'Picnic' film poster
Ah, the afterglow of Labor Day. That last, hallowed holiday of a fleeting summer sun, its golden rays warming and caressing a hardworking humankind. A splendid day, indeed, for contemplating our ups and downs, pleasures and disappointments.
This year, in the wake of our holiday celebration, I found myself recalling my Black Milwaukee family’s St. Mark’s Methodist church picnics on Labor Day at Estabrook Park and Lincoln Park, organized by my late grandfather, Sandal C. Carter, the church choir director. And great fun frolicking with childhood friends such as Beverly Beckley, Connie Faye Connor and Herbert “Junior” Hall.
This Labor Day, I also basked in the glittering glow of the imagination of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Picnic, brought to the screen in 1955.
Directed by Joshua Logan and boasting an all-star cast of William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Arthur O’Connell, Cliff Roberston, Susan Strasberg, Betty Field, Verna Felton, Nick Adams and Phyliss Newman, this wonderful film, set in Kansas, captured small town middle America at its charming best.
Holiday Pleasure
In the film, the holiday pleasure of neighboring families was happily, then troublingly, interrupted by frazzled drifter Hal Carter (Holden)—an ex-college football star seeking his old roommate Alan Benson (Robertson). Before finding him, Holden is smitten by lovely young Madge Owens (Novak) – to the disdain of her possessive mother Flo (Field), who wants her to snag wealthy Robertson. But she is encouraged by her smarter, teen-age sister Millie (Strasberg).
Holden charms the Owens family’s elderly, next door neighbor Helen Potts (Felton), bullies paperboy Bomber (Adams) who also has his eyes on Novak, and joins the neighbor families at a riverfront park for the small town’s crowded, annual Labor Day picnic.
A series of startling, albeit poignant, events ensue after Holden visits the rich Benson family’s huge grain elevators and begs hid old buddy for a job. Robertson agrees to hire him as a low-level grain scooper, and boasts about the beauty of his girlfriend, Novak.
Following a day of fun and games, the picnic evening finds Novak crowned Queen of Neewollah—Halloween spelled backwards. After being introduced, she arrives on the river in a paddleboat wearing a red-white fur cape and crown, to the strains of “Ain’t She Sweet.” In the film’s most memorable moments, Holden and Novak glide across a moonlit dance floor to “Moonglow,” played from a bandstand.
Watching them arouses the jealousy of old maid schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (Russell)—a roomer in the Owens home—who rips Holden’s shirt trying to dance with him. After being rebuffed, her boyfriend Howard Bevans (O’Connell), calms her down as she moans over and over, “I wanna have a good time.”
Meanwhile, Strasberg is sick from the liquor in O’Connell’s suit jacket and her mother blames an innocent Holden, who flees with Novak in Robertson’s car.
Making love near a waterfall, Holden asks Novak to go away with him. She refuses, then wavers. After Robertson calls police, Holden returns the car to the Robertson home and two cops arrive. Holden slugs them and flees in the car to O’Connell’s store, where he is welcomed. O’Connell says Russell has told him not to visit her unless he is willing to get married.
The next morning, O’Connell drives to the Owens home with Holden hiding in the back seat. He informs Novak, who meets Holden outside. He again begs her to join him in Tulsa, where he can work as a hotel bellhop, and hops a fast-moving freight train. Despite her clinging mother, Novak leaves for Tulsa at the urging of Strasberg.
The wavering O’Connell reluctantly agrees to marry Russell and, after the wedding, they leave to honeymoon at his cousin’s place in the Ozarks. Russell’s students cheer as they pass the school on the way and, thumbing her nose at the school building, she joins O’Connell for a drink.
The film ends as Holden is seen atop a speeding freight car and Felton consoles Field, distraught over losing her daughter to the vagabond Holden. She soothingly tells her: “I liked him, Flo. There was a man in the house. And it seemed good.”
Unlike this wonderful movie, Labor Day in recent years means fewer picnics, more holiday sales, fewer family gatherings and listening to more political speeches. Simple things like a paddleboat on a river and a bandstand in a park now, for the most part, are gone.
But for me, every year on, and after, Labor Day—the last warm weather holiday when America pauses and rests—all is well when I remember the splendor of 1955’s colorful, unforgettable Picnic, as well as my family’s happy Labor Day church picnics. Both live forever in my hometown Milwaukee heart.
