Picnic

Picnic is a 1955 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film filmed in CinemaScope. It was adapted for the screen by Daniel Taradash from William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. Joshua Logan, director of the original Broadway stage production, directed the film version, which stars William Holden, Kim Novak, and Rosalind Russell, with Susan Strasberg and Cliff Robertson in supporting roles. Picnic was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two. The film dramatizes 24 hours in the life of a small Kansas town in the mid-20th century during the Labor Day holiday. It is the story of an outsider whose appearance disrupts and rearranges the lives of those whom he encounters. Plot On the morning of Labor Day 1955, a freight train brings vagrant Hal Carter to a Kansas town to visit his fraternity friend Alan Benson. While he stays with kind Helen Potts, he also meets Alan's girlfriend Madge Owens, her sister Millie, and their mother. Alan is happy to see the "same old Hal" and shows him his family's sprawling grain-elevator operations. He promises Hal a steady job as a "wheat scooper" and invites him to attend the town's Labor Day picnic. At the picnic, Hal divides his attention among Madge, Millie, and middle-aged schoolteacher Rosemary, who is accompanied by her gentleman friend Howard Bevens. After Hal dances with Madge, an intoxicated Rosemary accosts him, tearing his shirt and causing a scene. Alan unjustly blames him and says he is embarrassed that he invited him. By now a crowd is watching, and Hal flees into the darkness.