Joseph Losey knew it wasn't easy being green, nor Red for that matter. In this uneasy fable, racial bigotry, war's tragedies, and social insularity are brought together through the simplicity of a child's fantasy. Twelve-year-old Dean Stockwell plays a young orphan, Peter, whose propensity for whimsical thinking gets him into trouble in the grown-up world. When his hair inexplicably turns green, he becomes an outcast in his own rural community. The idyll of small-town America is anything but as Peter comes up against suspicion and prejudice for his tinted tresses. It isn't just the unsustainable greenery on his head that hounds him, but the many meanings he conjures to explain away his distinguished 'do, not the least being that green signifies “hope.” Ripening peacenik Peter's innocuous campaign to protect children from the ravages of war turns his wrongheaded neighbors against him. An uncanny mix of fantasy and reality, The Boy with Green Hair was also a bit of prophetic autobiography for a director who would soon be shunned as a Red-head.