Splendor in the Grass
Tags: romantic, melodrama

Plot synopsis:
Kansas, 1928: Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis (Natalie Wood) is a teenage girl who follows her mother's advice to resist her desire for sex with her boyfriend, Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), the son of one of the most prosperous families in town. In turn, Bud reluctantly follows the advice of his father, Ace (Pat Hingle), who suggests that he find another kind of girl with whom to satisfy his desires. Bud's parents are ashamed of his older sister, Ginny (Barbara Loden), a flapper and party girl who is sexually promiscuous, smokes, drinks, and has recently been brought back from Chicago, where her parents had a marriage annulled to someone who married her solely for her money. Rumors in town, however, have been swirling that the real reason was that she had an abortion. Being so disappointed in their daughter, Bud's parents "pin all their hopes" on Bud, pressuring him to attend Yale University. The emotional pressure is too much for Bud, who suffers a physical breakdown and nearly dies from pneumonia.
Bud knows one of the girls in high school, Juanita (Jan Norris) who is willing to become sexually involved with him, and he has a liaison with her. A short while later, depressed because of Bud ending their relationship, Deanie acts out by modeling herself after Bud's sister, Ginny. At a party she attends with another boy from high school, "Toots" Tuttle (Gary Lockwood), Deanie goes outside with Bud and makes a play for him. When she is rebuffed by Bud, who is shocked, since he always thought of her as a "good girl," she turns back to "Toots," who drives her out to a private parking spot by a pond that streams into a waterfall. While there, Deanie realizes that she can't go through with sex, at which point she is almost raped. Escaping from "Toots" and driven close to madness, she attempts to commit suicide by jumping in the pond, being rescued just before swimming over the falls. Her parents sell their stock to pay for her institutionalization, which actually turns out to be a blessing in disguise, since they make a nice profit prior to the Crash of '29 that leads to the Great Depression.
While Deanie is in the institution, she meets another patient, Johnny Masterson (Charles Robinson), who is working out anger issues targeted at his parents, who want him to be a surgeon. The two patients form a bond. Meanwhile, Bud is sent off to Yale, where he fails practically all his subjects. While at school, he meets Angelina (Zohra Lampert), the daughter of Italian immigrants who run a local restaurant in New Haven. In October 1929, Bud's father travels to New Haven in an attempt to persuade the dean not to expel Bud from school. While Ace is in New Haven, the stock market crashes, and he loses everything. He takes Bud to New York for a weekend, including to a cabaret nightclub, after which he commits suicide. Bud has to identify the body.
Deanie returns home from the asylum after two years and six months, "almost to the day." Ace's widow has gone to live with relatives, while Bud's sister has died in a car crash. Deanie's mother wants to shield her from any potential anguish from meeting Bud and so pretends to not know where he is. When Deanie's high school friends come over, her mother gets them to agree to feign ignorance on Bud's whereabouts. However, Deanie's father refuses to coddle his daughter and tells her that Bud has taken up ranching and lives on the old family farm. Her friends drive Deanie out to meet Bud. He is now married to Angelina, they have an infant son, "Bud Jr.," and Angelina is expecting another child. Deanie lets Bud know that she is going to marry John, who is now a doctor in Cincinnati. During their brief reunion, Deanie and Bud realize that both must accept what life has thrown at them, as Bud says, "What's the point? You gotta take what comes." They each relate that they "don't think about happiness very much anymore."
As Deanie leaves with her friends, Bud only seems partially satisfied by the direction his life has taken. After the others are gone, he reassures Angelina, who has realized that Deanie was once the love of Bud's life. Driving away, Deanie's friends ask her if she is still in love with Bud. She realizes that she still loves him warmly, but that they can never recover that blazing love of youth which they once had. She does not answer her friends, but Deanie's voice is heard reciting four lines from a Wordsworth poem:
"Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower,
We will grieve not; rather find
Strength in what remains behind."

Review: And why wouldn't it be - with Kazan at the helm and an original screenplay by William Inge.The film begins with a similar theme to "Rebel Without a Cause" - that is why won't parents treat their children like human beings and really help them come to terms with becoming adults?
Barbara Loden is particularly memorable as Beatty's wild flapper sister, but Pat Hingle as his father, and Audrey Christie and Fred Stewart as Wood's parents are also unforgettable.This is a resonant film that I believe will be more and more appreciated with the passing of time..
Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood play two of the children of the families who go together in high school and are desperately in love.
Deannie's mother only wants the best for her, but it's the old fashioned values, restraint, and the pain of Bud with another girl, which eventually snowball into Deannie being sent to a mental institution after a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt (ironically Wood attempts suicide by drowning in the movie, years later the real life Wood died from drowning.
Beatty is solid, too, if a bit overly earnest.All of the twists and turns of the plot work, though ultimately Bud's family's economic setbacks and deaths and Didi's family's successes are mere soap operatic window dressing to the "A" plot line, which is the heart tugging reality of "nothing bringing back the hour of the Splendor In The Grass" for Bud and Didi, though both obviously still share the feeling.
This film makes we wish I had studied acting or directing or film or whatever, so that I could be involved in the production of movies like Splendor in The Grass.I am babbling and jumping around all over the place here but I want to add a couple more thoughts.
To the contrary, I think the true message delivered by this film is that you only have one life on this planet, one chance, and if you are lucky enough to find someone that makes you feel the way Deannie and Bud felt for each other, you should do your best to explore it for what it is and not throw it away, because you are young.
It besides is being a movie that really give all of its actors the room to really shine and tell the story, at times without using any words.Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty were such a great young screen couple within this movie.
How poignant this movie is....showing us young love between Deanie and Bud. All the time, you just know that the parents are setting them up for disaster.
Natalie Wood in particular proves this in the film, so does the nascent Warren Beatty, both whom deliver poise far beyond their respective ages at that time.
The character played as Deanie longed for basic love from Bud to which he was unable to deliver due to his family's constant intervention on his son's personal life; it is his father that denied him pleasure of having 'happiness' with his high school sweetheart.
It is visible to see from Deanie's eyes the disappointments, it just reminds me of my other favorite movie seen, "Carlito's Way," the character played by Al Pacino, when he was attempting to convince his love interest played as "Gail." In that seen, he meets her at a place of her work and very disturbed by what she does for living, strip joint dancer.
Based on a play by William Inge,Natalie Wood  shines in every scene and also marks the movie debut of Warren Beatty.
The Movie is a true classic directed by master Elia Kazan,set in Kansas during depression era a love story between a rich boy (Beatty) and poor girl (Wood),the families are against the romance.
Elia Kazan's wonderful and tearful story about two young lovers fighting their own urges and everyone around them is certainly a film that is hard to watch at times.
The same is true with Bud, played here by a very young Warren Beatty.Perhaps the one true problem I saw with this film is that the story doesn't go far enough.
I understand they were already under fire from the censors for their portrayal of young people trying to repress sexual urges, but I'm sure Kazan could have come up with a way to show not just how Bud and Deanie felt about each other but to better examine the relationship with their respective parents.
This is absolutely touching and beautiful and a great ending to an other wise uncomfortable story.Still, to think of the film in retrospect is to take it seriously and understand that this is not just a story about two people in love at a time when everybody was telling them to not be.
I feel the desire Bud has and the torture Deadie is going through, and I think it's because of either the impeccable acting from the leads and supporting cast (Bud's sister was great in her role) or the flawless directing of Elia Kazan.The opening scene begins with Bud(Beatty) and Deadie(Wood) "necking" (got to get that old-timey vibe) in Bud's car.
This is a fine movie, with a great screenplay by William Inge, director Elia Kazan's ability to convey powerful emotions, and a marvelous performance by Natalie Wood.Typically relegated to the second ranks among playwrights, Inge deserves more critical respect than he receives.
Natalie Wood had an uneven movie career, but her Oscar-nominated performance as "Deanie" in Splendor in the Grass showed that, under the guidance of a great director (Elia Kazan), she could really deliver the goods.
Highlights in "Splendor":  the classroom scene, and the entire last act, which is so devastating precisely because Wood and Warren Beatty (as "Bud Stamper") play it as if there were no movie cameras within a thousand miles.Kazan's direction and William Inge's Oscar-winning screenplay notwithstanding, the film as a whole is not as successful as the two lead performances.
In 1928 Kansas a poor girl named Wilma (Natalie Wood) is in love with rich Bud Stemper (Warren Beatty).
Starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty (in his first major film role), "Splendor in the Grass" centers on the conflicts inherent in young love, particularly regarding the choice between following one's feelings vs.
Wood's Oscar-nominated performance as Deanie Loomis, which requires her to radiate the bloom of love as well as the emotional torrents of heartache and despair, is nothing short of remarkable, and she is ably supported by a strong cast that includes Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, and Barbara Loden.
Deanie Loomis (Natalie Wood) isn't just deeply hurt when Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) dumps her for The Easiest Girl in Town (besides his sister--who's very serious competition)--she literally goes off the deep end.
Finally, special mention should be made of Zohra Lampert, who plays the woman that Beatty marries when his father loses all of his money--she does so much with so little and is so appealing while doing it that when the film ends you find yourself caring about someone besides Wood--because of Lampert's character, you almost find yourself worrying about Beatty's character, in spite of his best efforts.The director was Elia Kazan, who made a number of good decisions here (hiring Wood and Lampert, Boris Kauffman as cinematographer and Anna Hill Johnstone as costume designer) and a small raft of bad ones (Beatty, Hingle, Inge's script, and the yowling hysteria of Barbara Loden--then Mrs. Kazan and a much better actress than this film would lead you to think--she was good in her husband's earlier film WILD RIVER and quite brilliant as the numb center of her only film as a director, 1970's WANDA).
His emotional exhaustion and impatience have closed a door of his happiness.However, he has, in the end, stayed in the traditional environment, while Deanie has made an uncertain, but a decisive step into the world.Their support are Pat Hingle (Ace Stamper) as an unreasonable father, who inexorably separates his son from his happiness and Audrey Christie as Mrs. Loomis as a soft-spoken mother, who has built a prison cell" around her daughter.Mr. Kazan has very well described this social disorder, in which, missed opportunities and youthful fears have eliminated every crumb of optimism..
For my money, there is a loving God, but he had no control over whatever race of advanced, otherworldy beings landed on this planet and started playing games with the gene pool.....God can only watch the results, and hear the prayers, and teach humans how to live after the storm.If we are lucky the storm hits when we are young, and time has a chance to erode the scars....if we are profoundly unlucky, the storm hits later, devastating entire families."Splendor in the Grass" has to be the greatest portrayal of this phenomenon ever created, and it owes this to William Inge, director Elia Kazan, and Natalie Wood, whose aching, profoundly haunting beauty in front of a movie camera is pretty much unmatched in history..
Deany dons a white dress and a white hat to meet her lost love.This is a very effecting scene and lets the viewer know that there is no real finale or no "reel" finale so it seemsBoth Beatty and Wood made a big impression with the performances along with Pat Hingle.A period piece that speaks in its own universal language of love lost!C Pope.
This is really the golden age of American cinema.They don't do movies like that anymore.This Kazan work is close to perfect,as are most of the movies of this director.Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood portray young people confronted with a society that has yet to free itself from a puritan moral.Passion is allowed only in lit they study in high school ,and sport is shown as a repression way.In the book "Kazan par Kazan" (Michel Ciment,1985),the director insists on the fact,that,if a young man doesn't practice a sport,he'll be an outcast all his life.Relationship between Wood and Beatty is intense,and it will remain unfulfilled,because the boy thinks that sex would spoil his love 's purity(in the book,Ciment points out to Kazan that he uses the picture of water again and again :the director agrees and says:purity,sexuality,death,menace).Besides,Beatty has at home the sister figure,a slut who sleeps with the first to come:she's played by Barbara Loden,Kazan's wife who will make "Wanda" ,her only movie,in 1970.A visual splendor, a desperate love poem,with an apparently peaceful conclusion.But actually a harrowing one,because both of them will leave their life in the past conditional.Jackie De Shannon wrote a marvelous eponymous song after watching it.Listen to it!.
A fragile Kansas girl (Natalie Wood)'s love for a handsome young man (Warren Beatty) from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.Natalie Wood was a great actress, especially in her younger days (she seemed to excel at being a love interest).
When I first saw this movie during the 1960's, I thought it was something special; more than fifty years later, I still do.The intensity of Deanie Loomis' emotions for Bud Stamper, clashes with the strictures and inhibitions of her emotionally burnt-out parents.
"What I liked about this ending", he says, "is its bittersweet ambivalence, full of what Bill had learned from his own life: that you have to accept limited happiness, because all happiness is limited, and to expect perfection is the most neurotic thing of all; you must live with the sadness as well as the joy." Kazan also said, "It is not my favorite of my films, but the last reel is my favorite last reel, at once the saddest and the happiest".The performances of Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty and all the others, are locked forever in this moving film.
Released in 1961 - Splendor In The Grass is a heart-wrenching, emotionally-charged, teen, tear-jerker starring Natalie Wood and introducing Warren Beatty (24 at the time) in his first starring role.This is a very effective and almost flawlessly acted story of the intense sexual awakening of two "very-much-in-love" young adults living in a small-minded, straight-laced, Kansas town in the late 1920s.Believing whole-heartedly in the saying "Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father", Deanie Loomis follows her mother's advice to resist desire for sex with her boyfriend, Bud Stamper, the handsome son of one of the most prosperous families in town.Bud, in turn, reluctantly follows the advice of his father, Ace, who openly suggests that he find himself another kind of woman to satisfy his desires.This whole traumatic episode of denial triggers a profound emotional breakdown for both of these 2 young people, especially for the fragile Deanie, who, driven close to madness, is eventually institutionalized.Splendor In The Grass is a highly-recommended picture.
Wood is utterly mesmerizing as Deanie, a beautiful but insecure young girl who carefully constructs her entire existence around the love of her life--a brooding young high school hero named Bud--only to have her mental and emotional worlds simultaneously come crashing down when Bud suddenly pulls himself out of her life.Looking back, it was apt that Wood first came to stardom playing opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, for her performance in this film equals Dean's in terms of sheer emotional ferocity and raw vulnerability.
While Splendor in the Grass is by no means one of director Elia Kazan's masterpieces, it is very much worth watching if only as a showcase for the heartbreaking Natalie Wood..
In the same way he was able to extract a searing performance from Andy Griffith in 1957's "A Face in the Crowd", master director Elia Kazan gets similarly stellar results from Natalie Wood in this classic 1961 melodrama about youthful sexual repression in rural 1920's Kansas.
In the same year as her Maria in "West Side Story", she has never been more affecting then she is here as Deanie Loomis, the local butcher's daughter deeply in love with Bud Stamper, the son of an oil scion and the high school football hero.
Of course, I would add that anyone letting a beautiful being like Deanie, well, okay, Natalie Wood, slip out of their life has to be the real nut in the story; Bud, you dumb jock, you should be stuck in poverty with some pregnant, slovenly and undeserving woman with kids running around dirty and loud...oops, I guess he was...way to sucker punch the creep, Inge, with that terrifically haunting, unhappy and unfulfilled ending...let's see how THOSE lambs bound as to the tabors sound, ye that pipe and ye that play.And, oh yeah, always drink plenty of milk..
Beatty's unusual, almost delicately beautiful and innocent features, combined with the inability of his character to articulate his feelings to, especially, his father - or to even let them be heard, make him equally realistic as Bud. Beatty's performance especially is very touching and clearly inspired by the great director Elia Kazan, whom Beatty still to this day, credits for having taught him the most about the art of making movies..
Natalie Wood was such a great actress, I loved the way she acted in this movie!
Three of the greatest talents in filmmaking history, Elia Kazan, Warren Beatty, and especially Natalie Wood, make this film great.
I thought the Virginia character (Joanne Woodward) stole the show, only to go to the film's Wikipedia site and find that the actress playing Bud's (Warren Beatty) wild sister was Barbara Loden and not Joanne Woodward.Of any Natalie Wood film I feel that this was her best performance and she was more beautiful than in any of her other movies.The entire cast was great, from Pat Hingle to Sandy Dennis.
He managed to make this 2 hours 3 minutes long picture about dumb characters repeating the same lines over and over with variations a success, gaining thousands of teenage fans all over the world, fascinated with the winning theme of "true love", that magically turns any stinker like this into something "beautiful, transcendental, the best movie of all time".
Straining against the limits of 1961 censors, this Elia Kazan directed tale of two passionate 1920's teens--Deane Lloomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty)--should never be mistaken for a Mid-West, jazz age period piece.
You have got to admire how much emotion Wood put into her character as Deanie Loomis, a distraught, young in love teenager in this film.
Warren Beatty in his first film seems to be on less of an emotional plane as Bud Stamper, Wood's love interest.
Just when "A Streetcar Named Desire" made me think more caution would have prevented Blanche's descent into madness, Elia Kazan provided a perfect counter-example with "Splendor in the Grass", a passionate high-school movie about teenage love, but also a harrowing psychology study of the devastating effects of social and parental rules.Indeed, for all its evocative title (it's a quote from Wordsworth' poetic ode to youth memories), the film can be summarized in one word: frustration...
Deanie is asked to explain Wordsworth's lines at school and explains that the poem is about the way in which youthful idealism dies and is replaced by a more mature but harder adult realism, and this is what we see happening to Deanie and Bud; their youthful dreams die and they end the film disillusioned and yet perhaps wiser.The leading characters are played by a sweetly innocent Natalie Wood and the young Warren Beatty in his screen debut.
Splendor in the Grass (1961) *** (out of 4) A poor Kansas girl (Natalie Wood) is dating the good-looking, rich kid (Warren Beatty) in town but both of their parents find something wrong with the other.
In that respect, Pat Hingle's character, Ace Stamper turns out to be the most clueless one of the lot here.I'd have to say that Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty turned in virtuoso performances in this film.
But around the time when Warren Beatty's character Bud doesn't see Natalie Wood's Deanie anymore because Bud's father has bigger plans for him, plus he doesn't get to sex Wilma because her mother tells her it is evil, I very much became involved.