguably one of the biggest Box Office draws of the 1930's, he never won an Oscar.
Other Best Picture Nominees: None-Bartholomew's career would go heavily down-the-tubes when he hit adulthood, and he would have a series of financial and personal problems for the rest of his life.

Jackie Cooper (1922-2011)

First Best Picture: Skippy (1931), where he played the title character
Second Best Picture: The Champ (1931), where he played Dink and got second billing to Wallace Beery, who won the Oscar.
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 3342 days (9 years, 1 month, 25 days), which is the youngest any actor has ever achieved such a feat to date.
Oscar-Nominated?: Yes-Cooper became the youngest person in Oscar history to be nominated for Best Actor, though he lost to Lionel Barrymore who was 44 years his senior.
Other Best Picture Nominees: None, though he would go on to have a significant role in the Superman movies as Perry White.

Deanna Durbin (1921-2013)

First Best Picture: Three Smart Girls (1936), where she played Penny Craig
Second Best Picture: One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), where she plays Patsy Cardwell
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 5754 days (15 years, 9 months, 1 day)
Oscar-Nominated?: Deanna Durbin, the girl who saved Universal Studios from declaring bankruptcy, won a Juvenile Oscar in 1938 after being one of the country's biggest box office draws for several years.
Other Best Picture Nominees: Nope-Durbin enjoyed strong success in her late teens and early twenties (she was the second highest-salaried woman in the United States in 1946, second only to Bette Davis), but eventually audiences waned and she become something of a recluse despite truly magnificent roles being offered to her like the leads in Kiss Me Kate and My Fair Lady on Broadway.

Elle Fanning (1998-Present)

First Best Picture: Babel (2006), where she played the daughter of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett
Second Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), where she once again starred opposite Pitt and Blanchett, playing a younger version of the latter.
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 3913 days (10 years, 8 months, 16 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: Not yet-neither she nor her sister have been nominated, though it sort of feels like one of them might strike eventually.
Other Best Picture Nominees: None to speak of, though she has a lead role in Maleficent this past year which could score a few nominations on Thursday.

Bonita Granville (1923-1988)

First Best Picture: Cavalcade (1933), where she played Young Fanny (Cavalcade is one of the few films profiled here that actually won the Best Picture trophy)
Second Best Picture: Little Women (1933), where Granville gets an uncredited role as a classmate of Amy's.
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 3940 days (10 years, 9 months, 14 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: Yes, Granville would go on to be one of the youngest Oscar nominees ever in 1936 when she was cited for These Three in the first year that Best Supporting Actress was a category (though she lost to Gale Sondergaard in Anthony Adverse).
Other Best Picture Nominees: None, though she had to have gotten close with Now, Voyager in 1942.

Roddy McDowall (1928-1998)

First Best Picture: How Green Was My Valley (1941), where he plays Huw, Maureen O'Hara's younger brother in the film that famously beat Citizen Kane for the Best Picture trophy.
Second Best Picture: The Pied Piper (1942), a largely forgotten film from 20th Century FOX where McDowall plays a character named Ronnie
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 5086 days (13 years, 11 months, 4 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: No, though he came extraordinarily close in 1963.  A mix-up when FOX was submitting for lead vs. supporting for Cleopatra caused McDowall, who was personally popular and just had received a Golden Globe nomination, to be submitted as lead when he was clearly supporting.  Had that not happened, he probably would have gotten his sole Oscar nod, and perhaps even beaten Melvyn Douglas in Hud.
Other Best Picture Nominees: For the first time, yes!  McDowall stayed active for most of his life, and went on to star in two Best Picture nominees: The Longest Day (1962) and Cleopatra (1963).

Haley Joel Osment (1988-Present)

First Best Picture: Forrest Gump (1994), where Osment played the title character's son (the film went on to win Best Picture)
Second Best Picture: The Sixth Sense (1999), where Osment became a star by seeing dead people.
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 4131 days (11 years, 3 months, 23 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: Yes, Osment became one of the youngest nominees ever when he landed a nomination for playing Cole in The Sixth Sense, though he lost the award to Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules.
Other Best Picture Nominees: None to speak of, though I've always thought he gave an Oscar-worthy piece of work in AI and he's apparently quite funny in The Spoils of Babylon.

Mickey Rooney (1920-2014)

First Best Picture: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), where Rooney played Puck opposite the likes of Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, and Anita Louise
Second Best Picture: Boys Town (1938), though unlike with Captains Courageous Spencer Tracy got top-billing here.
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 6560 days (17 years, 11 months, 17 days)-Mickey makes this list by just under two weeks.
Oscar-Nominated?: Rooney is by far the biggest star on this list, and went on to win a Juvenile Award in 1938 (alongside Deanna Durbin), as well as four Oscar nominations.  Two were as a lead: Babes in Arms in 1939 (losing to Robert Donat) and The Human Comedy in 1943 (losing to Paul Lukas) and two in supporting: The Bold and the Brave in 1956 (losing to Anthony Quinn) and The Black Stallion in 1979 (losing to Melvyn Douglas).  Rooney won an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Oscars as well.
Other Best Picture Nominees: Rooney made so many movies I may have missed one, but by my count the only other Best Picture nominee he was in was The Human Comedy in 1943.

Quvenzhane Wallis (2003-Present)

First Best Picture: Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), where she played the main character of Hushpuppy
Second Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave (2013), where she had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role as Solomon Northup's daughter (the film of course won Best Picture)
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 3655 days (10 years, 2 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: Wallis received an Oscar nomination and became the youngest person ever nominated for Best Actress with Beasts of the Southern Wild but lost to Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook.
Other Best Picture Nominees: None so far, but she may well win a Golden Globe tonight, as she's nominated for Annie.

Virginia Weidler (1927-1968)

First Best Picture: All This and Heaven Too (1940), where she plays one of Charles Boyer's daughters
Second Best Picture: The Philadelphia Story (1940), where she plays the younger sister of Kate Hepburn and has a very memorable turn on the piano.
Age at Release of Second Best Picture: 5029 days (13 years, 9 months, 5 days)
Oscar-Nominated?: Nope, and she also missed out on the Juvenile Award despite no one winning it in 1940 and she being a prime contender considering she had two roles in Best Picture nominees.
Other Best Picture Nominees: None-Weidler largely retired and became extremely private (in a similar fashion to Deanna Durbin), never doing interviews after her retirement at the age of sixteen.

And there you have it folks-feeling a bit unaccomplished?  Do you think that Daniel Huttlestone will be able to join this list on Thursday, or will Into the Woods remain at-large?  Which of these actors was the most surprising?  And if you have any others, please let me know and I will credit you in the article!

Deanna Durbin (1921-2013) and the History of the Juvenile Oscars

This past week Deanna Durbin, Universal's girl-next-door, passed away at the age of 91.  Durbin is probably not well-known to today's movie audiences, but in her time she was a huge star.  Her movies even saved Universal Studios from declaring bankruptcy.

As a result of this, she won a special Juvenile Academy Award in 1938, the second person to win the award (the picture to the left is Durbin with her trophy).  At the time, the Oscars didn't generally recognize childhood performances in competitive categories, and so from 1934 to 1960, twelve individuals received Juvenile Academy Awards.  While there are only twelve (the same number as the number of men who have walked on the move-coincidence?...probably), and the last award was presented over sixty years ago, thanks to the young ages of many of the recipients, a number of these men and women are still alive, and in honor Deanna Durbin, I thought it would be fun to check to see what happened to each of them in the years that followed.

Shirley Temple
Born 1928 (still living)
Won in 1934

Temple, one of the biggest stars in the history of cinema, and probably the most well-known child actor of all-time, was a surefire winner in 1934.  After becoming the biggest Box Office draw in America, she slowly saw her popularity decline as she entered adulthood.  She, did, however, enjoy one of the oddest second acts in Hollywood, becoming a U.S. Ambassador to both Ghana and Ireland, and racking up a myriad of accolades to go with her Oscar, including the Kennedy Center Honor, the SAG Life Achievement Award, and the National Board of Review Career Achievement Award.

Deanna Durbin
Born 1921 (died in 2013 at 91)
Won in 1938

As mentioned before, Durbin won at the height of her fame as America's girl-next-door.  Like Temple, she couldn't find as much work in the years that followed, and eventually retired in 1949.  She was frequently asked to return to the screen, but spent the rest of her life in Paris, living a deeply private life with her husband and two children.

Mickey Rooney
Born 1920 (still living)
Won in 1938

The girl-next-door needed the boy next door to go with her, and so Mickey Rooney picked up the first Oscar of his career in 1938 as well.  It's hard to believe since he's been such a parody of himself in the years since, but at the time he was headlining the Andy Hardy movies and playing opposite Judy Garland (as well as Spencer Tracy in 1938's Boys Town).  Rooney received an Oscar nomination the next year for Babes in Arms and four years later for The Human Comedy.  After serving during World War II, he returned to Hollywood and enjoyed fame in film and television, receiving Oscar nominations for 1956's The Bold and the Brave and 1979's The Black Stallion.  He became the only Juvenile Oscar winner to win a second trophy in 1983, another Honorary Academy Award.

Judy Garland
Born 1922 (died in 1969 at 47)
Won in 1939

Is there a star that burned as brightly and fell as far as Judy Garland?  Judy received her Oscar after one of the biggest years of her career, with The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms (her costar Mickey Rooney gave her a kiss on Oscar night, as seen in the photo to the left) both tearing up the Box Office.  Garland would of course go on to be the ultimate comeback kid several more times in her career, gaining two Oscar nominations for A Star is Born (losing in one of the closest Oscar races ever against Grace Kelly) and Judgment at Nuremberg, and giving one of the most lauded performances in the history of entertainment at Carnegie Hall in 1961.  She died from an overdose of barbiturates in 1969.

Margaret O'Brien
Born 1937 (still living)
Won in 1944

Following in Judy's footsteps (career-wise), O'Brien won the Juvenile Oscar five years after Garland, primarily for starring opposite her in Meet Me in St. Louis.  O'Brien couldn't cut it as an adult star, and only made occasional appearances on the silver screen in the later years.  There's a great story about O'Brien's Oscar, which had been stolen by a maid in the 1950's, finally returning to her in 1995 after being found at a flea market.

Peggy Ann Garner
Born 1932 (died in 1984 at 52)
Won in 1945

The brilliant young performer from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn won right after O'Brien, and gave one of the best performances to be honored for this award (though I haven't seen them all, Garner is one of the few I would have nominated in the competitive awards).  Like almost everyone on this list, Garner was unable to break-out into adult film roles, though she did feature in Robert Altman's movie A Wedding in 1978.  She passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 52.

Claude Jarman, Jr.
Born 1934 (still living)
Won in 1946

Jarman won this award after his film debut, The Yearling, a film that scored seven nominations in 1946 and could have probably made it eight if Jarman didn't have this avenue to win his award (he was the Hailee Steinfeld of his day).  Headlining a Best Picture for your debut film typically means that you're destined to fall a bit, and Jarman's career was quickly over.  Interesting side note though-he ended up having seven children in three marriages, so yeah, that's a lot of kids.

Ivan Jandl
Born 1937 (died in 1987 at 50)
Won in 1948

Jandl also won his Oscar for his screen debut, starring opposite Montgomery Clift in The Search (he's so adorable in this movie-prepare to say "awe" multiple times).  Jandl was from the Czech Republic and didn't speak English, so he learned his lines phonetically.  While he made other films in the Czech Republic, this was his one and only American film (though once you've starred opposite Monty Clift, where else is there to go?).

Bobby Driscoll
Born 1937 (died in 1968 at 31)
Won in 1949

Like Judy, Bobby Driscoll had a pretty horrible life, but unlike Judy, he didn't remain in the spotlight throughout all of it (and it was decidedly shorter).  Driscoll was rumored for this award for his performance in Song of the South (as was his costar Luana Patten), but didn't win until three years later for his work in So Dear My Heart and The Window (you can see him receiving the award to the left from Donald O'Connor).  Driscoll was a huge star in his youth, and also made films like Treasure Island and was the voice of Disney's Peter Pan.  His career started to go south as an adult, however, and he eventually fell into the world of drugs and crumbling marriages.  He oddly got involved with Andy Warhol's Factory for a time in the 1960's, before becoming homeless and dying from drug-related heart failure.  As a sign of his fallen stature, it wasn't until over three years after his death that it was announced to the public, despite his Oscar-winning status.

Jon Whiteley
Born 1945 (still living)
Won in 1954

Also a young actor whose career petered out as he grew up, Jon Whiteley's life has had a much happier ending.  After winning for The Young Kidnappers (along with his costar Vincent Winter), Whiteley appeared in a couple of films before quitting the business all-together.  He went on to become a well-known art historian at Oxford, and to be happily married with two children.

Vincent Winter
Born 1947 (died in 1998 at 50)
Won in 1954

The second-youngest of all of the winners (after Temple), Winter was only seven when he won along with his costar for The Little Kidnappers, and is chronologically the youngest of all of the winners, despite another star winning six years later.  Winter also had a relatively happy adult life.  After moving away from the front of the camera in his early years, he went on to be a production manager on a number of high-profile films, regularly working with Steven Spielberg in the 1980's.  He passed away from a heart attack at age 50.

Hayley Mills
Born 1946 (still living)
Won in 1960

The daughter of the great British actor John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, acting was in the blood for Hayley Mills, one of the few child actors to rival Shirley Temple in her popularity, and therefore a perfect bookend for the awards.  Mills won her Oscar for her work in Pollyanna, a huge commercial success, and went on to have a string of hits with Disney, including The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, and The Moon Spinners.  While she had one big hit out the gate from Disney (The Trouble with Angels), her film career petered out and she largely left the film industry, only to return in the 1980's with work in television, most notably Good Morning, Miss Bliss, a short-lived series that nonetheless spawned the massively successful Saved by the Bell.  In an interesting side note, at the height of her fame, she was offered the title role in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, though Walt Disney insisted the role wasn't appropriate for her image, and the part went to Sue Lyon.

And those are the twelve winners.  Interestingly enough, despite the award being an option at the time, the Oscars still nominated a few child actors during this time period, including Bonita Granville, Brandon deWilde, Sal Mineo, and Patty McCormack (all of whom lost their competitive Oscars).  This all changed when Patty Duke pulled off the trophy for 1962's The Miracle Worker, and with proof that child actors could win the competitive Academy Award, the Oscars stopped giving out the Juvenile Oscar.  Since then, two actors under eighteen have won the award (Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin), and a myriad of actors have received nominations, including Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin, and last year's Quvenzhane Wallis.

OVP: The Window (1949)

Film: The Window (1949)
Stars: Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman, Bobby Driscoll

Director: Ted Tetzlaff

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There are occasionally films from the 1930's and 1940's that remind you that television didn't exist at the time.  Primarily, these are films like Andy Hardy or the Bowery Boys which would have almost certainly been a television series had that been an option at the time, rather than having 3-4 films coming out each year within the respective series.  The Window, on the other hand, is in the frame of the after school special, a cautionary tale that were it not for the pedigreed cast and impressive camerawork, would have been forgotten just as quickly as those afternoon movies.

The film stars young Tommy (Driscoll), who has a penchant for telling falsehoods while living in the tenament section of the Lower East Side and is constantly causing his parents (Hale and Kennedy) trouble, and almost gets them evicted in the film's opening scenes.  Like the boy who cried wolf, Tommy soons finds the need for people to believe him when he witnesses a couple (Roman and Stewart) commit a murder.  Tommy tries to convince his parents that the couple have committed the murder, and then tries to tell the police, but for nearly the entire film, no one believes him, except the culprits, who are told about Tommy's witnessing their deed, and then try to kill him.

(Spoilers ahead) The film gets a little ridiculous at this point, as Tommy consistently alludes what appears to be professional criminals, despite showing little intelligence earlier in the film, and we get to see daring scenes, including Tommy nearly dying in a collapsing building.  Since it's the 1940's, you know that Tommy will eventually convince his parents of the truth and the murderers are going to be caught, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't try and make it a little more unpredictable and less "convenient" (there's a scene where Tommy sees his father while being chased by Stewart's character, and waits until after his father gets into a cab to call out his name, defeating the purpose and giving away his location in one full swoop).

Most of what will sell this film for you is whether you buy into Driscoll's performance or not.  Barbara Hale (yes, Della Street herself) and 5-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy are clearly fine actors, but they get one-note characters and don't take much time to stretch their acting muscles, and quite frankly, don't get enough screentime to save the film if you don't care for Driscoll's work, which I'll admit I don't.  Driscoll won the Juvenile Oscar that year, in part for his performance here (for the sake of the OVP, I will only be counting a Juvenile Oscar win amongst the Oscar-winning films if the film itself was specifically cited, like The Search or Pollyanna, but I will point out if a performer won the Oscar if the film received another citation from the Academy), but I am not a fan.  His performance is sometimes very naturalistic, but at other times he's clearly aware that he's being filmed, and I'm going to (fairly or unfairly) attribute his more naturalistic moments to Tatzlaff, rather than Driscoll himself.  Driscoll, a huge star as a child, would go on to have an extremely difficult life, eventually becoming homeless, a drug addict, and went to jail before his death at age 31 (he was also briefly a part of the Andy Warhol circle in the late 1960's).

The film received its only Oscar nomination for its best attribute, its editing.  The film is able to maintain much of its suspense through its pacing, knowing just when to keep the focus on one character long enough for us to worry about what is going on offscreen as we see it onscreen.  I specifically remember one scene where Stewart, having realized that Tommy has not in fact left the apartment (he had written a note stating that he is a running away), but is locked into his bedroom and trying to escape.  The camera sheepishly watches Tommy trying to grab the key, unaware that Stewart is on the other side of the door, ready to attack once he gets out.  Most editors would have intercut with both characters, but Frederic Knudtson (who received his first of six nominations for this film) smartly focuses on the sly Stewart, letting Tommy struggle to find the key before he finally puts it in his reach.  It's a smart way of telling just how dasterdly the villain is, and it gives genuine suspense to a seemingly meaningless scene.

And what about you-have you seen The Window?  Do you think that Driscoll's performance was worthy of the Academy Award (and what do you think about his brief filmography)?  And what other film staples of the pre-television era do you wish would make a comeback?