- published: 02 Oct 2010
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Picnic is a 1955 film in Cinemascope. It tells the story of an ex-college football star turned drifter who arrives in a small Kansas town on Labor Day and is drawn to a girl who is already spoken for. The screenplay was adapted by Daniel Taradash from William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of 1953.
Directed by Joshua Logan, the film's leading roles were taken by William Holden and Kim Novak, with Susan Strasberg, Cliff Robertson, Arthur O'Connell, Nick Adams, Betty Field, Rosalind Russell, Verna Felton and Raymond Bailey in support. The film is sometimes cited as a richly detailed snapshot of life in the American Midwest during the 1950s. It won two Academy Awards and was nominated for four more.
The plot covers a 24-hour period. Hal Carter (William Holden) is a former college football star, adrift and unemployed after army service and a failed Hollywood acting career. On Labor Day (September 5, 1955), he arrives by freight train in a Kansas town to visit his fraternity buddy, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson), the son of a wealthy grain elevator owner, Mr. Benson (Raymond Bailey). Working for his breakfast by doing chores in the backyard of kindly Mrs. Potts (Verna Felton), Hal stops paperboy Bomber (Nick Adams) from pestering neighbor Madge Owens (Kim Novak), who happens to be dating Alan. Her single-parent mother (Betty Field) is hoping Madge will marry Alan, which would thus raise both Madge and herself into the town's highest, respectable social circles. Alan wants to marry Madge, but his father thinks she is beneath him. Madge tells her mother she doesn't love Alan and is weary of being liked only because she is pretty.