Darryl Hickman, celebrated child actor in the 1940s, dies at 92

Darryl Hickman, one of Hollywood’s most versatile child actors in the 1940s in films such as the Depression-era saga “The Grapes of Wrath” and the dark thriller “Leave Her to Heaven,” and who later played a supporting role to his younger brother Dwayne on TV’s “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” died May 22 at age 92.

The death was announced in a family statement, which gave no further details. Mr. Hickman, who lived in Montecito, Calif., had been treated for Parkinson’s disease.

With expressive chestnut eyes and slightly pug nose as a boy, Mr. Hickman carried a mix of tenderness and grit that made him a favorite of directors and casting agents. About 100 boys tried out to play Winfield Joad, the youngest member of a struggling Dust Bowl family that strikes out for California in the 1940 film version of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” starring Henry Fonda.

Director John Ford said he picked Mr. Hickman, then 9, because “he was the only kid that didn’t act like an actor.” Ford, who won the best director Academy Award for the film, had a fearsome reputation on the set but showed special kindness to Mr. Hickman and the young actress Shirley Mills, who played his sister. At 4 p.m. tea, Ford saved the best treats for the children, Mr. Hickman said. “He would bring Shirley and me the good cookies,” he recalled.

Over the next decade, Mr. Hickman worked on more than 40 films featuring some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

In 1941, he played a reform-school urchin in “Men of Boys Town,” with some reviewers saying he was as much as force in the movie as the stars, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy. During War War II, he was part of morale-boosting movies such as “Joe Smith, American” (1942) with Robert Young and landed a small part as a neighbor boy in the musical “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), starring Judy Garland.