Bad Seed

Colonel and Christine Penmark live in a small Southern town with their daughter, Rhoda. On the surface, little Rhoda Penmark is sweet, charming, full of old-fashioned graces, loved by her parents and admired by all her elders. But Rhoda's mother has an uneasy feeling about her. When one of Rhoda's schoolmates is mysteriously drowned at a picnic, Mrs. Penmark is alarmed, since the boy who was drowned was the one who had won the penmanship medal that Rhoda felt she deserved. Bad Seed grew from the novel by William March to the Broadway stage, and later the Academy Award-nominated film The Bad Seed.