What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak

And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

DVD Review

By Guest Writer Bartlett Webber

Picnic, starring Kim Novak, William Holden, Rosalind Russell, Susan Strasberg, from the play by William Inge, 1955

Maybe it was the first scene where Hal, played by William Holden, jumps off the hobo freight train that set me up to like this film under review, the film adaptation of William Inge’s play Picnic. Ever since my old time growing up days in North Adamsville whenever the trains came by and some dusty local hoboes, tramps or bum (and there are distinctions between them recognized by the whole wandering nation) or passers-through hopped the skids I have been entranced by this whole scene. Spent back in Summer of Love days when I (and an assortment of guys who I hung around with in high school) headed west to see what was up in San Francisco many a night myself on the rattlers (well-named when the hours passed and all you heard out in the prairie was that freaking rattling). So I saw Hal as a wild-eyed spirited forbear.     

I set the headline up the way I did, asking rhetorically what the matter of Kansas was, for a purpose. No, not today’s more political purpose when many are asking what happened to convert one of the reddest states in the nation back in the day (“red” then meaning socialist red) to today’ Republican conservative red but why is everybody in this film ready to heave-ho the old time prairie small town values to get the hell to somewhere else (even if only the next town or next state over).       

  

Here’s the play and you figure out why, okay? That first scene Hal, the muscular brawny hobo saint who shows plenty of 1950s “beefsteak” to an appreciative 1950s female audience), when he lands in this small Podunk town was no accident. He, long weary and without current prospects, expects an old rich father college buddy, Alan, to help him out, get him a fresh start. (Hal obviously had been on hard times since the days when he flunked out of college for lack of study even though he had had it made as the college football hero.) At first it looked his reconnection with that college buddy idea was going to get him back on his feet. But then he spied her. Spied Madge, played by a young and fetching Kim Novak. Moreover Madge spied him and then the dance of dances began. 

All of this taking peeks got its big workout at the town’s annual Labor Day picnic where Madge, know universally for her good looks and apparently not much else, was to under Alan’s guidance be crowned Queen of the May. Hal and Madge are still looking though as they all, Alan, Hal, Madge, Madge’s brainy younger sister Millie, played by a young Susan Strasberg, Madge’s mother and an older neighbor woman head to the picnic and the fun-filled activities that usually go along with such small town festivities, maybe a big town’s too. Then the night falls and the stars seem to be aligned. And for anybody who doesn’t get that idea then you have missed probably the closest thing a 1950s film gets to the act of intimate sexual attraction, of an explicit sexual scene except unlike now with clothes on, when to the strains of Moonglow they dance the dance most of us have all been through.

From there though as can be expected of a guy like Hal who was all fire and motion things go downhill. Alan, as expected, was in a rage that Hal stole his girl and put the rich father-friendly local cops on him for “stealing” his car. Hall gets into a beef with the coppers so we know why he will be on lam (to next state Tulsa). Millie who is eternally humiliated for being a “plain jane” compared to big sister Madge swears she is going to New York and become a great writer once she gets the dust of small town Kansas out of her system. In a side story an “old maid” schoolteacher, played by Rosalind Russell,   desperate to get married and flee her fate gets hitched and blows the burg. And Madge? Well Madge despite those golden prospects with Alan, despite her mother’s admonitions that she can do better than hobo Hal and with little sister’s blessing blows that small town as well (to next state Tulsa as well).           

See this film if only for that “dance” scene which will make you sit up and take notice even in today’s jaded explosive screen sex world. Oh yeah, if you are a guy start practicing those jazzy hip William Holden dance moves. If a gal check out Kim Novak’s “come hither” moves that had even an old guy like me thinking funny thoughts.