Child actors

The child film actor I recall best is Freddie Bartholomew chiefly because he could play English roles, usually toff English roles. Though when I was young I didn't like him at all, not in "David Copperfield" or in "Captains Courageous"; but when I got older and saw some of his films on TCM and other TV stations I have to admit I thought him rather good. Certainly, in "Captains Courageous", from the Kipling novel, he was superb; maybe he was playing himself or playing someone he had known - a toffy-nosed prig of a boy from an upper class family who bossed his servants and was simply a perfect prat (twerp, twit and maybe twat too). While it had an oscar-winning performance from Spencer Tracey as a yeeoldee Nowegianee sailor (oscar winning! it was one of the most ridioculous pieces of acting I've ever seen), Bartholomew was the brilliant: he showed how the character of the twit, prig, twerp (and maybe twat too) changed when being forced to suffer the perils of ocean life on a fishing boat; he turned into a decent, caring guy "with a heart".
Roddy McDowell I didn't like either. I am talking about his performance in "How Green was my Valley" in which he played the youngest son in a South Wales mining family. Again, on re-seeing it I think he's rather good: "hugely appealing" is how David Thomson, the American film critic, describes him in that film.
Sometime directors do strange things to get from a young actor a performance they wish to have. Carol Reed in "The Fallen Idol" told the young actor in that film stories that had no bearing on the plot he was involved in in the picture - stories that induced the emotional responses he required.
Vincent Minelli did a very cruel thing in making "Meet me in St Louis". Mark Steyn in his "Songbook" tells of speaking to Hugh Martin, one of the songwriters of the film; he remarked that the scene in which Margaret O'Brien smashes the snowmen to pieces "was an incredibly powerful scene". "It was child abuse," Martin replied. "Just before shooting that day Minelli told the girl that her dog had been run over. He hadn't. But Margaret O'Brien burst into tears and he just kept the cameras rolling."