I first saw a Warren Beatty film during possibly the best decade of his career. After his huge success in Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967), Beatty followed up with great roles in Robert Altman's MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971), Alan J. Pakula's THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974), and Hal Ashby's SHAMPOO (1975). My first Warren Beatty film was the comedy HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978) co-directed by Beatty and Buck Henry, a remake of Alexander Hall's HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (1941). Beatty was funny and good looking with a self deprecating style. At the time I saw HEAVEN CAN WAIT, I imagined him as a kind of modern Cary Grant. It wasn't until I watched one of his earlier films, John Frankenheimer's ALL FALL DOWN (1962), that I discovered how wrong I was. Beatty was groomed at the start of his career to be the next Paul Newman or James Dean, playing disillusioned, rebellious young men.
So what better director then Elia Kazan for Beatty to have his film debut in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. Kazan had previously directed smoldering young actors Marlon Brando in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and James Dean in EAST OF EDEN (1955). Joining Kazan was powerhouse playwright William Inge who wrote the original screenplay for SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. Inge's plays (which became films) like Joshua Logan's PICNIC (1956) and Logan's BUS STOP (also 1956) had young, restless males characters trying to figure out their lives. SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS was the right choice at the right time for young Mr. Beatty.
Kazan and Inge show us right away the crux of the story in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. High school sweethearts Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) and Wilma Dean ("Deanie") Loomis (Natalie Wood) necking passionately by a sensuous bubbling waterfall. Bud wants to go farther but Deanie resists. Bud takes Deanie back home, sexually frustrated yet still in love with her. Mrs. Loomis (Audrey Christie) warns Deanie that she must maintain her virtue, not become one of those bad girls who ruin their reputation. Bud comes from the wealthiest family in town. Bud's father Ace Stamper (Pat Hingle) owns several oil wells. Ace idolizes his only son. Ace wants Bud to go to Yale to be educated and later run one of his businesses. Bud wants to stay closer to home, marry Deanie, and become a farmer. Both families are nervous that Bud and Deanie will consummate their love too soon and bring scandal.
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| Although many of the stills for SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS are black and white, the film is in color. |
1929 arrives. Bud collapses during a high school basketball game, his illness a mystery. Deanie visits Reverend Whitman (playwright William Inge in a cameo) and prays for his recovery. Bud recovers after several months, asks Doc Smiley (John McGovern) for sex advice which the doctor laughs off. Bud reaches out to Juanita and takes her to the waterfall where they have sex. The high school learns about the tryst before Deanie. When Deenie realizes Bud has cheated on her, she has an emotional breakdown. Bud and Deanie grow apart as their senior year draws to a close. Bud's teammate Allen "Toots" Tuttle (Gary Lockwood) ask Deenie to the prom. Bud attends the prom with Deanie's friend Kay (Sandy Dennis). Deanie tries to win Bud back, attempts to seduce him but Bud rejects her. Deanie asks Toots to take her to the waterfall. She ditches Toots and attempts to drown herself before park officials rescue her.
Mr. Loomis (Fred Stewart) sends Deanie to Wichita for treatment. Bud follows his father's wishes and attends Yale, trying to flunk out at every chance he gets. Bud meets and falls in love with an Italian waitress Angelina (Zohra Lampert). Deanie starts occupational therapy, working on art projects. She begins a relationship with John (Charles Robinson), a former Med student who also had a breakdown. Bud's father Ace comes to Yale to visit him. The stock market crashes that day. Ace takes Bud out to a New York show hosted by Texas Guinan (Phyllis Diller's first movie role) and tries to get Bud laid by one of the dancers. Later that night, Ace jumps out a window, committing suicide, his fortune gone. Bud returns home with Angelina, begins to raise cattle on one of his father's properties. Deanie returns home, soon to marry John. High school friends Hazel (Crystal Field) and June (Marla Adams) come to visit and tell her Bud lives outside of town. They drive her out to see Bud on his father's ranch. He's married to Angelina with a child and another one on the way. Bud and Deanie, the perfect couple, never to be united, crushed by the weight of their parents interference and their own sexual hang-ups, meet for one last time.
I like when a playwright like William Inge writes an original screenplay like SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. Playwrights have a good feel for symbolism and metaphors. In SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, the waterfall in the opening scene acts as the sexual tension bubbling between Bud and Deanie. The water is sensuous, shimmering, frothing like the two teenagers hormones. It's where the high school kids go to make out, touch, and lose their virginity. But Deanie resists the impulse to go all the way. Later, Bud will take another girl Juanita to the waterfall where it's implied they do have sexual intercourse. Juanita is the type of girl Deanie's mother doesn't want her to become but the type of girl Bud's father Ace tells Bud he should sow his wild oats with before settling down. Deanie will ask Toots to bring her to the waterfall after the prom. After fighting off Toots advances, Deanie bolts for the waterfall, nearly drowning herself in the torrent of water, her perfect world shattered by her repressed sexuality and Bud's infidelity.
Both Bud and Deanie's parents are uptight with their sexual morals, in different ways, scarring Bud and Deanie in ways they never imagined. Deanie's mother Mrs. Loomis proudly tells Deanie she never let Mr. Loomis touch her until they were married. Even after the wedding, she only gave herself to her husband to have a baby. The Loomis's lack of intimacy seeps into Deanie's psyche. When Mrs. Loomis asks if Bud has spoiled her, Deanie cries out, "I'm not spoiled mom. I'm just as fresh and virginal like the day I was born, mom!"
Ace Stamper fears scandal if Bud and Deanie were to have sex before getting married. Ace's angst stems from his scandalous daughter Ginny who got knocked up in Chicago the year before. Ace paid for her abortion. Ginny's back home now, stirring up trouble, driving all the single men in town crazy with desire. The irony is Ace wants Bud to lose his virginity to a bad girl yet his daughter is the epitome of the whore. Even Ace himself has slept with disreputable women like his daughter in his younger, halcyon days before marrying the docile Mrs. Stamper (Joanna Roos). It's sexual hypocrisy. Ace pushes for Bud to sow his wild oats with a bad girl before settling down with Deanie. Bud only wants Deanie. But his desire to make love with Deanie butts up against her resistance. Bud's desire to have sex with Deanie and her rejection makes him physically ill. When he becomes better, he goes straight to Juanita for the intimacy he craves. She's his cure. Things will never be the same for Bud and Deanie after that. When Deanie tries to seduce Bud at the prom, dressed in a sexy red flapper girl dress, it's Bud who flinches. What about your pride, he asks. "My pride? My pride? I don't want my pride," she screams.
Thomas Mallory's The History of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table have a connection to A SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. Deanie's English teacher Miss Metcalf (Martine Bartlett) asks her class about King Arthur and the Knights. One student says, "they had a high regard for women." Although it might not seem like it, Bud is the shining knight in this town. He stays true to Deanie. He's polite and a gentleman. Deanie is Bud's Guinevere. He holds her to the highest pedestal. He's willing to marry her right away so they can consummate their relationship. But Ace wants Bud to go to college first, then think about marriage. Bud starts out like King Arthur but he becomes Lancelot, a flawed knight. After his illness, he gives in to his lust when Juanita provides him the carnal knowledge that Deanie can't.
I'll talk about the young stars Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood momentarily but two of the most interesting performances in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS come from Pat Hingle as Bud's oil baron father Ace and Barbara Loden as Bud's promiscuous older sister Ginny. My recollections of Pat Hingle are later in his career when he usually played authority figures like judges or as Police Commissioner Gordon in Tim Burton's BATMAN (1989). SPLENDOR is early in Hingle's career and what a role. Hingle's Ace Stamper is a tragic, flawed patriarch. Injured in his youth from a fall off an oil derrick (Hingle actually fell 54 feet down an elevator shaft in real life before the film), Ace is a cripple physically and in his psyche, hobbling around his family and empire like a force of nature. Ace wants to control everyone especially his two children. Bud is everything that Ace couldn't be. A good athlete, handsome with a bright future. Ace lives vicariously through Bud. Ace has Bud's future laid out but Bud has other ideas. 1929 and the Stock Market Crash loom. Ace's future will not end well. Ace may be Hingle's finest role until he played sadistic gambler Bobo Justus in Stephen Frears THE GRIFTERS (1990).
The other mesmerizing role is Barbara Loden as Virginia i.e. Ginny, Bud's older sister. If Bud is the future of the Ace Stamper family, Ginny is his disappointment. Ginny scandalously became pregnant in Chicago before Ace had to reluctantly come to the rescue (paying for an abortion and paying off the suitor). She'd tarnish the Stamper name if Ace didn't have so much oil money to almost hide it. Ace's dilemma is that Ginny is the bad girl that Ace feels Bud needs to roll around with before he marries Deanie. It tears Ace up that Ginny is that type of woman that men (like Ace) use and discard. There's a harrowing scene at the Stamper New Year's Eve party where a pack of tuxedoed men follow a drunk Ginny around the house like dogs in heat. Ginny's almost raped by one of them until she's rescued by Bud. Actress Loden was a protégé of director Kazan and would marry him in 1967.
Natalie Wood grew up before our eyes first appearing as a child actor in films like MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947) and THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947). She would move into young teenager roles in John Ford's THE SEARCHERS (1956) and Nicholas Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955). 1961 would be quite a year for Wood appearing in both Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins WEST SIDE STORY and SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. In SPLENDOR, Wood makes the leap from teenager to young adult. It's a demanding role as she begins as the perfect girlfriend and descends into a mental meltdown as her knight in shining armor rejects her for maintaining her virtue. Wood is absolutely stunning. Beatty and Wood would have a brief affair during the making of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS.
When you watch SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, the first thing that might come to mind is "what does that title mean?" The title is from a William Wordsworth poem called Ode: Imitations of Immortality. The poem goes "Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor of the grass/of glory in the flower/we will grieve not/rather find strength in what remains behind." Deanie is asked by Miss Metcalf at the worst possible moment in her life what the poem means. Deanie replies, "when we're young, we look at things very idealistically I guess. When we're grown up...we have to forget the ideals of youth...and find strength." Bud and Deanie's relationship had its moment of splendor. They were the perfect couple and should have married. But outside forces including pressure from their families to conform a certain way ruined the happy ending they should have had. Bud and Deanie can never get that feeling back.
Director Elia Kazan was an actor's director and one of the top director's in the late 1940s and 1950s on Broadway and in Hollywood. Kazan had a string of hits beginning with Marlon Brando in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) and ON THE WATERFRONT (1954). Kazan worked with James Dean in EAST OF EDEN, Carroll Baker in BABY DOLL (1956) and Montgomery Clift in WILD RIVER (1960). But Kazan was also controversial, naming names and causing several of his colleagues to be blacklisted when he testified at Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities in the early 1950s. Kazan would only make four more films after SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, his last film an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's book THE LAST TYCOON (1976) starring Robert De Niro and Tony Curtis.
Playwright William Inge had a string of stage hits in the 50s including Come Back, Little Sheba, Picnic, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. He wrote the exceptional screenplay for SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. But like Kazan, Inge's career would struggle after SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. Taking a page out of SPLENDOR, Inge would commit suicide like his character Ace Stamper, choosing carbon monoxide poisoning rather than jumping out a window in 1973. A sad ending to such a gifted playwright.
Both Kazan and Inge should be proud of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, a tragedy in the Midwest about sexual repression and sexual hypocrisy. Kazan directed a string of meaningful films dealing with social issues that provided us with some of the greatest acting performances in cinema history. Inge wrote some of the finest characters ever portrayed on the stage. Together, they created a provocative film in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS that showcases two young actors Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood just emerging into grown up roles in their fledgling careers. The film also provides two excellent supporting roles for Pat Hingle and Barbara Loden as bickering father and daughter in the Stamper family.
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