Return to evil
Patty McCormack back in ‘The Bad Seed’
PATTY McCormack took a 62year detour between her Oscarnominated turn as Rhoda Penmark, the demonic eightyear-old killer in “The Bad Seed,” and her role as psychiatrist Dr. March in Lifetime’s eponymous remake of the 1956 big-screen classic.
In this version, co-starring Rob Lowe (who also directed), McCormack, 73, has a chilling scene with the 2018 version of Rhoda: Emma Grossman (Mckenna Grace), whose single dad (Lowe) takes her to Dr. March, concerned about Emma’s icecold indifference to several murders hitting a little too close to home.
“It was truly emotional for me,” McCormack says of the scene, in which Dr. March pronounces Emma to be “100 percent perfectly average” (hint: big misdiagnosis). “I felt like I would feel that I was passing the torch, all that stuff ... and it was quietly emotional for me sitting across and looking at [Grace] and see her do what I had done in the movie.”
The Brooklyn-born McCormack, who received a 1957 Oscar nomination as Best Actress in a Supporting Role (she was 11 when she filmed the movie), didn’t completely divorce herself from “The Bad Seed” after it made its indelible mark. (She originated the role in the 1954 Broadway production written by Maxwell Anderson.) Her busy acting career, including a short-lived TV series, “Peck’s Bad
Girl,” continues to this day and she’s revisited “The Bad Seed” in one form or another several times — including a production staged by her nephew in Staten Island (she played Mrs. Daigle) and as a murderous mother in the movies “Mommy” and “Mommy 2: Mommy’s Day.” She was approached about appearing in the 1985 ABC version of “The Bad Seed” starring Blair Brown, David Carradine and Carrie Wells in the Rhoda role (called Rachel here) — but turned it down.
“The higher-ups at Warner Brothers at the time changed and ... I just backed off, and I’m glad I did, actu- ally,” she says. [‘The Bad Seed’] did come into play before, but nothing like this. This is a serious remake and, God, what a part. It’s not exactly the same story, but it’s similar and it’s better for these times. Our [movie] was a little old-fashioned, really, where the mother [played by Nancy Kelly] was helpless and didn’t know what to do. It’s fun here to see the father (Lowe) have those same feelings.”
In Anderson’s 1954 play, Rhoda lives; in the 1956 movie, Rhoda meets her maker at the end of a pier when she’s struck by lightning, an ending that satisfied the ’50s-era Motion Picture Production Code (crime could never pay — no exceptions).
While it plays out a little differently for Emma Grossman in Lifetime’s version, McCormack says the “evil child” theme still resonates.
“I think it’s frightening for people to think that children, these little adorable people, can just create havoc like that,” she says. “Anytime a kid can take over the story, like in ‘The Omen,’ it frightens adults because they’re not in control. Maybe it’s a timeless theme, ‘the child with no conscience.’ You would describe Rhoda as missing a big piece [of her personality] and I guess it’s scary for adults not to understand that.
“It’s always a good story — and it will probably keep popping up,” she says. “‘The Bad Seed’ came in and out of fashion, it absolutely did. There were years where nobody mentioned it — but suddenly it’s back.”
“The Bad Seed” premieres 8 p.m. Sunday on Lifetime.