Tommy Christmas Scene

We’re starting out a little early here with the Christmas videos, but “Tommy” (1975) isn’t really a Christmas movie anyway. They just have this great scene in there at the Christmas party.

Everybody’s marching around, blowing horns in poor little traumatized Tommy’s ears and look at Frank Hobbs (Oliver Reed) sticking a Santa Claus mask in the kid’s face, after knocking back who knows how much booze he’s been drinking straight out of the bottle. Oliver Reed’s not quite as bad a villain as he was when he played Bill Sykes in “Oliver” (1968), but what a great actor he was!

Speaking of “Oliver!,” they had more of the kids listed in the credits than they have on IMDB for “Tommy.” They don’t list who any of these kids were who were at the Christmas party, but they do list little Tommy. He was played by a child actor, Barry Winch, who wasn’t in the acting business too long after this. He did a couple of TV episodes in a show called “Holding On” after this, and that’s it.

But how the heck did they film this scene and get little Barry to sit there like that? Was he really deaf? But wait — he does have a startle response right about 1:33 when Oliver Reed shouts ‘Tommy can you hear me?’ right in his ear.

Ann Margret is Tommy’s mom, Nora Walker. Tommy was traumatized from seeing his father killed. That’s how he became that “deaf, dumb and blind kid.” Later on he turns into Roger Daltrey of The Who.

It’s a pretty wild movie! It also boasts a cast that includes Elton John, singing the most famous song from the film “Pinball Wizard,” Eric Clapton, John Entwistle, Jack Nicholson, Tina Turner as “The Acid Queen,” and Keith Moon as Ernie, Tommy’s funny uncle, whom they use as a babysitter.

Frank and Nora had very questionable judgment when it came to babysitters. They even leave the poor kid with Cousin Kevin (Paul Nicholas), the school bully, the classroom cheat! Tommy is Roger Daltrey by now.