splendour in the grsaas 1961 movie review

Splendor in the Grass
A film review by Christopher Null - Copyright © 2000 Filmcritic.com
You only get one chance to see the words "and introducing Warren Beatty," and that's in Splendor in the Grass, Elia Kazan's sprawling love story about tortured teens (Natalie Wood and Beatty) who drift together and apart and together and apart through the 1920s and 1930s. This flip-side of Rebel Without a Cause </misc/emporium.nsf/84dbbfa4d710144986256c290016f76e/4d920f1e0d2965318825700600797337?OpenDocument> is really Wood's movie altogether, though a really down and droll last act weakens her emotional tour de force in the first half substantially. Watchable but not great.
Rating
3.0 out of 5 Stars
Director: Elia Kazan
Producer: Elia Kazan
Screenwriter: William Inge
Cast
Natalie Wood as Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis
Pat Hingle as Ace Stamper
Audrey Christie as Frieda Loomis
Barbara Loden as Virginia "Ginny" Stamper
Zohra Lampert as Angelina
Warren Beatty as Bud Stamper
Fred Stewart as Del Loomis
Joanna Roos as Mrs. Stamper
John McGovern as Doc Smiley
Jan Norris as Juanita Howard
Martine Bartlett as Miss Metcalf
Gary Lockwood as Allen "Toots" Tuttle
Sandy Dennis as Kay
Crystal Field as Hazel
Marla Adams as June
Lynn Loring as Carolyn
Phyllis Diller as Texas Guinan
Sean Garrison as Glenn
Charles Robinson as Johnny Masterson (uncredited)
Ivor Francis as Dr. Judd (uncredited)

Peter Romano as Brian Stacy (uncredited)
Production

Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 American period drama film produced and directed by Elia Kazan, from a screenplay written by William Inge. It stars Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty (in his film debut) as two high school sweethearts, navigating feelings of sexual repression, love, and heartbreak. Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, Barbara Loden, Zohra Lampert, and Joanna Roos are featured in supporting roles.
Splendor in the Grass was released theatrically on October 10, 1961, by Warner Bros. to critical and commercial success, grossing $4 million, and received two nominations at the 34th Academy Awards for Best Actress (for Wood) and Best Original Screenplay, winning the latter.
Plot
In 1928 Kansas, teenagers Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis and her boyfriend, Bud Stamper, want a more physically intimate relationship, but heed the advice of their parents not to become more involved for the sake of Deanie's reputation and Bud's future plans for college. Bud's sister, Ginny, a flapper, is more worldly, having returned from Chicago after an annulment and rumors of an abortion to the disappointment and shame of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ace Stamper. Soon, Bud rescues Ginny from an attempted rape at a New Year's Eve party, but disturbed by what he has seen, tells Deanie they should stop fooling around, and they break up.

Bud has a liaison with a friend, Juanita. Shortly afterward, Deanie explodes in anger when her mother asks if she is still a virgin. Allen "Toots" Tuttle takes Deanie to a school dance where she sees Bud, and tries to entice him into having sex. Bud rebuffs her and Deanie runs back to Toots, who drives her to a private spot. While there, Deanie realizes that she can't go through with sex, at which point she is almost raped. Escaping from Toots and driven close to madness, she attempts suicide by jumping in the pond, but is rescued just before reaching the waterfalls. Her parents sell their oil stock to pay for her institutionalization, and fortuitously turn a profit prior to the Crash of 1929 that leads to the Great Depression.

While Deanie is in the institution, she meets patient Johnny Masterson, who has anger issues targeted at his parents, who want him to be a surgeon. The two form a bond. Meanwhile, Bud is sent to Yale, where he fails practically all his courses but meets Angelina, the daughter of Italian immigrants who run a local restaurant in New Haven. In October 1929, Bud's father Ace travels to New Haven in an attempt to persuade the dean not to expel Bud from school. Bud tells the dean he only aspires to own a ranch. The stock market crashes while Ace is in New Haven, and he loses almost everything. He takes Bud to New York for a weekend, including to a cabaret nightclub, and has a prostitute sent to Bud's room; Bud rebuffs her. Ace commits suicide by jumping from a building – something he was joking about a short time earlier.

Deanie returns from the asylum after two years and six months, "almost to the day". Ace's widow has gone to live with relatives, and Bud's sister has died in a car crash. Deanie's mother wants to shield her from any potential anguish from meeting Bud, so she pretends to not know where he is. When Deanie's friends from high school come over, her mother gets them to agree to feign ignorance on Bud's whereabouts. However, Deanie's father refuses to coddle his daughter and tells her that Bud has taken up ranching and lives on the old family farm. Her friends drive Deanie to meet Bud at an old farmhouse. He is dressed in plain clothes and married to Angelina; they have an infant son named Bud Jr. and another child on the way. Deanie lets Bud know she is going to marry John (who is now a doctor in Cincinnati). During their brief reunion, Deanie and Bud realize that both must accept what life has thrown at them. Bud says, "What's the point? You gotta take what comes." They each relate that they "don't think about happiness very much anymore."[3]

As Deanie leaves with her friends, Bud only seems partially satisfied by the direction his life has taken. After the others are gone, he reassures Angelina, who has realized that Deanie was once the love of his life.[3] Driving away, Deanie's friends ask her if she is still in love with Bud. She does not answer them, but her voice is heard reciting four lines from Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality":

"Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower
We will grieve not; rather find
Strength in what remains behind."

Cast
Natalie Wood as Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis
Pat Hingle as Ace Stamper
Audrey Christie as Frieda Loomis
Barbara Loden as Virginia "Ginny" Stamper
Zohra Lampert as Angelina
Warren Beatty as Bud Stamper
Fred Stewart as Del Loomis
Joanna Roos as Mrs. Stamper
John McGovern as Doc Smiley
Jan Norris as Juanita Howard
Martine Bartlett as Miss Metcalf
Gary Lockwood as Allen "Toots" Tuttle
Sandy Dennis as Kay
Crystal Field as Hazel
Marla Adams as June
Lynn Loring as Carolyn
Phyllis Diller as Texas Guinan
Sean Garrison as Glenn
Charles Robinson as Johnny Masterson (uncredited)
Ivor Francis as Dr. Judd (uncredited)

Peter Romano as Brian Stacy (uncredited)
Production
Drive-in advertisement from 1962

Filmed in New York City at Filmways Studios, Splendor in the Grass is based on people whom screenwriter William Inge knew while growing up in Kansas in the 1920s. He told the story to director Elia Kazan when they were working on a production of Inge's play The Dark at the Top of the Stairs in 1957. They agreed that it would make a good film and that they wanted to work together on it. Inge wrote it first as a novel, then as a screenplay.

The film's title is taken from a line of William Wordsworth's poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood":

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind...

Two years before writing the screenplay for the film, Inge wrote Glory in the Flower (1953), a stage play whose title comes from the same line of the Wordsworth poem. The play relates the story of two middle-aged, former lovers who meet again briefly at a diner after a long estrangement; they are essentially the same characters as Bud and Deanie, though the names are Bus and Jackie.

Scenes of Kansas and the Loomis home were shot in the Travis section of Staten Island, New York City.[4] Exterior scenes of the high school campus were shot at Horace Mann School in the Bronx. The gothic buildings of the North Campus of The City College of New York stand in for Yale University in New Haven.[5] The scenes at the waterfall were shot in High Falls, New York, summer home of director Kazan.[5]

Warren Beatty, while having appeared on television (most notably in a recurring role on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), made his screen debut in this film. He had met Inge the year before while appearing in Inge's play A Loss of Roses on Broadway.[6]

Inge also made his screen debut in the film,[7] as did Sandy Dennis who appeared in a small role as a classmate of Deanie.[6] Marla Adams and Phyllis Diller were others who made their first appearances in this film.[6] Diller's role was based on Texas Guinan, a famous actress and restaurateur, who owned the famous 300 Club in New York City in the 20s.
Reception