Ep. 34 - Picnic with Alex Robertson and Roseanne Caputi

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This week on Fabulous Film & Friends our run of great 1955 films comes to an abrupt and awkward end as we discuss Picnic, a time capsule dramatic weepie directed by Joshua Logan and starring everyone’s favorite red-eyed, clenched jawed everyman, William Holden, a nearly diffused and dowdy Kim Novak,  skinny and young Cliff Robertson, a suitably wild eyed Rosiland Russell and an always  dependable Arthur O’Connell. 

My guests today are Roseanne Caputi and Alex Robertson.

And now the synopsis:

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by William Inge Picnic tells the story of Hal Carter, a handsome but loud and big-talking freight hopping roustabout who lands in a sleepy Kansas town on Labor Day, the day of the big town picnic. It’s no accident that Hal lands in the town as it is home to Hal’s former college roommate Alan Benson. and Hal is hoping that the wealthy grain-empire magnate to be can offer him employment. 

Alan is happy to see Hal and indeed offers him labor in the grain silos while also loaning him a car so he can take Millie Owens to the town’s festivities. Millie is the sister of Alan’s fiancé Madge. And Millie is bookish, college bound and awkward while Madge is beautiful and glamorous but a bit of an underachieving working girl who has a job at the town’s five and dime. Madge, under intense pressure from her mother to marry up with Alan,  takes an immediate liking to Hal. 

Accompanying the foursome on the picnic are Rosemary and Howard, a schoolteaching spinster and her bachelor boyfriend, whom she seems to regard as below her standards. 

After a day of sack races, pie eating contests, and tug-of-war,  night settles in sexy dancing starts and with the help of the demon liquor,  the human drama comes to a loud and steady boil.  

 What's it all mean? 

Is it an enduring classic? 

Find out!