Phillip Alford

Mr Radley’s house is frightening, which is part of its attraction to the children in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Phillip Alford’s Jem takes that interest seriously, alongside Mary Badham’s Scout and John Megna’s Dill. We enjoyed being in their company because their fears feel important to them, even when an adult might find them foolish. Alford helps make the time before the courtroom absorbing enough to matter in its own right. He seems fully occupied with the business of being young, rather than waiting for the adults to give him something useful to do.

His older-brother performance works particularly well beside Badham, whose Scout supplies so much of the film’s life. Alford’s unforced manner keeps their childhood recognisable, and director Robert Mulligan allows the children’s curiosity and apprehension to carry these stretches. We recommend the film warmly, with a reservation about how much attention it gives to Atticus’s goodness. The children benefit from being allowed to interest us without having to impress us with their virtue.

That debut remains the centre of Alford’s reputation; the later work offers little basis for a larger account of his acting. He played Jace Landers in the two-part television presentation Bristle Face (1964), then Boy Anderson in Shenandoah (1965), another family drama set in the American South. He left acting in his early twenties, leaving a small body of screen work. We would be wary of treating those few credits as evidence that he could only do one thing, or of inventing the performances a longer career might have brought.

A performance like Jem is easy to take for granted because it asks for so little special attention. Yet the children’s scenes depend on all three actors accepting the same fears as serious, and Alford never seems to be standing outside that childhood to explain it. Mulligan gives their interests time, and the actors make that patience worthwhile. Watch To Kill a Mockingbird for the children as well as for Gregory Peck.