Skip to main content

Film Friday: "Splendor in the Grass" (1961)

To celebrate Natalie Wood's birthday, this week on "Film Friday" I'm bringing you one of my favorite films of hers, which also happens to be the first film I ever saw with her.

Original release poster by Bill Gold
Directed by Elia Kazan, Splendor in the Grass (1961) tells the story of Wilma "Deanie" Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), two young lovers living in a small Kansas town in the late 1920s. Deanie's mother (Audrey Christie) is a domineering woman who boasts of her aversion to men and warns her daughter that nice girls do not have sexual feelings. Bud's father, Ace (Pat Hingle), an arrogant self-made millionaire, has "all his hopes pinned" on his son and tells him to forget marriage until he graduates from Yale. Unable to consummate their love, the confused and frustrated youngsters end their relationship. After Bud becomes sexually involved with Juanita Howard (Jan Norris), the most permissive girl in school, Deanie attempts suicide and is sent away for psychiatric care.

While Deanie is at the institution, Bud goes off to Yale, where he fails almost all of his courses. Sometime later, he learns that his sexually promiscous sister, Ginny (Barbara Loden), was killed in  car accident and that his father committed suicide after his oil holdings were wiped out by the October 1929 stock market crash. Bud then decides to leave Yale and marries a poor Italian waitress named Angelina (Zohra Lampert), whom he met in New Haven. When Deanie is released from the sanitarium after two years and six months, "almost to the day," fellow patient Johnny Masterson (Charles Robinson) proposes to her and offers her the chance for a new life. Before she can accept, however, Deanie feels that she must see Bud once more and goes to visit him at his little farm. During their brief reunion, they realize that both must accept what life has thrown at them and although they still love each other, they can never recover that blazing love of youth which they once had.

Deanie Loomis: Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not; rather find strenght in what remains behind.

In late 1957, while co-producing and directing William Inge's play The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Elia Kazan "dropped a casual remark" that the two might someday collaborate on a film project and asked the writer if he had any good material for a screenplay. Inge, whose credits include Bus Stop (1955) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Picnic (1953), had never written a script before, but he was intrigued by the suggestion and told Kazan a true story he had heard as a boy growing up in the 1920s in the small town of Independence, Kansas about a couple of high school kids who, like himself, felt trapped by the oppressive puritanism of time and place. Enthusiastic about the idea, Kazan immediately said, "let's do it."

By early spring in 1958, Inge submitted a first draft entitled "Splendor in the Grass," the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers which he felt reflected "the pain my generation expressed in coming to maturity, and with the conflicts we fought to find our personal standards when society demanded we accept only her own." According to Kazan, what the playwright handed in to him was a "dramatic narrative with dialogue" that lacked the essentials of a proper screenplay, so the two began working closely together to cut and rearrange Inge's script, giving it "form and shape" for the cinema. After receiving approval from the Motion Picture Production Code for the basic story of Splendor in the Grass, the film officially went into pre-production later that year.

Beatty, Kazan and Wood on the set
Consciously or unconsciously, Kazan always chose to make films that expressed his own opinion in some way and dealt with personal or social issues that he was familiar with. While Splendor in the Grass was reportedly a coded version of Inge's personal experience, his own "forbidden" love for a handsome high school senior, there were certain elements of the story that resonated with Kazan's own experiences as well, notably the effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the power of parents, particularly fathers, "to obstruct and distort the efforts of their children to develop their own lives and identities." 

In addition, Kazan also had a personal interest and involvement in another key theme of Splendor in the Grass, that of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, which had been present in his life since 1945, when his first wife insisted that they see an analyst in hopes to restore their marriage after his affair with the model turned actress Constance Dowling. Before filming began, Kazan sent the script to a psychiatrist, seeking a deeper analysis of the characters, and also visited the prestigious Menninger Clinic, a pioneering psychiatric institution specialized in the problems of young people founded in Tepeka, Kansas in the mid-1920s. To Kazan, the fact that the first mental hospital of its kind was located in mid-Western America was "almost an acknowledge that mid-America was cracking up, that its values were not working."

Natalie Wood as Deanie Loomis
When the time came for casting Splendor in the Grass, it was Inge who suggested Natalie Wood for the role of Deanie. Wood had been one of Hollywood's most successful child stars, hitting her peak with the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947), but by the early 1960s she was having a difficult time transitioning into more adult roles. Although Kazan had been impressed by her poignant Oscar-nominated performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955),  he was reluctant to cast an actress who had been declared "washed up" by the film industry and began considering Lee Remick and Jane Fonda for the part. When Kazan met Wood, however, he realized that she was indeed the right person to play Deanie. 

When Natalie was first suggested to me, I backed off. I didn't want a "washed-up child star." But when I saw her, I detected behind the well-mannered "young wife" front a desperate twinkle in her eyes. I knew there was an unsatisfied hunger there [...] I talked with her more quietly then and more personally. I wanted to find out what human material was there, what her inner life was [...] Then she told me she was being psychoanalyzed. That did it.
(Elia Kazan)

Audrey Christie and Natalie Wood
Splendor in the Grass was an exhilarating but wrenching experience for the 22-year-old Wood, who saw herself facing her innermost demons during the making of the film. The scene that proved most problematic for the young actress was the one where a heartbroken Deanie tries to drown herself in a lake. A few days before they shot the sequence, she told Kazan that she had "a terror of water, particularly dark water, and of being helpless in it" and wasn't sure that she could play the scene. The director then asked his assistant to get into the water with her and while that didn't entirely reassure her, she managed to do the scene. "On dry land she continued to shake with fear, then laughed histerically, with relief," Kazan later recalled. Ironically, the yacht from which Wood stepped into dark water to her premature death twenty years later was called The Splendor.

While Kazan was deciding whether to cast Jody McCrea or Troy Donahue in the role of Bud Stamper, Inge was working on a Broadway play called A Loss of Roses, starring an attractive 23-year-old actor named Warren Beatty. Although the production was a failure, Beatty received glowing reviews for his role as a young gas station attendant living in Depression-era Kansas and even received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Inge immediately recommended him to Kazan, convinced that he would be "just perfect" to play Bud, but the director thought Beatty was "awful raw, awful new and rather clumsy." However, Kazan saw something of Bud in Beatty and agreed to cast him in the role.

Pat Hingle and Warren Beatty
Briefly trained at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York, Beatty was a newcomer to the motion picture industry, appearing mostly in small television parts in shows like Studio One (1957) and Playhouse 90 (1959). He was ecstatic to learn that he had won the lead role in his first feature film and even more so to be working with Kazan, whom he greatly admired. Although Kazan thought Beatty was a little "snotty", he took him under his wing and was generous with his lessons, teaching the inexperienced actor "how to break down a script, how to think about acting, where to place the camera, and so on," much like he had done with James Dean during the making of East of Eden (1955). These proved to be valuable lessons for Beatty, who went on to produce and direct such successful films as the Best Picture-nominees Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981), the latter earning him an Oscar for Best Director.

Apart from the two leads, Kazan used East Coast, Broadway actors, many of them from the famed Actors Studio, of which he was one of the founders. Pat Hingle, for example, who played Bud's overbearing father, had worked with Kazan several times before, making a cameo appearance in On the Waterfront (1954) and providing the opening narration for Wild River (1960), as well as appearing in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. The future Mrs. Elia Kazan, Barbara Loden, was also a member of the Studio and was cast as the sexually promiscuous flapper Ginny Stamper, Bud's sister, her second film role after appearing in a small part in Wild River. Loden went on to become the first woman to write, direct and star in her own feature film, Wanda (1970), which received great acclaim at the 31st Venice International Film Festival. 

Beatty and Wood in a publicity still
According to most accounts, Wood was not particularly fond of Beatty when she first met him (apparently, she thought he "didn't bathe enough"). As filming progressed, however, Kazan noticed that something changed between them and claimed that they fell in love while he "wasn't looking," even though they were involved with other people at the time (Wood was married to Robert Wagner, while Beatty was engaged to the English actress Joan Collins). Although many asserted that their relationship did not begin during the making of Splendor in the Grass, by the time the film was released Wood and Beatty had left their significant others and were living together, a romance that lasted until the mid-1960s.

Shot entirely in New York over a period of five months, principal photography on Splendor in the Grass  wrapped up in August 1960. Geoffrey Shurlock of the Production Code Administration had followed Kazan's every step throughout production and proved to be even more imposing once the film was done. Upon viewing an initial version of the picture in February 1961, Shurlock argued that it could not be approved under the Code because of its "overly vivid portrayal of sex in a number of sequences." After Jack Warner asked that the film be re-edited so as to eliminate, or at least soften, the scenes that were seen as sexually explicit, Kazan spent the following months "dubbing, cutting, recutting, scoring, fighting with Warners and fighting with the Legion of Decency," until Splendor in the Grass finally passed the censors in October 1961.

Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood
Reportedly, Warner Bros. did not have very high expectations for Splendor in the Grass, but the film opened to solid box-office results and received generally positive reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "a frank and ferocious social drama that makes the eyes pop and the modest cheek burn [...] The production is in excellent color and is scenially superb." He especially applauded Wood and Beatty's performances, writing that "the authority and eloquence of the theme emerge in the honest, sensitive acting of Mr. Beatty and Miss Wood. The former, a surprising newcomer, shapes an amiable, decent, sturdy lad whose emotional exhaustion and defeat are the deep pathos in the film [...] And Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance, and her eyes in the final scene bespeak the moral significance and emotional fulfillment of this film."

Variety, on the other hand, was not so favorable in their assessment, writing: "Elia Kazan's production of William Inge's original screenplay covers a forbidding chunk of ground with great care, compassion and cinematic flair. Yet there is something awkward about the picture's mechanical rhythm. There are missing links and blind alleys within the story. Too much time is spent focusing on characters of minor significance." However, the reviewer did praise the entire cast, saying that both Wood and Beatty "deliver convincing, appealing performances"; Audrey Christie and Pat Hingle gave "truly exceptional, memorable portrayals" of Mrs. Loomis and Ace Stamper; and Fred Stewart was "excellent" as Mr. Loomis.

At the 34th Academy Awards ceremony held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in April 1962, William Inge won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, while Natalie Wood received a her second nomination for Best Actress, but lost to Sophia Loren for her performance in Vittorio De Sicca's Two Women (1960). The Best Picture winner that year was Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' West Side Story (1961), which also happened to star Natalie Wood.
 
Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty at the Academy Awards in 1962

Splendor in the Grass was one of the very first classic films I saw (I had to see it for a class I had while studying at the University of Notthingham in 2012). Although at the time I was still generally allergic to classic films, I remember that I really enjoyed it and was mesmerized by Natalie Wood's performance. I returned to it after Gene Kelly cured me of my allergy and loved it even more. Natalie is absolutely stunning in it and even though this was Warren Beatty's film debut, he is wonderful in it as well. I love Warren Beatty. He's just so pretty to look at. I missed half the plot of McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) because I was staring at him all the time. There is just something about him that grabs you from the moment you lay your eyes on him. He is sort of everything James Dean unfortunately never had the chance of being and I love that. In conclusion, Splendor in the Grass is one of those films that I recommend everyone to see. Not only is it filled with phenomenal performances, but it also explores themes, especially peer and family pressure, that are still relevant today.


_________________________
SOURCES:
Elia Kazan: A Life by Elia Kazan (1988) | Elia Kazan: The Cinema of an American Outsider by Brian Neve (2009) | Natalie Wood: A Life by Gavin Lambert (2004) | Star: The Life and Wild Times of Warren Beatty by Peter Biskind (2010) | Warren Beatty: A Private Man by Suzanne Finstad (2006) | TCMDb (Articles) | The New York Times review | Variety review

Comments

  1. Can't find anywhere, who was Joe in this film? Ty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm trying to find out who played Joe, the boy at the New Year's Eve party.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have a wooden love seat chair and rocker. It belonged to my Great Grandmother. I saw the same set in Splendor in the GRASS. ITS VERY OLD AND PASSED DOWN IN FAMILY. I WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It was from a scene in mental hospital.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Golden Couples: Gary Cooper & Patricia Neal

It was April 1948 when director King Vidor spotted 22-year-old Patricia Neal on the Warner Bros. studio lot. A drama graduate from Northwestern University, she had just arrived in Hollywood following a Tony Award-winning performance in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest . Impressed by Patricia's looks, Vidor approached the young actress and asked if she would be interested in doing a screen test for the female lead in his newest film, The Fountainhead (1949). Gary Cooper had already signed as the male protagonist, and the studio was then considering Lauren Bacall and Barbara Stanwyck to play his love interest.          Neal liked the script and about two months later, she met with the director for sound and photographic tests. Vidor was enthusiastic about Patricia, but her first audition was a complete disaster. Cooper was apparently watching her from off the set and he was so unimpressed by her performance that he commented, « What's that!? » He tried to con

Golden Couples: Henry Fonda & Barbara Stanwyck

In the mid- and late 1930s, screwball comedy was in vogue and practically every actress in Hollywood tried her hand at it. Barbara Stanwyck never considered herself a naturally funny person or a comedienne per se , but after delivering a heart-wrenching performance in King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937), she decided she needed a « vacation » from emotional dramas. In her search for a role, she stumbled upon a « champagne comedy » called The Mad Miss Manton (1938), originally intended as a Katharine Hepburn vehicle. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda as Melsa and Peter in The Mad Miss Manton .   Directed by Leigh Jason from a script by Philip G. Epstein, The Mad Miss Manton begins when vivacious Park Avenue socialite Melsa Manton finds a corpse while walking her dogs in the early hours of the morning. She calls the police, but they dismiss the incident — not only because Melsa is a notorious prankster, but also because the body disappears in the meantime. Sarcastic newspaper editor

Golden Couples: Clark Gable & Jean Harlow

  At the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony, MGM's hugely successful prison drama The Big House (1930) earned writer Frances Marion an Oscar for Best Writing. Hoping that she would be inspired to repeat that accomplishment, Irving Thalberg, head of production at Metro, sent Marion to Chicago, Illinois to research story ideas. While flicking through the pages of The Saturday Evening Post , she found an article revealing that, in a city where people distrusted the police, a small group of leading citizens met in secret to arrange their own justice for criminals. Marion took inspiration from that story and wrote The Secret Six (1931), in which Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone, stars of The Big House , play two mobsters prosecuted by a half a dozen vigilantes. Thalberg was pleased with the leading roles Marion wrote for Beery and Stone, but asked if she could also fill out one of the minor leads for Clark Gable , a tall, dark and handsome 30-year-old actor whom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recen

Film Friday: «Who Was That Lady?» (1960)

Theatrical release poster Directed by George Sidney , Who Was That Lady? (19 60 ) begins when che mistry p rofessor David Wilson (Tony Curtis) is caught by his wife Ann (Janet Leigh) kissing one of his female st u de nts. To stop her from divo rcing him , he a sk s for hel p from his good friend, television writer Michael Haney (Dean Mart in), who invents a crazy story that Davi d is working undercover with the FBI and kissed the student — a foreign agent — in the line of du ty. To convince Ann, Mi ke tricks Schult z (William Newel l), a prop man at the T V studio, into fabricating an FBI identification card for David and s up plying him with a g un. Ann is so t hrilled by the idea of being married to a secret agent t hat she forgives David. Meanwhile, Mike sets up a date wi th the Coogle sisters, Gloria (Barbara N ichols) and Florence ( Joi Lan sing), and takes David along , telling Ann that the girls are foreign agents. Just as Ann realizes that her h usband ha s

Christmas in Old Hollywood

The beautiful Elizabeth Taylor with an extremely cute little friend. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with their son Stephen (early 1950s). Here they are again. What an adorable picture! Paulette Goddard looking rather uncomfortable next to her Christmas tree. Boris Karloff and Ginger Rogers at a Hollywood Christmas party in 1932. The adorable Shirley Temple chatting with Santa. Here she is again with a dolly friend. Look how cute she looks here, modeling a new Christmas dress (1935). The fur-tastic Joan Crawford. Doris Day asking us to "do not disturb until Christmas." Don't worry, Doris, we shall not. Though it's past Christmas now, so I'm sure Doris won't mind if we disturb just a little bit. Priscilla Lane looking sparkling drapped in her garlands. A VERY young Carole Lombard sitting next to her tree (1920s). Jean Harlow looking stunning as always. Janet Leigh looking extra cute unde

Films I Saw in 2020

For the past four years, I have shared with you a list of all the films I saw throughout 2016 , 2017 , 2018 and 2019 , so I thought I would continue the «tradition» and do it again in 2020. This list includes both classic and «modern» films, which make up a total of 161 titles. About three or four of these were re-watches, but I decided to include them anyway. Let me know how many from these you have seen. As always, films marked with a heart ( ❤ ) are my favorites. Sherlock Jr. (1924) | Starring Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire and Joe Keaton The Crowd (1928) | Starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman and Bert Roach Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) | Starring Henry Fonda, Alice Brady and Marjorie Weaver Brief Encounter (1945) | Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard and Stanley Holloway The Bells of St. Mary's (1945) | Starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman The Girl He Left Behind (1956) | Starring Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood Gidget (1959) | Starring Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson an

Wings of Change: The Story of the First Ever Best Picture Winner

Wings was the first ever film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Since then, it has become one of the most influential war dramas, noted for its technical realism and spectacular air-combat sequences. This is the story of how it came to be made.   A man and his story The concept for Wings originated from a writer trying to sell one of his stories. In September 1924, Byron Morgan approached Jesse L. Lasky, vice-president of Famous Players-Lasky, a component of Paramount Pictures, proposing that the studio do an aviation film. Morgan suggested an «incident and plot» focused on the failure of the American aerial effort in World War I and the effect that the country's «aviation unpreparedness» would have in upcoming conflicts. Lasky liked the idea, and approved the project under the working title «The Menace.»   LEFT: Byron Morgan (1889-1963). RIGHT: Jesse L. Lasky (1880-1958).   During his development of the scenario with William Shepherd, a former war correspondent, Morga

80 Reasons Why I Love Classic Films (Part II)

I started this blog six years ago as a way to share my passion for classic films and Old Hollywood. I used to watch dozens of classic films every month, and every time I discovered a new star I liked I would go and watch their entire filmography. But somewhere along the way, that passion dimmed down. For instance, I watched 73 classic films in 2016, and only 10 in 2020. The other day, I found this film with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. that I had never heard of — the film is Mimi (1935), by the way — and for some reason it made me really excited about Old Hollywood again. It made me really miss the magic of that era and all the wonderful actors and actresses. And it also made me think of all the reasons why I fell in love with classic films in the first place. I came up with 80 reasons, which I thought would be fun to share with you. Most of them are just random little scenes or quirky little quotes, but put them together and they spell Old Hollywood to me. Yesterday I posted part one ; her

Top 10 Favourite Christmas Films

Christmas has always been a source of inspiration to many artists and writers. Over the years, filmmakers have adapted various Christmas stories into both movies and TV specials, which have become staples during the holiday season all around the world. Even though Christmas is my favourite holiday, I haven't watched a lot of Christmas films. Still, I thought it would be fun to rank my top 10 favourites, based on the ones that I have indeed seen. Here they are.  10. Holiday Affair (1949) Directed by Don Hartman, Holiday Affair tells the story of a young widow (Janet Leigh) torn between a boring attorney (Wendell Corey) and a romantic drifter (Robert Mitchum). She's engaged to marry the boring attorney, but her son (Gordon Gebert) likes the romantic drifter better. Who will she choose? Well, we all know who she will choose.   Holiday Affair is not by any means the greatest Christmas film of all time, but it's still a very enjoyable Yule-tide comedy to watch over the holi

The Sinatra Centennial Blogathon: Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly

  In January 1944, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer happened to see a young crooner by the name of Frank Sinatra perform at a benefit concert for The Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles. According to Nancy Sinatra, Frank's eldest daughter, Mayer was so moved by her father's soulful rendition of « Ol' Man River » that he made the decision right then and there to sign Frank to his studio. Sinatra had been on the MGM payroll once before, singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the Eleanor Powell vehicle Ship Ahoy (1942), although it is very likely that Mayer never bothered to see that film. Now that Frank was «hot,» however, Metro made arrangements to buy half of his contract from RKO, with the final deal being signed in February of that year. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in  Anchors Aweigh Being a contract player at the studio that boasted «more stars than there are in the heavens» gave Frank a sudden perspective regarding his own talents as a film performer. The «g