With apologies to every child actress who ever stepped onto the screen, I hereby state that the best performance ever given my one was that of a now virtually forgotten British youngster, Nova Pilbeam. The picture "Little Friend," and most of her others have long been mostly unavailable.
Americans saw Nova Pilbeam only three times as a child. Of the few pictures she made as a young leading woman, only one-Hitchcock's "The Girl Was Young/Young & Innocent"-is worth mentioning in any review of her performances.
She was fourteen when she played Felicity in "Little Friend." It's the story of divorce told through the eyes of a youngster, old enough to grasp what is happening, too young to comprehend the circumstances. She was a remarkably plain little girl in an era when screen children were all curls and dimples. But in her desperate anguish which drove her to the brink of suicide, she was almost beautiful.
She gave another superb performance two years later as Lady Jane Grey, the pawn of royal intrigue, in "Nine Days a Queen/Tudor Rose," certainly one of the most distinguished historical dramas ever filmed. And she appeared for Hitchcock twice-as the kidnapped child in the first version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and in "The Girl Was Young," the most underrated of his British thrillers.
Nova Pilbeam is just an odd name to movie fans today, but I'll wager that nobody who saw "Little Friend," or "Nine Days a Queen" has ever forgotten her.
Americans saw Nova Pilbeam only three times as a child. Of the few pictures she made as a young leading woman, only one-Hitchcock's "The Girl Was Young/Young & Innocent"-is worth mentioning in any review of her performances.
She was fourteen when she played Felicity in "Little Friend." It's the story of divorce told through the eyes of a youngster, old enough to grasp what is happening, too young to comprehend the circumstances. She was a remarkably plain little girl in an era when screen children were all curls and dimples. But in her desperate anguish which drove her to the brink of suicide, she was almost beautiful.
She gave another superb performance two years later as Lady Jane Grey, the pawn of royal intrigue, in "Nine Days a Queen/Tudor Rose," certainly one of the most distinguished historical dramas ever filmed. And she appeared for Hitchcock twice-as the kidnapped child in the first version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and in "The Girl Was Young," the most underrated of his British thrillers.
Nova Pilbeam is just an odd name to movie fans today, but I'll wager that nobody who saw "Little Friend," or "Nine Days a Queen" has ever forgotten her.