Splendor in the Grass (1961)

To my fellow Inge fan--Spider,

I had never thought of the Inge plays in that way before, but you make an excellent point.
I can't really find anyone in any of the Inge plays that is a villain.They are all just people trying to do what is right, and often one person's well-meaning "right thing" does not end up right for another person. Inge does hit the mark there.

In Come Back, Little Sheba we see the same feeling of hope in a hopeless situation. Shirley Booth captures that perfectly. Doc is still struggling with his alcoholism as his wife remembers the times and symbolism (pictorial memories) of the things she recalls from when she first fell in love with doc. Doc is not an evil man, he is a crippled man trying to make himself whole again. One can see that his wife truly loves him and will do anything to make him whole again. (And, aren't we all a little crippled in some ways; and don't we want to do anything we can  to help those we truly love? That's humanity... that is a true and real part of what real humanity is like.) 
I've always found the casting strange in that movie--Burt Lancaster married to Shirley Booth. Nevertheless one certainly gets the feeling perfectly.

The only Inge play that I find a little over the top is Bus Stop. It's hard to imagine anyone as dumb as that cowboy.

By the way, of Inge's five stage plays, Splendor in the Grass is the only one for which he also wrote the screenplay too. It is unusual for a playwrite to write his own screenplays too. (Usually someone else writes the screenplay.) The Big exception here is Neil Simon; he DID write almost all of his own screenplays from his own stage plays. There may be a few more like Simon but not many.

While on this subject, I should say that Arthur Miller did re-write The Crucible and Everybody Wins as screenplays, all of the other plays you see are teleplays.

Also, Tennessee Williams wrote the screenplay for A Streetcar Named Desire. I think that is the only stage play for which he wrote his own screenplay. 

So glad you agree about the absence of "villains," kijii. I think it's a profoundly important point. As for Bus Stop, you can't go by the film, which bastardizes Inge's play completely. I've seen only one production of it that is faithful to the play and in the end does what every Inge work will do: make you want to cry. That production was a filmed stage production starring Tim Matheson, Margot Kidder, and Pat Hingle. It was beautifully directed by Peter Hunt, Helen Hunt's uncle. Bus Stop (1982). If you can find it, I advise you to watch it.

And as for Splendor in the Grass - that was never a play but an original screenplay that Inge wrote at the behest of Elia Kazan after Kazan directed Inge's play, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs on Broadway. And he won an Oscar for it.

Oh, and about A Streetcar Named Desire: Kazan tried and tried to open it up, but in the end he realized that it was a masterpiece that shouldn't be changed. So he shot the play; hence Williams' credit as writer. Not only that, but he shot it almost in continuity. Lumet did the same thing with O'Neill's play, Long Day's Journey Into Night.

That's interesting. I didn't know that but once can see that it would be hard to imagine this movie as stage bound.
And, I can see WHY Kazan did NOT open it up because it worked so SO well as a stage play.

I don't know if you are from Kansas or not, but did you recognize that the waterfall scene in Splendor in the Grass (with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty) looked VERY similar to the scene in Picnic where William Holden washed his face before grabbing the freight train bound for Tulsa? Or, were they just two waterfall scenes?

Spender in the Grass: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOr3FEQfRrg
(The waterfall does add to the sensuality of the scene here.) 

No. Different filming locations: Picnic WAS filmed in Kansas and Spender in the Grass was not.

I offcourse will not coment on a movie I haven't seen, but I found this:



Feber i blodet = Fever in the Blood, Norwegian poster.

teleadm

Well, you were right to wait. I just hope it shows up before another 20 years pass by.

My family absolutely loves this film. As you say there are no true villains but, man, do I want to slap Pat Hingle in the face with a shovel. I just want to scream, " Shut up for three minutes and listen to your son!"

pimpinainteasy

What a wonderful post. Elia Kazan and William Inge would be honored to read it. I'm glad you liked the film. I think it's a very special, realistic, and heartbreaking story of young love in a particularly repressive era.