This unusual coming of age drama features the screen debuts of Julie Harris, in the title role, and Brandon De Wilde. Playing 12 year old Frankie Addams, the 27 year old Harris received a Best Actress Oscar nomination (her only recognition from the Academy to date). It was produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Fred Zinnemann, their third and last collaboration following The Men (1950) – Marlon Brando’s screen debut – and the essential Western High Noon (1952) earlier that same year. This one was based on the Carson McCullers play, and features a screenplay by Edna & Edward Anhalt (Panic in the Streets (1950)).
It’s a story about a high strung young girl who’s struggling to fit in and/or learn her place in the world. She believes her older brother’s upcoming wedding might just be where she belongs, with the bride and groom, about whom she says “they provide the we of me”. Top billed Ethel Waters plays Bernice Sadie Brown, the motherless Addams family’s cook. De Wilde plays Frankie’s younger next door neighbor (and cousin?) John Henry, the lonely (outspoken and angry young) girl’s only friend. Waters, Harris, and De Wilde had played these same roles previously on Broadway. Arthur Franz and Nancy Gates play the betrothed, (soldier) Jarvis and Janice of Windy Hill. William Hansen plays the widower Mr. Addams, a workaholic jeweler who doesn’t understand (nor seem to find time for) his peculiar daughter; hence, Bernice has become Frankie’s (and John Henry’s) surrogate mother. She regales the two youngsters with stories about her first (and only beloved) of four husbands, Lutie, and attempts to curb the roughest edges of Frankie’s behavior (though she couldn’t prevent the girl from cutting her hair boyishly short). James Edwards plays Bernice’s troubled trumpet playing foster brother Honey; Harry Bolden plays her preacher friend T.T. Williams. Dickie Moore plays a soldier Frankie meets after the wedding that was presided over by Hugh Beaumont’s character.
The titled event is a disaster for Frankie, who literally has to be pulled from the newlyweds’ automobile by her father. She runs away (on her way to Savannah, GA) and encounters Moore’s character, a drunken soldier who tries to kiss her (and more?) against her will. She returns home to find that John Henry is on his deathbed with some (unspecified) illness that Bernice had ignored while dealing with Honey’s latest crime. These occurrences, along with Frankie making a friend (unseen, but spoken about, named Helen) and joining the Girl Scouts (she’s wearing the uniform at film’s end), contribute to Frankie’s maturation. —Classicfilmguide.com
Vienna-born Fred Zinnemann had childhood dreams of becoming a musician, and later planned on a law career, before his viewing of the movies of Erich Von Stroheim drew him into the movie business, initially as a cameraman. He came to the United States in 1929, and later found work as an editor, and subsequently as an assistant to documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, and then as an assistant to choreographer Busby Berkeley. He joined MGM in the late ‘30s as a director of comedy shorts, and won an Academy award for his 1938 short subject That Mothers Might Live. Zinnemann moved up to full-length features in 1941, but found little opportunity to work on anything but B-pictures until 1948, with The Search, a drama set in post-World War II Europe. He didn’t really become a major recognized box-office name as a director, however, until 1952 when his Western drama High Noon, starring Gary Cooper, which had been perceived by most observers as headed for commercial disaster, became a monster… read more
Based on Carson McCullers' Frankie Addams. Firstly, I must notice Julie Harris's performance who, at the age of 27, plays the 12 y.o. Frankie. And she's totally believable in the role. Of course, the film may seem a little verbose at times but Zinnemann manages with success to give life to the Addams' mansion and to convey the sweaty atmosphere of the South. Recommended.
