SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS 1961

The weird thing about sexual repression is how it creates, then proceeds to foster and perpetuate, the atmosphere of shame and sin it purports to be on guard against. Case in point: so-called "family" entertainment.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955) is the dirtiest movie I ever saw. Really. This corn-fed ode to spring, sparkin', and spoonin' is nothing but a wall-to-wall smut-fest obsessed with fornication. Or, fornicatin' as the characters themselves would probably drawl, were the film able to stop being so coy and wholesome for five minutes and just lay out on the table what is obviously its sole purpose, preoccupation, and focus. For nigh on 2 ½ hours (dialect helps to get into the spirit of things), horny farmhands in tight jeans and overheated farmer's daughters in calico dresses and bullet bras talk and think of little else but sex. Sure, it's all coded and cloaked in innuendo-soaked songs and double-entendre choreography, but Oklahoma! is like one long, whispered-behind-the-barn dirty joke. A rumps and udders horse opera. There's your dim-witted, semi-nymphomaniac who "cain't" say no; Kansas City bur-lee-cue dancers going just as "fer" as they can go; randy traveling salesmen; rape-inclined farmhands; and, lest we forget, that sexual assault disguised as a kiss: The Oklahoma Hello.

If a ten-year-old is capable of moral indignation, then indeed I was. By the time that surrey with the fringe on top rolled in at the end, my cheeks were hotter than Hades, and I could barely look my parents in the eye. 

"A raging torrent of emotion that even nature can't control!"
OK, that's actually the ad copy for the 1953 Marilyn Monroe film Niagara, but it so succinctly captures Splendor in the Grass' metaphorical use of rushing waterfalls barely contained by dams (not to mention the film's overheated, Freudian themes) I just had to use it.

I'll admit my tongue-in-cheek scandalized reaction to Oklahoma! might seem a tad incongruous coming from someone who saw all manner of R-rated movies during his adolescence. Still, I'm not kidding about how vulgar this musical seemed to me when I was young. The comparatively straightforward approach of movies like Barbarella and Midnight Cowboy didn't embarrass me so much as demystified sex for me. Their explicitness made it feel as though sex and nudity were no big deal. Oklahoma!, on the other hand, mirrored my repressed Catholic upbringing. By figuratively and literally dancing around the film's all-pervasive topic of sex, the film turns sex into a sinful no-no suitable only for giggling and snickering about in empty, euphemistic codes of indecency.

A firm memory I hold from my adolescent movie-going years is how filthy I considered the family films of my era (the '60s): David Niven's The Impossible Years, Doris Day's Where Were You When The Lights Went Out, Debbie Reynolds' How Sweet It Is – compared to the permissive, let-it-all-hang-out R-rated films that were coming into fashion.

The pernicious effect of repression and guilt - its power to distort and pervert natural sexuality - is the theme dramatized in Elia Kazan's sensitive film adaptation of William Inge's original screenplay, Splendor in the Grass.

Natalie Wood as Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis

Warren Beatty as Arthur "Bud" Stamper

Pat Hingle as Ace Stamper

Barbara Loden as Virginia "Ginny" Stamper

Audrey Christie as Mrs. Loomis

Splendor in the Grass is set in a small town in Kansas in 1928. Not, as immortalized by Rodgers & Hammerstein, a Kansas corny in August, but one overrun with oil derricks born of an oil boom. And all that pumping, pumping, pumping of the land serves as unsubtle metaphoric counterpoint to all the pent-up sexual energy of the town's young folk. Experiencing the first rushes of jazz-age permissiveness, the air is full of sex (in a nice touch, almost all the half-heard background conversations have to do with sex, sin, or something forbidden) and high-school sweethearts Deanie Loomis (Wood) and Bud Stamper (Beatty) find their barely-understood passions clashing with the repressive, Victorian-era values of their parents. As a result, archaic notions of propriety and decency intrude upon their natural urges, and the young lovers suffer painfully and unnecessarily under the strain of trying to do "what's right."

"Mom...is it so terrible to have those feelings for a boy?"
"No nice girl does."
"Doesn't she?"
"No...no nice girl."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

William Inge is one of my favorite playwrights. His works, among them: Picnic, Come Back Little Sheba, and The Dark at the Top of The Stairs, find the poetry and tragedy in small lives – recalling for me the best of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. In Splendor in the Grass, Inge's gentle evocation of the subtle frustrations, conflicts, and inchoate desires festering below the surface of otherwise tranquil small-town life is engagingly realized by director Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden).

William Inge appears as the sad-eyed Rev. Whiteman, whose sermon on holding onto
 what's real in times of material prosperity falls mainly on deaf ears. Inge's original screenplay for Splendor in the Grass won an Oscar.

In this story about "innocent" passion, a young couple, excited by newly awakened feelings but confused by their intensity, are left without guidance by well-intentioned adults incapable of doing anything but projecting the failures and frustrations of their own lives onto the pair. The young feel an obligation to live up to the ideals of those who have sacrificed to give them a better life. Yet, in trying to orchestrate the happiness of their children through the stressing of false morals, shame, and repression, these parents succeed only in passing on a legacy of compromise and regret.

The Stampers
This awkward portrait sitting pretty much says all there is
to say about the functionality of the town's wealthiest family

PERFORMANCES

Stage director and Actor's Studio co-founder Elia Kazan is heralded as an "actor's director" for the sensitive performances he's credited with eliciting from those under tutelage. It's not a title I'm likely to argue with in that I think Splendor in the Grass is a remarkably well-cast movie, with everyone involved giving colorful and fleshed-out performances devoid of some of the fussier affectations of Method Acting. Sure, Warren Beatty's pauses can drag on a little, and one strains to hear him speak on a couple of occasions, but by and large, the natural performances here all crackle with vitality and life. 

Future Mrs. Kazan Barbara Loden makes an indelible impression as Ginny Stamper, the flapper-out-of-water in the small, conservative Kansas town. Her screen work is minimal (she died of cancer at age 48), but in 1970 she wrote, directed, and starred in the noteworthy independent film Wanda. 

As deserving of praise as all the players are, I just have to single out a personal favorite, Natalie Wood. Tapping into a natural edginess and heartbreaking eagerness to please that had only been hinted at in previous roles, Wood gives what I consider to be the best performance of her career. As the lovesick, worshipful Deanie, she displays an emotional daring I always find so compelling in actors. She is tragically vulnerable throughout, and she and the absurdly beautiful Warren Beatty (making his film debut) make a stunningly beautiful screen couple and display a palpable chemistry. (Tip: watch her in scenes where she's not the focus. She's entirely in character and reacting to everything at each moment in a way that feels so wonderfully spontaneous. I can't say enough about her in this film. The Oscar nomination she garnered was so very well-deserved.)

Zohra Lampert as Angeline
I have always had a thing for this appealingly sensitive, low-key actress (and marvelous comedienne) who deserved a bigger career. She has a bit of a cult fan base built around the horror film Let's Scare Jessica to Death, but outside of her scene-stealing performance here, I mostly know her as the Goya Beans spokeslady.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Splendor in the Grass is a tragic love story in the grand tradition. True love, in the form of Deanie and Bud, finds no solace or sanctuary in small-town (small-minded) mores that uphold the curious notion that the pursuit of happiness is good, but the pursuit of ecstasy is sinful and wrong. Instead, love that should be simple and uncomplicated descends into confusion and madness, the star-crossed pair suffering at the hands of false morality and parental interference.  

Understatement

Aside from Natalie Wood's stubbornly contemporary look throughout most of the film, Splendor in the Grass has one of its greatest assets in its detailed depiction of small-town life and attention to period. In addition, it's a great-looking film, from the atmospheric cinematography (Boris Kaufman) to the costumes, to the eye-catching art direction.

Personal favorite Sandy Dennis (l.) makes her film debut as Kay,
a somewhat fair-weather friend of Deanie's.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I first saw Splendor in the Grass when I was a youngster back in the late sixties, and recall being struck by how much the film's chronicling of a uniquely American brand of sexual restlessness in the face of cultural change (rampant horniness crossed with faith-based guilt), echoed the cultural climate of what was going on in America at the time. In terms of young people confronting changing attitudes about morality, sex, family, religion, double-standards, and women's roles, the America of the late '60s was not dissimilar to the America of 1929. A reality even 1961 audiences must have felt when confronted by the relative sexual candor of Splendor in the Grass hot on the heels of the conservative Eisenhower years.

Comedienne Phyllis Diller makes her film debut as real-life nightclub owner, Texas Guinan

I can't say I really understood Splendor in the Grass when I first saw it. Thrown by the film's portentous manner and the pedigree of talent both behind and in front of the camera, I simply thought the film had gone over my head. I went away from it thinking I had just seen the most poetic film about blue balls ever made.

Life experience has revealed to me that Splendor in the Grass is about much more than sexual desire. Familial obligation, guilt, love, innocence, loss, and coming-of-age maturity all make William Inge's bittersweet look at young love a film I always enjoy revisiting, and one of my all-time favorite Natalie Wood movies.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 -2013