[4][5] It stars Dean Stockwell as Peter, a young war orphan who is subject to ridicule after his hair mysteriously turns green, and is based on the 1946 short story of the same name by Betsy Beaton.
Peter starts attending school and begins living the life of a normal boy, until his class gets involved with trying to help war orphans in Europe and Asia.
The realization about his parents and the work helping the orphans makes Peter turn very serious, and he is further troubled when he overhears the adults around him talking about the world preparing for another war.
Upon his return, the townspeople, upset about a boy who is now different, urge Gramp to encourage Peter to consider shaving his hair so that it might grow back normally.
[11][12] Shortly after executive producer Dore Schary at RKO enlisted Losey to direct this screenplay in 1947, production manager Adrian Scott was subpoenaed by the HUAC, and the project was put on hold.
[15][16] The song "Nature Boy" written by eden ahbez and sung by an uncredited chorus was a primary theme of the score for the motion picture.
Director Edward James Olmos, a fan of Stockwell's earlier film, had a replica of Peter's costume created for a war orphan character in The Plan named John.
[26]Hirsch adds that “there are indications of the kind of composition and use of camera that Losey will develop and refine in his subsequent work.”[27] Critics James Palmer and Michael Riley note that The Boy With the Green Hair resonates to this day as an “antiracist, pro-peace allegory or fable,” surviving contemporary efforts by RKO’s anti-communist Howard Hughes to undermine its message.
[28] Thematically, Losey hoped to establish a sharp visual contrast between the “the reality of the town” and its conformist residents with the “dreamlike” forested glade where the war orphans deliver their plea for universal peace.
[29] He conceived of a “dream-like transformation” between two these realms emulating the startling transition between the black-and-white and color sequences in Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939).
[31] Biographer Foster Hirsch argues that anti-war message is “really irrelevant.”[32] Losey’s treatment is less about war and more about an American establishment’s demand for social conformity: [T]he primal fear of difference which the film dramatizes has only marginal connections to the general issue of “war,” but powerful links to the contemporary hunt for Communists.”[33]Hirsch adds that the topic of “insidious conformity” anticipates director Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).ref>Hirsch, 1980 p. 32[34] Palmer and Riley observe that “the boy’s green hair [is] more effective as a symbol of individuality than” than as a metaphor suggesting “renewal or peace.”[35] The film was released on DVD on December 1, 2009, and on Blu-ray on May 30, 2023 as part of the Warner Archive Collection.