The Boy with Green Hair 1948

Police in a quiet town bring in a psychologist to understand a curiously silent runaway boy whose head has been shaved. Peter Fry, Dean Stockwell, a war orphan, begins telling the psychologist the life story that brought him to this moment.

After years moving from one neglectful aunt or uncle to another, he finds a steady second home with an understanding retired actor named Gramp Fry, Pat O’Brien. Peter starts at a new school and begins living the life of a normal boy, until his class becomes involved in helping war orphans in Europe and Asia.

Peter soon discovers that, like the children on the posters who haunt him, he too is a war orphan. The realization about his parents and the work helping other orphans makes him serious, and he is unsettled by adults talking about the world looming toward another conflict. The next day, after a bath, he discovers his hair has turned green, and the taunts from townspeople and peers drive him to run away.

In a lonely stretch of woods, the orphaned children from the posters appear to him. They tell him that, while he is a war orphan, his green hair can make a difference, and he must tell people that war is dangerous for children. He leaves determined to deliver this message to anyone who will listen. Upon his return, the townspeople, upset about a boy who looks different, urge Gramp Fry to encourage Peter to consider shaving his hair so it might grow back normally. Peter goes back to the woods to search for the poster children, but is chased by a group of schoolboys who try to cut his hair.

He eventually decides to have his head shaved, and the town barber, David Clarke, performs the deed. Peter then leaves home in the middle of the night, wearing a baseball cap and carrying a baseball bat.

Back in the present, Peter finishes his story. The psychologist, Dr. Knudson, Samuel S. Hind s, tells him that when someone really believes something, they don’t run away. Peter is reunited with Gramp Fry in the station’s waiting room. Gramp reads him a letter written by his father for his 16th birthday, in which his father shares beliefs about how some things are worth dying for and urges Peter to remind others if they forget. Encouraged to keep sharing his message, Peter is sure that his hair will grow back green again. The psychologist notes that he doesn’t care whether the hair was literally green, only that the message is heard. Gramp and Peter go home, carrying with them the idea that a young voice can remind a town of what’s worth standing up for.