Hot Time in the Old Town

 

 

 

 

 This is my entry in the 6th Annual Golden Boy Blogathon hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema and The Flapper Dame

 

 

 

 

The 50's were a different time altogether.  One can look at the average 50's drama and either wax nostalgic for lost innocence or maybe cringe at the closed-minded mores that governed what constituted "polite" society.  I have to admit I would probably have not fit in well in the 50's.  But then again, that stems from an upbringing that began sometime around 1970 (when I would have been 8, BTW).

Even so, those halcyon days did have a few things going for it that you would be hard pressed to find in today's world.  In the 50's people actually did things like give an itinerant bum a meal for doing a few chores around the house. And people did not look askance, and with a touch of suspicion at said stranger when he showed up.

William Holden, the aforementioned "bum", was 37 when this movie was made.  Not sure how old he is supposed to be in this film. For the sake of talking about the character, I'm going to say his character, Hal, is about 25, though.  Hal went to college (but flunked out in his junior year) and did a stint in the Army, and then bummed around for a bit.

But Holden looks damn good for 37, especially when his shirt is off.  According to my research, they had to shave his chest for those scenes.  (Possibly because they couldn't convincingly dye the hair on his chest good enough so it looked convincingly young?)

Picnic is based on an original play written by William Inge, a playwright who had some limited success on Broadway with four big hits, but later in life fell into depression because he felt nothing ever lived up to his first successes. Sad note: that depression eventually led to him committing suicide in 1973. 

 

 

 

 

Picnic (1955):

Pulling in to an unnamed town in Kansas (the opening train scene was filmed in Salina, as noticed by the sign on a building as it comes into town, but most of the film was shot in Hutchison), a train conductor lets Hal (William Holden) out of one of the cargo cars.  Hal tells the conductor he has a bigwig friend in town that he has come to see.  The conductor is, not surprisingly, unconvinced, but wishes him luck anyway.  Hal goes to use a nearby creek to wash up and then wanders in to town.

He sees young Millie (Susan Strasberg) playing in her yard, and while he watches her, the neighbor Mrs. Potts (Verna Felton) invites him in for a meal.  He repays the hospitality by doing some yard work.  Which is an excuse for him to take off his shirt.  Which garners attention from the whole family of girls next door; Millie, Madge (Kim Novak), and their mom, Flo (Betty Field).  As well as town schoolteacher, Rosemary (Rosalind Russell).

Madge

Millie

Mrs. Potts and Flo

Rosemary

Madge has a part time boy friend, Alan (Cliff Robertson), but she also has several admirers, including "Bomber" (Nick Adams).  She has plenty of potential prospects, obviously, but her mother says her time is short.  She only has her looks to snare a man for a short time because it is a quick leap from 20 to 40.  (She is just 19 at the time of the film).

Mom tells her that they made a mistake doting on her as a child, and that she spends more time and attention on Millie because she doesn't want to make the same mistakes.  She also tells her that she should get serious with Alan, because marriage to him, he being the richest prospect in town, would be a good thing for her.

(The idea that a woman is nothing on her own and needs to be married to be important in life is one of the issues I struggle with in watching 50's films.  But fortunately, that is one of the issues that this film addresses and, I think, attempts to dismantle, in it's own way.)

It turns out that Alan is the "old friend" that Hal has in town, so his tale of having a bigwig friend he told the conductor at the beginning is actually true.  Hal goes to Alan seeking out a job.  Hal has dreams of a cushy office job, but Alan tells him if he comes to work he'll basically have to start off small. Like as a laborer.

 At a local swimming hole, all the girls are entranced by this sexy new guy in town.  Millie tells her friends that Hal is taking her to the picnic. Although Millie is only about 15, if my math is right (Madge is 4 years older than Millie), and Hal is not interested in her other than just as a friend tagging along to the picnic, even Millie exhibits some attraction to him.

Mom is starting to get a little put off by Hal.  She wonders how he ever got in to college (it was a football scholarship), and how come the fraternity he joined with Alan pledged him, since apparently in those days fraternities usually had a little more :breeding" in their selection of candidates. (Mom is starting to show her feathers as an elitist, surprising since she is not in such an elitist environment.)

She is not the only elitist in the film.  Alan's father disapproves of Madge because she is from a lower economic class.  But elitism is not the main focal point of the film.  I may or may not be in the minority on this (and it's possible I am getting different signals, since this movie is often described as a tender and old-fashioned film), but I think there are a lot of proto-feminist ideas being put forth, at least in subtext.  The film seems to be saying that the old-fashioned view that women are nothing without a man in their lives is outdated. 

After all, Madge is resistant to the idea that she is only supposed to marry for the advancement of her status in town.  And Rosemary, who is on the verge of becoming the classic spinster and old maid, is desperate to get married. Not because she wants a man in her life, necessarily, else why should she try to latch on to a guy like Howard (Arthur O'Connell), who doesn't seem like all that much of a catch to me? Even Flo, as the mother whose husband left her to raise her two girls alone, seems to be a counterpoint to that tradition in the way she is portrayed.

The picnic scenes include several classic contests, none of which add to the movie in any way, but are apparently needed to convey the old-fashioned feeling of the small town  tradition. (And at least one reviewer I read during the preparations for this blog suggests that the director just took advantage of the use of the extras at a real celebration where he was filming to bulk up the film...)  But as the day winds down, we get a little more insight into the character of Hal and who he thinks he is (or who he wishes he was...) Never having become the man he wants to be in real life, he is not averse to building himself up in the eyes of the people with whom he is hanging out.

But is Hal anymore guilty than anyone else? It feels like everyone else in town is either running from their past, hiding from the future, or both. Alan seems to struggling with living up to his father's ideals Rosemary is, well, worried about becoming an old maid. Millie seems to hide behind books because she has to compete with her older sister who is "the pretty one" ( I kept expecting her to say "Everyone loves Madge. It's always Madge. Madge, Madge, Madge!) and she has to settle for what she can get. Flo has worries about her daughters futures because of the things she went through in her own past.  The only one who really seems comfortable in his own life is Howard..

At the end of the picnic is a dance.  Hal dances with Millie, which causes Madge to become a little jealous and she ends up dancing with Hal. (And James Wong Howe's lighting of this scene is one of the more impressive, because the camera makes the scene look more like a painting than an actual movie scene).  And Rosemary, who is getting drunk, decides she wants to dance with Hal, too.  But Hal rejects her advances and she tears his shirt in the struggle. And when Millie gets sick, and is discovered to have been drinking, Rosemary tries to pin the blame on Hal.

Hal, struggling with his own demons, to be sure, is becoming less and less enamored of this idyllic setting. He leaves the picnic, but Madge tags along. The relationship between Madge and Hal comes to a head, because Madge, like nearly all the women in the town, finds herself attracted to Hal. But Madge's attraction is more than just superficial.  Made likes the way that Hal doesn't make her feel like just a pretty face and nice figure. And the two kiss.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Rosemary confronts Howard, making him come to a final decision over their long-term courtship. She insists that Howard HAS to marry her, and thus, we find that even Howard has his own little fears about the future.  As he he tells Rosemary, sometimes, as time goes on, you become complacent with the lot in life you've been given,, "until it becomes too late to change".  (and thus, for me, Howard becomes the most relatable character, since his lot in life is similar to mine.)

When Hal returns Alan's car, the police are waiting at his house. It seems Alan is a bit perturbed that Hal has been horning in on his relationship with Madge and has filed a report that Hal stole the car (when, after all, Hal has been loaned the car by Alan). Hal has a scuffle with Alan and then runs, but is chased by the police. He manages to elude them and shows up at Howard's house, asking for Howard to let him stay the night, planning to leave town the next day.

There is a (somewhat) happy ending to it all, as eventually, most of the people facing bleak or uncertain futures do find fulfillment.  (Of sorts. Perhaps Howard's eventual change may not have been fulfilling enough for him as it was for Rosemary.  And I can identify with his resignation to go forward even if he was initially reluctant.) 

But that's not necessarily how it was planned out..  Apparently the original Inge play had a grimmer and starker ending,  Note: I got this information from Joe Bob Brigg's phenomenal treatise on "Sexy Movies That Changed History" Profoundly Erotic. Apparently the director, Joshua Logan, wanted a less bleak ending to the film than the playwright, William Inge, had initially conceived.  The play, as originally written, ended with Madge having turned into an old maid herself, rejected not only by Hal, but also having lost Alan's love, too, and is living a life in despair and shame.  This from the days when it was still a Broadway play.

 So some interesting tidbits of information I garnered;

First: Even though Holden himself thought he was too old for the role, he took it, mainly to fulfill a contract he had signed. It was the last one he had to make for the contract.  And he did not like his co-star Kim Novak all that much. And he had such a hard shoot with her, especially the scene where they had to dance. According to my info, he finally asked to be allowed to shoot that scene drunk, because it was the only way he could feel comfortable with dancing, especially with her.

And Novak, for her part, felt she was not quite adept enough for her role.  And it sometimes shows, if you ask me, The director apparently begged and pleaded to be able to cast someone (ANYBODY) else.  But producer was adamant that his new "ingenue" be given the primary role.  I personally was never that impressed with her as an actress.  Even Vertigo, which is probably considered her top performance, just never really clicked with me.

Rosalind Russell declined to be nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the movie because she felt her good days were still ahead of her and didn't want what she thought would be the death knell for her potential starring roles if she was classed in a "supporting actress" mold. And since at least two bravura performances were still in her future (in Auntie Mame and Gypsy) perhaps she wasn't wrong.

Cliff Robertson was just getting his start in the business. This was his first credited role.  And you know he had a pretty good career.  After all John F. Kennedy himself tagged Robertson as being the best choice to play him in P.T. 109 and he an Oscar for Charly.

But the most interesting piece of trivia I found concerned the woman who played Mrs. Potts, (whom I consider the most likeable character in the film). She had a pretty good career up until her death in 1966.  But one of her most memorable "roles"? Her picture was the one on the desk of Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan), who was identified as his wife, Mildred in the series. And this long after her passing. (Morgan's connection with her had to do with his long term association with Felton in two other TV series from the 50's, December Bride and Pete and Gladys).

I don't consider Picnic to be a true gem of the classic 50's small town life that some critics seem to identify it.  To me it seems hardly a step above Peyton Place, which is definitely not a movie you would associate with being a love letter to life as it was in those days.  But is it horrible? No, not really.  I just come away from it with a different view.

For further review: Previous entries in Golden Boy Blogathons:

The Horse Soldiers

The Devil's Brigade

Bridge on the River Kwai (as well as The Bridges of Toko-Ri)