Post by spiderwort on Sept 1, 2017 19:52:18 GMT
Here is a paraphrased conversation from the end of movie between Flo Ownes and Helen Potts after Novak ran after Holden:
Flo Owens: Oh there is SO much I wanted to teach her.....
Helen Potts: Let her find out on her own, Flo........
One can almost imagine three (maybe four) stages of women with men (boys) in a midwestern town:
Susan Strasberg - emerging but not yet interested in boys.
Kim Novak - emerged but not yet realized relationship with men.
Rosalind Russell - Needing not to be an old spinster schoolteacher and more.
Verna Felton - Too late.........
Oh, kijii, you're breaking my heart! There's always a deep poignance in any Inge work, and you're touching upon that so well. The ending seems a happy one, but we both know that it probably won't work out and that Madge will be hurt. Inge never wanted that ending; he always felt that in the end Madge would stay home. But Josh Logan, who directed it on Broadway as well as the screen, coerced him into writing it the way we have always known it. He thought it would be more successful, and successful it was! Years later Inge wrote his own version, called Summer Brave, where Madge doesn't leave. It's not as good a play (he made some other changes, too), and it wouldn't have been as successful. And while I agree with him that she would not have left, I still love the combination of joy and veiled sadness at the end of the film (and play) as we've always known it.
(And as for loving the characters more than the dancing, of course!!! I just happen to love the cinematic virtues of that scene in particular.)