Picnic

 

William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Picnic served as the basis for the 1955 movie of the same name. The play is noted for being Paul Newman’s Broadway debut; Paul campaigned hard for the lead role but ended up in the secondary part of Alan while understudying for the lead. Eventually, he would take over the lead role. The play was a hit, running for nearly 500 performances and was shortly afterwards purchased by Columbia Pictures with the thought of adapting it into a feature film. 

Meanwhile, stage director Joshua Logan was struggling in his personal life. He suffered from extreme mood fluctuations that eventually required him to get medically treated with lithium. During one of these low times, he had a complete manic breakdown. It was a godsend when studio head Harry Cohn contacted him with an offer to direct the motion picture version of Picnic. Logan was grateful for the opportunity, and it allowed him to not only direct a story he was intimately familiar with but to also put his name on a prestige picture, one that was expected to be enormously popular. 

William Holden was on the tail end of his contract with Columbia Pictures and was more than willing to accept a steep pay cut to wrap up the contract. He was also excited about being involved in a prestige film, something that would help him negotiate a better-paying contract in the future. Perhaps he was even thinking Oscar nominations, too, but ultimately the only acting nod for this film went to Arthur O’Connell for his memorable supporting performance as the alcoholic, be-trodden bachelor manipulated into getting engaged to the local school teacher played by Rosalind Russell. Even though there was just the one acting nomination, there really isn’t a weak link in this entire cast. William Holden is perfectly cast as the wandering drifter, as is the woman he falls in love with played by Kim Novak. The biggest surprise, though, is the wonderfully playful, yet moving, performance by the young Susan Strasberg. Susan is at times bratty and spoiled but is also struggling with self-image and her perceptions of being a sibling to, in her own mind, a much more attractive older sister. 

The setting is Kansas, Labor Day 1955. A freight train passing through brings with it Hal Carter (William Holden), a vagrant. Hal is on the lookout for an old college roommate, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson), a wealthy friend who may be able to hook Hal up with some work. Before Hal can find his friend, though, he meets up with the Owens family: single mother Flo (Betty Field), her elder daughter Madge (Kim Novak), and younger daughter Millie (Susan Strasberg). Madge is engaged to Alan but, despite this being an opportunity to never have to worry about money again, she is uncertain of the marriage. So too is Alan’s father (Raymond Bailey), the owner of the local grain mill and patriarch of the family fortune. Alan shows Hal around the mill and offers him a start-up job as a grain scooper, which Hal reluctantly accepts. He also invites Hal to the Labor Day picnic, a big gathering in town that involves games, good food, and all-around fun. 

At the picnic, Hal accompanies the youngest daughter, Millie, participating in many of the games with her and generally having a good time. Along with her, he also hangs out with Rosemary (Rosalind Russell), a middle-aged schoolteacher who claims to prefer the single life, and her friend Howard Bevens (Arthur O’Connell). These two have been sneaking alcohol and, as the night wears on, have gotten drunk. When Hal takes an opportunity to dance with Madge in the moonlight, Rosemary drunkenly gets upset with him and tries to force him to dance with her instead, tearing his shirt in the process. Millie is also upset because she has always felt inferior to her older sister and sees Hal’s affections to Madge as further reassuring Millie that she is the lesser one. She discovers the bottle of alcohol Rosemary and Howard have been drinking from and finishes it off, getting violently sick. The commotion between Rosemary and Hal attracts attention from the townsfolk, including Flo, who accuses Hal of giving her daughter Millie the alcohol. Alan is also upset with Hal, seeing that he and Madge are attracted to each other. This starts a fight between the two friends that will force Hal to hop the next train back out of town lest he end up in jail. Meanwhile, Madge, who has fallen for Hal, too, has a difficult decision to make: Enter into a comfortable, but loveless, marriage with Alan or go after the man she loves, even though it will probably lead to financial troubles in the long run. 

We cannot always control who we fall in love with; that’s just a reality of our lives. But sometimes the one we fall in love with isn’t necessarily the one we should be with. That’s one of many reasons so many people enter into marriage only to see them fall apart in divorce. This is a romantic comedy, and the ending reflects that, but it is also one where it’s difficult to believe the relationship between Hal and Madge will be a lasting one. The realities of life seem stacked against these two. I’m not abdicating that she should have stayed put and married Alan; financial security isn’t enough to keep a marriage together, either. I’m just enough of a pessimist, though, to see past the end of the film and to whatever future these two lovebirds may have. Of course, I could be wrong about them; stranger things have happened, and people have changed and settled down because of love. But in the real world that rarely happens.

For a romance movie, the love story really wasn’t the thing that interested me. I was far more interested in Millie’s story. We first see her sitting with her back to the outside wall of her home, reading a book and sneaking a cigarette. It’s not long before we get a real sense of who this young girl is. We get no definite age for her, only that she will be attending college soon on a scholarship.  That would seem to suggest that she is 17 or 18, which aligns with the actress’s real age of 16 at the time of filming. Yet she looks and acts like a girl a bit younger than that and has a real body-positive problem thanks to being the younger sister of the prettiest girl in town. She’s considered the smart one while her sister got the looks. Madge doesn’t understand why Millie is so down on herself and has to be reminded that Millie needs to feel beautiful, too. It reminds me of something I was taught growing up. When you tell one girl she is beautiful and the other girl she’s smart, the first one will feel like she’s stupid, and the second will feel like she’s ugly. That is the danger of targeted compliments like these.

Millie is a far more interesting character to watch than Madge. She is acting out in response to her feelings of being unattractive. It’s comical watching her light up one of her smuggled cigarettes only to have to immediately hide it when her mother or sister suddenly shows up. She is acting out but doesn’t want to be caught doing it. Susan Strasberg was the daughter of the famous theater director and acting teacher Lee Strasberg, one of the creators of Actors Studio West in Los Angeles, and no doubt had some hands-on training with his daughter. She is simply magnetic in Picnic, drawing your eyes to her whenever she is on screen. Kim Novak was no slouch, either, but her character is far less interesting to watch in this movie. 

William Holden is doing a fine job, too, showing just why he was such a big star in his day. His attraction to Madge comes slowly and subtly. We don’t get a scene of him staring longingly at her as if to spell things out to the audience. Instead, when it happens, it happens naturally. Hal spends much of the early picture selling the lifestyle he has lived, including his various dalliances with women on the road, but when he tells Madge that he loves her, you can tell he doesn’t just say that to all the girls. When he has to leave town abruptly, he risks imprisonment to see her one last time and tell her where he is going to be next. We get the sense that he wants her to follow him but isn’t convinced she will, and we never get to see that moment when the two are reunited. 

Picnic is an interesting film when looking at the Academy Award-winning films over the decades. Romantic comedies don’t usually get into this prestigious list of films unless they also feature a sinking boat in the middle of the Atlantic. Yet it is on this list. It is an entertaining film and has quite a bit to say about self-esteem; not just with Millie, either. Rosemary states that she has no need for a man, but secretly she is unhappy being single and longs for Howard to propose to her. She takes it personally that she is middle-aged and has never been married, tying that fact to her own self-worth. Howard, on the other hand, sees marriage more on the scale of what he would have to give up in order to be married. It’s played for laughs, but there is an underlying seriousness to it all that sells the drama and helps us really care for these characters. 

This is a delightful film that is far more deep than it looks on the surface. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for a reason, and a good part of that is how it gets us to think about how others perceive themselves based on our reactions to them. It also has a good deal to say about how we can value ourselves based on outward conditions, some of which are entirely out of our hands. This is a well-written film that really should have gotten recognition by the Academy for the screenplay. It was passed over for that honor, though, but did manage to get the Best Picture nomination. It was the year for romantic comedies at the Oscars, as the film that beat Picnic for the big award was Marty, another movie about body positivity and self-esteem. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Motion Picture: Fred Kohlmar

Best Director: Joshua Logan

Best Supporting Actor: Arthur O’Connell

Best Art Direction - Color: William Flannery, Jo Mielziner, and Robert Priestley (won)

Best Film Editing: Charles Nelson and William Lyon (won)

Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: George Duning

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Release Date: December 7, 1955

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: William Holden, Kim Novak, Betty Field, Rosalind Russell, and Susan Strasberg

Directed By: Joshua Logan