Picnic (1955 film)

On the morning of Labor Day 1955, a freight train brings vagrant Hal Carter to a Kansas town to visit his fraternity friend Alan Benson. While he stays with kind Helen Potts, Hal also meets Alan's girlfriend Madge Owens, her sister Millie, and their mother Flo. Alan is happy to see the "same old Hal" and shows him his family's sprawling grain-elevator operations. He promises Hal a steady job as a "wheat scooper" (though Hal would prefer to start off as an executive) and invites him to attend the town's Labor Day picnic. Later that day, Rosemary, a middle-aged schoolteacher, plans to accompany the picnic with her friend Howard Bevans. At the picnic, Madge is crowned the seasonal Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelt backwards). As Hal dances with Madge, an intoxicated Rosemary watches. She interrupts them and insists he dance with her. Hal is uncomfortable and resists, and Rosemary tears his shirt. Millie gets up, claiming to be sick. As Madge tries to help her, Millie pushes her away, saying everyone always thinks "Madge is the pretty one." She runs off, and Howard finds a bottle of alcohol she left behind, which her mother Flo inadvertently sees. When she asks who had given liquor to her underage daughter, Rosemary blames Hal. Embittered by Hal's rejection, Rosemary accuses him of being a fake who is just scared to act his real age, and afraid of ending up in the gutter "where you belong." Madge follows Hal to Alan's car and gets in with him. By the river, he tells her he was sent to reform school as a boy for stealing a motorcycle and that his whole life is a failure. They kiss. Outside Madge's house, they promise to meet after she finishes work the next evening. Hal drives back to Alan's house to return the car, but Alan has called the police and wants him arrested. Hal flees the house in the car with the police following close behind. He shows up at Howard's apartment, asking to spend the night there. Howard is very understanding and now has his own worries: Rosemary has begged him to marry her. Back at the Owens house, Madge and Millie cry themselves to sleep in their shared room. The next morning, Howard comes to the Owens house, intending to tell Rosemary he wants to wait, but at the sight of him she is overjoyed, thinking he has come to take her away. He wordlessly goes along with the misunderstanding. As Howard passes Madge on the stairs, he tells her Hal is hiding in the back seat of his car. Hal is able to slip away before the other women gleefully decorate Howard's car. While Howard and Rosemary happily drive off to the Ozarks, Hal and Madge meet by a shed behind the house. He tells her that he loves her and asks her to meet him in Tulsa, where they can marry and he can get a job at a hotel as a bellhop and elevator operator. Mrs. Owens finds them by the shed and threatens to call the police. Madge and Hal embrace and kiss. Hal runs to catch a passing freight train, crying out to Madge, "You love me! You love me!" Upstairs in their room, Millie tells Madge to "do something bright" for once in her life and go to Hal. Madge packs a small suitcase and, despite her mother's tears, boards a bus for Tulsa. ==Cast==

advertisement from 1956 Columbia Pictures acquired the screen rights to William Inge's play Picnic for $350,000 in September 1953. Daniel Taradash once indicated that Columbia studio head Harry Cohn had offered him the opportunity to direct Picnic in exchange for writing the script. However, Joshua Logan, who also directed Picnic on Broadway, was hired instead. Holden's talent agent persuaded him to take the role, and he agreed. However, he settled for a paltry salary of $30,000 instead of the $250,000 he would have otherwise earned. To prepare for the role, Holden exercised at the gym and shaved his chest for the shirtless shots. For the part of Millie, Logan had wanted Kim Stanley, who also originated the role on stage, but felt she would appear too old on film. Susan Strasberg, the daughter of prominent Method drama teachers Lee and Paula Strasberg, was recommended and cast after she was given a screen test. Reta Shaw, Elizabeth Wilson and Arthur O'Connell were the three actors who reprised their roles from the original Broadway production. Locations Picnic was mostly shot on location around Hutchinson, Kansas. • Salina - the opening scene where Hal jumps off a train, then meets Alan (Cliff Robertson) at Alan's father's large house. This location is also used for the Saline River (where Madge kisses Hal) and the scene where Hal escapes from the police by running under a waterfall. • Sterling - where the pre-picnic swim in the lake was filmed. ==Reception==

Box office Picnic earned $6.3 million in box office rentals in the United States and Canada and $9 million worldwide. ''Harrison's Reports called Picnic'' "[a]n excellent comedy-drama, adapted from the Broadway success of the same name. Photographed in CinemaScope and Technicolor, the poignant story offers an arresting blend of drama, comedy and compassion, centering around characters who are credible and human." Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote Picnic was "one of the more distinguished films of 1955. Like William Inge's earlier Come Back, Little Sheba, this brew of frustration and sex, from the Pulitzer Prize and Critics Award play, comes to a slow boil. Some of it, thereafter, is pretty scalding stuff." The Chicago Tribune wrote: "It is a taut two hours of masterful movie making adapted from the Pulitzer prize winning play by William Inge, deftly shaped for the screen by Daniel Taradash, and sensitively directed by Joshua Logan. The story presents a cross-section of many lives, but the telling is never hurried, the detail is impressive, and the performances are some of the finest of the year." The performances of the cast were mostly well-received. The Chicago Tribune described William Holden as "brash and virile and somehow pathetic" yet "memorable", Rosalind Russell was "almost frighteningly good", Kim Novak was "beautiful but wooden as the pretty Madge, and little Susan Strasberg is effective as her younger sister, who wishes she were beautiful instead of bright." Variety also wrote Russell was a "standout, moving in her plea for marriage, amusing as she pretends indifference to men and pitiable in her whiskey-inspired outburst against Holden." A cover story in Time magazine wrote Holden was "miscast" and the performances of "Betty Field, Kim Novak, Susan Strasberg and Rosalind Russell—falls flat, or wants to." Awards and nominations The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: • 2002: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions – #59 • 2005: AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – Nominated ==Music==

The film's "Theme from Picnic", composed by George Duning and Steve Allen (although Allen's lyrics were not used in the film), was released in three versions: • "Moonglow and Theme from 'Picnic'" by Morris Stoloff and the Columbia Pictures Orchestra reached #1 on the Billboard Top 100 and remained on the chart for 27 weeks. • "Moonglow and Theme from 'Picnic'" by George Cates and His Orchestra reached #4 on the Billboard Top 100 and remained on the chart for 22 weeks. • "Picnic", a vocal version by the McGuire Sisters, reached #13 on the Billboard Top 100 and remained on the chart for 20 weeks. The single was a double A-side with "Delilah Jones", a #37 hit. At one point, the three singles were in the Top 40 simultaneously, and the Stoloff and Cates versions ranked consecutively at #3 and #4 in the Top 100 chart of June 2, 1956. The soundtrack album reached #2 on the Billboard album chart, where it remained for 56 weeks beginning in February 1956. ==Subliminal marketing hoax==

In 1957, marketing researcher James Vicary said he had included subliminal messages such as "eat popcorn" and "drink Coca-Cola" in public screenings of Picnic for six weeks, claiming sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn increased 18.1% and 57.8% respectively. However, after being unable to replicate the results, Vicary later admitted that he had falsified the data. ==Remakes==

Picnic was remade for television twice. The first was in 1986, directed by Marshall W. Mason and starring Gregory Harrison, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Learned, Rue McClanahan and Dick Van Patten. The second remake was in 2000, starring Josh Brolin, Gretchen Mol, Bonnie Bedelia, Jay O. Sanders and Mary Steenburgen. The adaptation by Shelley Evans was directed by Ivan Passer. ==See also==