Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
The war changed many cultural attitudes, both in the
United States and abroad, and afterward children were
viewed as less carefree and more conflicted. Perhaps the
actor best exemplifying this change was Roddy
McDowall (1928–1998), who started making films in
Britain at the age of eight and became a star with his
first Hollywood film, How Green Was My Valley (1941),
when he was thirteen. McDowall’s performance as a boy
in a Welsh mining town was imbued with tender torment, and he brought that same sensitivity to his subsequent films, such as My Friend Flicka (1943). Another
impressive actor of the war years was Margaret O’Brien
(b. 1937), who began acting when she was four and
found stardom the next year as the title character of
Journey for Margaret (1942), a film about an English girl
orphaned during the war. O’Brien appeared in eight
films over the next two years, including Lost Angel
(1943) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), earning her a
special Academy Award as the ‘‘outstanding child
actress of 1944.’’ Her output nonetheless slowed thereafter, although she won praise in the prominent role of
Beth in Little Women (1949). Unlike McDowall, whose
further acting work was prodigious, O’Brien had few
notable roles after the early 1950s.
The child actor who can best make the claim for avoiding the curse of obscurity is Elizabeth Taylor (b. 1932),
whose fame only increased as she aged beyond adolescence.
Taylor started in movies in 1942 at the age of ten, with a
striking beauty and endearing pathos that made her a
sensation in Lassie Come Home (1943) and National
Velvet (1944). She moved into teenage roles with
ease, and unlike most other child stars, Taylor moved into
adult roles while still in her teens, getting married at
eighteen in Father of the Bride (1950) and having a child
the next year in the sequel, Father’s Little Dividend
(1951). Her success grew even greater over the next two
decades, making her one of the biggest stars in Hollywood
history.
Another success story is that of Natalie Wood
(1938–1981), whose performance as a skeptical child
doubting the existence of Santa Claus in Miracle on
34th Street (1947) was further evidence of the hardening
attitudes behind children’s roles after the war. She continued in many minor films through the rest of her
childhood and found her foremost roles later playing
teenagers. Still, for every Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie
Wood, there were numerous fading child stars like Bobby
Driscoll (1937–1968), notable in Song of the South
(1946) and Treasure Island (1950) but out of work by
his early twenties, then dead at thirty-one, and Claude
Jarman, Jr. (b. 1934), who won a special Academy
Award at the age of twelve for his very first film, The
Yearling (1946), made a few movies as a teen, and finished acting for the big screen at twenty-two.