Splendor in the Grass
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- For the music festival, see Splendour in the Grass.
Splendor in the Grass, an American movie from 1961, tells a story of sexual repression. Written by William Inge, who appears briefly as a Christian minister, the film was directed by Elia Kazan.
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Plot
Deanie Loomis (played by Natalie Wood), a teenaged girl living in a small town in Kansas in 1928, follows her mother's advice to resist her desire for sex with her boyfriend, Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), the scion of the most prosperous family in town. In his turn, Bud reluctantly follows the advice of his father (Pat Hingle), who suggest that he find another kind of girl with whom to exercise his sexual desires.
Bud's parents are disappointed by, and shamed of, his older sister—she is sexually promiscuous, smokes, drinks, and has had an abortion—, and accordingly 'pin all their hopes' on Bud.
As the story progresses, Deanie is driven close to madness and institutionalized. Bud's family loses its fortune in the Great Depression, which leads to the father's suicide; and Bud takes up farming, which he had postponed because of his father's aspirations for him.
In the final scene, Deanie, home from the sanitorium, goes to meet Bud. He is now married to the daughter of Italian immigrants; he and his wife, whom he met while complying with his father's desire that he attend Yale University, have an infant child. After their brief reunion, Deanie and Bud see that they must continue their lives separately.
Detail
The different mindsets motivating Deanie's mother, who is relatively poor, and Bud's father, who has made a great deal of money in the oil industry, to hold back their children's sexuality are evident in two adjacent scenes early in the story.
In the first, Deanie's mother encourages her not to give up her virginity to Bud, telling her "Boys don't respect a girl they can go all the way with; boys want a nice girl for a wife". Having bid her daughter a good night, Mrs. Loomis then talks with her husband, enthusiastically informing him that their daughter and the son of the richest family in town are in love and that Bud would "be the catch of a lifetime".
In the next scene, Bud's father encourages him to abstain from sex with Deanie, because, if the two of them were to conceive a child, they would have to marry.
Deanie's mother believes that sex would ruin her daughter's chances of marrying Bud. Bud's father believes that sex, especially pregnancy, would force his son to marry Deanie. One parent wishes for such a marriage, while the other seems to warn against it.
Other facts
Inge won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay—Written Directly for the Screen, and Natalie Wood was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Scenes of Kansas and the Loomises' home were actually shot in the Travis section of Staten Island, New York City.
Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood were to be paired also for the film adaption of West Side Story, which was released eight days after Splendor. Contenders other than Beatty for West Side's Tony role included Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, and Anthony Perkins; but Richard Beymer won the part.
The film's title is taken from a line of William Wordsworth's poem "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood":
- 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...