Splendor in the Grass

 

 

 

The time period of the plot occurs during the late 1920s and early 30s at the start of the disastrous Depression in a rural, SE Kansas town, coinciding with the intensity of a first love and the devastating consequences of repressed sexuality upon a pair of love-struck teenagers. The film's tagline expressed this theme: "There is a miracle in being young...and a fear." A poster also described the reality of a 'first love' when feelings that are new and somewhat frightening are heightened by a constricting society: Whether you live in a small town the way they do, or in a city, maybe this is happening to you right now...maybe (if you're older), you remember...when suddenly the kissing isn't a kid's game anymore, suddenly it's wide-eyed, scary and dangerous. The film's title is taken from English romantic William Wordsworth's 1807 Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Reflections of Early Childhood, some of which is quoted here: Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower We will grieve not, but rather find Strength in what remains behind. The mood and story line of the stormy relationship between two star-crossed, teenaged lovers parallels the poem as the adolescents meet, fall obsessively in love and become sexually awakened, face repressed sexual attitudes, parental pressures, turmoil, social constraints and class differences, and ultimately break up and are traumatized without consummating their love. The values of the business-oriented civilization - at the time of its greatest crash - coincides with the collapse of their tender romance. In a quasi-Romeo and Juliet script, Warren Beatty marked his screen debut (after starring in the Broadway play A Loss of Roses), and co-star Natalie Wood received a Best Actress nomination (her second of three career nominations) for one of her finest (if not the best) screen roles. Reportedly, the stars began an off-screen love affair while making this film - a story of unconsummated passion between a rich midwestern boy and a passionate young girl.  [The irony of Wood's film role here was that her accidental drowning death in 1981, off of her yacht named the Splendour, was pre-figured by the shocking bathtub scene and an attempted suicidal drowning scene at the reservoir.] Although it was an early 60s film, it followed a number of films from the 50s (some of which were youth exploitation films) that portrayed the problems of youth, such as Picnic (1955) (another filming of a William Inge play), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) (with Natalie Wood), Kazan's own East of Eden (1955), Peyton Place (1957), A Summer Place (1959), and the same year's great musical West Side Story (1961). After the credits sequence - red lettering on a grayish background, a teenaged boy and girl are seated in the front of an open, yellow roadster convertible after school in the early evening - on a lover's lane a short distance in front of a raging waterfall. The attractive couple are passionately kissing and breathing heavily - their raging hormones are symbolized by the flow of churning water over the falls behind them. The Commerce High School senior sweethearts are beautiful, dark-haired Wilma Dean ("Deanie") Loomis (Natalie Wood, 26 years old) and hunky sports hero Arthur ("Bud") Stamper (Warren Beatty) - he begs her to go further, but she resists expressing her physical needs: Bud: Deanie, please.. Deanie: Bud, I'm afraid. (They kiss and embrace more.) Don't, Bud. Bud: Deanie... Deanie: We mustn't, Bud. Angry at her, sexually frustrated and slightly humiliated, Bud leaves the car and stands by the waterfall, stating: "I'd better take you home," as she slips on her boyfriend's striped letter sweater. A title card 1928, SOUTHEAST KANSAS - is superimposed over a plain, wood-frame house (the Loomis residence) and storefront for the family butcher business - Fancy Groceries. Bud pulls the roadster up in front, as Deanie's mother Mrs. Frieda Loomis (Audrey Christie) notices their arrival on the porch and overhears Bud tell Deanie: "We've had enough kissing for tonight." Not wanting to be seen, she stealthily peers at them through the front door window as they can't restrain themselves for a goodbye kiss. In the dark living room, Deanie's body language exhibits tremendous sexual longing - she leans backward as she strokes her hair and neck. She hugs a pillow as she reclines on a sofa with her legs extended. Her domineering mother, who forces her daughter to drink a glass of milk, reveals that they are a from a poor family that is struggling financially to afford her education, and there's little possibility that their shares of rising stock in the Stamper oil company may help ("If we sold those stocks, we'd make $15,000 and maybe we can even send you away to college next year. Well, we're not going to sell.") Deanie dreamily places her ear next to a giant shell - listening to the far-away roar of the ocean elsewhere. She stutters her unconvincing excuse for being with Bud: "We were studying together." Upstairs, as Deanie undresses for bed and hides herself for privacy in the bathroom to brush her teeth, her mother follows her and tries to instill her own sexual fears into her. Her rigid, puritanical mother vows that boys never respect a girl who goes all the way - love-struck Deanie is troubled by her own emerging, raw physical feelings: Mrs. Loomis: Now Wilma Dean. Bud Stamper could get you into a whole lot of trouble. And you know how I mean. Boys don't respect a girl they can go all the way with. Boys want a nice girl for a wife. (She slightly cracks open the door.) Wilma Dean, you and Bud haven't gone too far already, have you?   The Stamper's "spoiled," willful, "headstrong," 20s flapper daughter Ginny ("Sister" or Virginia) (Barbara Loden), with bleached hair and makeup, has been something of an embarrassing disappointment for the family - at finishing school, she broke all the rules and was expelled; then at a university, she went "hog wild" and flunked all her courses; finally, in a Chicago art school, she got "tied up with some cake-eater that gets her into trouble just so he can marry her" - but Ace had it annulled by his lawyer. Bud's older sister has returned home a failure for the third time, causing Bud's father to pressure him even more into being a successful flag-bearer for the family. Rebellious, Ginny has gained a bad reputation and has no intention of reforming herself in the backward, rural town: If you think I'm going to stay here in this god-forsaken town and have people laugh at me and gossip about me, you've got another thing coming, 'cause I'll really give them something to gossip about...I hate it here. I'm a freak in this town. Everybody stares at me on the street like I was something out of a carnival...This is the ugliest place in the whole world. Everywhere you look there's an oil well, even on the front lawn. Mrs. Stamper's comment about her breakfast-deprived children is rich in emotional meaning: "Neither of my children gets any real nourishment." In the crowded high school hallway of classmates, both Deanie and Bud walk together hand-in-hand - obviously a radiant Deanie is pleased to be admired and possessed by the school's handsome football hero. Chivalrously, he accompanies her to her English class and carries her textbooks for her. She is tardy to her seat and reprimanded by her prim, bespectacled teacher Miss Metcalf (Martine Bartlett). [A student is writing on the chalkboard "still unravished."] Oblivious as her teacher lectures about literature of the Middle Ages and stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Deanie doodles in her notebook, scrawling various versions of "Mrs. Arthur Stamper" and "Bud & Deanie." Girlfriends June (Marla Adams), Carolyn (Lynn Loring), and Kay (Sandy Dennis in her first film appearance) whisper about Bud and who's taking whom to the football game: Kay: Just because his father's got money... Carolyn: That's not true, Kay... June: Bud Stamper isn't stuck on himself at all. A flapper-styled, not-so-innocent, slutty Juanita Howard (Jan Norris) answers the teacher's question about a characteristic of the Age of Chivalry: "The Knights of the Round Table had a very high regard for women...They looked on women as very pure." Kay snidely utters an aside: "They wouldn't look on her as very pure." Deanie appears dreamy-eyed when Miss Metcalf rhetorically asks whether chivalry is dead: "Well, how about it, girls? Do any of you feel that you are on a pedestal?" During the school's football game, Bud is thrown out by the referee for unsportsmanlike conduct. In the shower room after the game, Bud (with his face under a steady shower stream) overhears his teammates joke with Alan Tuttle ("Toots") (Gary Lockwood) about taking out the sexually-experienced Juanita. According to him, "Juanita's the only girl in school who knows what it's all about...I never look twice at those other girls anymore. Ya take them out and spend good money on 'em, and they expect you to feel satisfied if they even kiss you good night." Outside the school gym, Deanie jealously reprimands Bud after he flirts with red-headed Juanita on his way to the car - and he is furious: "I'm not even supposed to know girls like that exist, huh?" When they reach her house, she is still repeatedly apologizing for her possessiveness and they affectionately make up: Deanie: (with her head on his shoulder) I just can't stand it when you're mad at me... Bud: I don't know what's the matter with me lately. I'm always losing my temper. You're the only girl in the world for me. Don't you know that, Deanie? Deanie: I want to be. Bud: If it weren't for you...if it weren't for you, Deanie - I don't know. (He smashes a fist into his hand) Deanie: (She caresses his cheek gently and kisses him. He kisses her back and pulls her toward him.) Oh, Bud, Bud, it's broad daylight. Stop it. Stop it. Come on now. Bud! People can see us. Bud: I don't care! They enter the empty house and check to insure their privacy in the parlor. Being head-over-heels in love with him, Deanie begins to show her sacrificial devotion after he has shown interest in someone else. She peppers him with kisses all over his face - and then when they hear voices, they retreat into the side dining room. Through a framed doorway, the camera eavesdrops on their overheated love scene. Deanie presses her groin into his as they lean against a door. Bud forcefully grabs her shoulders and presses her down to her knees to make her confess her utter obedience to his will: Bud: You're nuts about me, aren't you? You're nuts about me....(After making out a while, he begins to touch her below the waist.) Deanie: No, Bud... Bud: (He pushes her down to her knees in front of him.) At my feet, slave. Deanie: Bud, don't. Bud: Tell me you love me. Deanie: Bud, you're hurting me. Bud: Tell me you can't live without me. Say it. Deanie: I do. Bud: You do what? Deanie: I do love you. Bud: And you can't live without me...And you'd do anything I'd ever ask you, anything. Deanie: (fearfully) I-I'd do anything for you. Bud: Deanie, I didn't mean to hurt you. (She lies on the floor, curled up protectively.) Deanie, Deanie! Deanie, I was just kidding. Look, I'm the one who should go down on his knees to you, Deanie. Deanie, I was just kidding. I thought you knew that. Deanie: (sincerely) I can't kid about these things. Because I am nuts about you, and I would go down on my knees to worship you if you really wanted me to. Bud, I can't get along without you. And I would do anything you'd ask me to. I would! I would! Anything!   After her confession of complete submission, she rolls over onto her back in a sublime, vulnerable state of passionate surrender, moaning orgasmically and begging for "anything" to happen: "Oh Bud. - Bud! - Bud." When they hear the intrusive Mrs. Loomis returning to the house, Deanie hurriedly straightens herself and they begin playing a regimented duet of Chopsticks on the piano. With lines dripping with sexual innuendo, Deanie is prepared to give into her passions now that Bud has increased his sexual demands and they can't ignore their emotions - the two make plans for an eventful evening: Deanie: Are we going to the Victory Dance? Bud: I can think of things I'd rather do. Deanie: (after warily looking around) I'll be ready. Once Bud has left and promised to return to pick her up for the dance after dinner, Deanie learns from her mother that Bud's sister Ginny has a bad reputation. She was put "in the family way" by a man in Chicago and had to be taken to a doctor for an abortion - "one of those awful operations." The shrewish Mrs. Loomis strikes fear in her daughter about falling in love: "That's what happens to girls who go wild and boy crazy." Upon his return home, Bud announces personal decisions to his manipulative father about his career plans, asserting: "It's what I want that counts." His true wishes are to marry Deanie and attend an agricultural college: Dad, I'm gonna marry Deanie...I don't really want to go to Yale. I'm not a very good student...I'd like to go away to a good agricultural college for a couple of years. I'd really like to do that, Dad. I could come right back here and I could take over your ranch just south of town...I could marry Deanie. I could take her off to college with me. That's what I really want. She'd be a big help to me, Dad. Mr. Stamper ignores his son's deepest goals, and attempts to convince him to wait about marriage. But Bud, sexually frustrated and unable to postpone his pent-up desires any longer, clenches his teeth in protest. He is advised that there are "two kinds of girls" - and the 'loose' ones are available to sow some wild oats ("get a little steam outa our system"). Adding to the complexity of Bud's confusion is that he feels sexual passion for Deanie - one of the 'good' girls. After realizing he's beaten by his dominating father's hypocritical, morally-corrupt bargain, Bud doesn't follow his own heart - he agrees to go to Yale for four years before marriage: Mr. Stamper: Son, a boy your age doesn't even know what he wants. After you've had a college education, then you might change your mind...Trust me, trust me this time, son....(rising and moving forward) Son, all I'm asking you to do is to finish Yale. And then if you still want to marry the li'l Loomis girl, you come back here and you marry her, boy, with my blessing. I'll send you both off to Europe for a honeymoon. Bud, please wait, son! Bud: I just don't know if I can, Dad! I feel like I'm going nuts sometimes. Mr. Stamper: I understand. (He places his arm over his boy's shoulder.) Your old man understands. What you need for the time being, Bud, is a different kind of girl. When I was a boy, son, there was always two kinds of girls. Us boys - we-we'd never even mention them in the same breath. But every now and then, one of us boys'd sneak off with a girl - and we'd get a little steam outa our system. Bud: Dad, Dad, no girl looks good to me except Deanie. Mr. Stamper: I know. Bud: I love her, Dad! Mr. Stamper: I know, son, I know! Bud: See, I don't want to do that. (agonizing) OK. I'll go to Yale. But I want you to know that I'm gonna marry her as soon as I get out. Mr. Stamper: That's a promise. Bud: I want you to remember that. Rain streaks down the windshield of Bud's sportster parked by the waterfall - the couple's faces are blurred by the glass as she vows to be faithful for four long years: Bud, I'll wait for you. I'll wait for you forever. I'll do anything you want, Bud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Sunday church service, Reverend Whiteman (uncredited screenwriter William Inge himself) sermonizes: "Lay not up treasures for yourself on earth. Where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves do break through and steal. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." 

 

Deanie lovingly reaches for Bud seated next to her, 

while Mr. Stamper, the one most in need of heeding the Biblical words, snoozes. 

After the service, Bud's father requests that his son "spy" ("keep an eye") on Ginny while he's away on a short trip to New York: "She won't do anything crazy when you're around."

 

At the Stamper's dinner table that evening, Bud's sister has attracted a muscular, ignorant boyfriend named Glenn (Sean Garrison). With his unemployed father, he is a newcomer to town from Oklahoma and works in the local filling station. Deanie is both amused and repelled by Ginny's sassiness (termed a "bad nature" by her mother). 

 

When they double-date together after dinner at one of the outlying ranch properties on the sprawling Stamper estate, Ginny taunts her do-good, miserable, and sexually-repressed brother:

Why don't you quit trying to pretend you're so pure and righteous...You never do anything except what Dad tells you - isn't that right, Deanie? You've been finding that out, haven't you? He just lets things torment him inside and make him miserable and he never does anything about them, never does anything.

 

Deanie and Bud gaze out over a landscape dotted with creaking oil wells - Bud assures his fiancee: "All this - it's gonna be ours some day."

Later, on Christmas day, Ginny cautions her stunned brother after slapping him. She challenges him to confront their father: "If you want to listen to Dad, go ahead. One of these days, you'll find out. You'll find out and then God help you."

 

 

At a New Year's Eve country-club dance to bring in 1929, Ginny lives up to her reputation as a booze-drinking, loose trollop - dipping and passing out gin drinks from a huge bathtub to a horde of male admirers. During the countdown to the next year, Mr. Stamper pops with a lit cigar an inflated pink balloon (with '28' imprinted on it) atop a model of one of his golden oil derricks. The sexually-suggestive symbolism (of wealth and male power) is further amplified when a stream of champagne shoots up from the top of the oil rig - while the band plays "Auld Lang Syne." He is assured of prosperity in the coming year, but repelled by the spectacle of his drunken, uninhibited daughter kissing him in public: "You cut that out. You behave yourself." Shattered by her father's curt rejection but remaining defiant, Ginny turns to heavy drinking, soon becomes inebriated ("plastered"), and flirtatiously flaunts her wantonness in front of married men. She barges into the Men's Room - and amidst protests, emerges guzzling from an upturned whiskey flask.   Mr. Stamper instructs Bud to take the soused woman home, and Bud dutifully leads her away from the party onto the porch. A group of her former partners witness her outspokenness toward her upset brother: If you weren't my brother...you wouldn't even come near me...You're a nice boy. You're nice. I know what you nice boys are like. I know - you only talk to me in the dark. IN THE DARK! When she pulls away from him and is left with at least eight 'nice-looking' boys on the porch, they paw at her and kiss her. After she implores one of them (Joe) to take her "anywhere!!!," she is led into the dark parking lot and trailed by the men - and a gang-rape is implied within one of the sedans. As Bud seeks to rescue and defend her, he finds the waist-sash from her dress on the ground. He angrily drags Joe from the car and fights him and others off in a bloody melee, as Ginny starts the car and tries to run them over as she drives off. Unaware of the reason for the fight, Deanie searches for Bud in the parking lot. With a bloody lip and bruised face, he staggers and falls into her arms. After driving her home, he withdraws within himself and refuses her comforting invitation to come inside. With increased torment in his own mind, he decides to break off their relationship for a while and stop seeing her: We've got to stop all this kissing and foolin' around, Deanie...I just don't think we'd better see each other for a while. Deanie stands on the curb - puzzled, frozen and stunned by his sudden decision. After some time has passed, Bud is in school's basketball practice - preoccupied, bewildered, exhausted, and unable to concentrate. In his English class, Bud is equally dazed when he receives a "not very good" grade on his term paper from his teacher, Miss Longfield: "You've got to do much better if you're going to get into Yale in the fall." In the hallway, Deanie is expectantly waiting for him: "I miss you, Bud." During a basketball game as he completes a lay-up, Bud bumps into a padded pole and soon falls down unconscious. The Stampers' family doctor Doc Smiley (John McGovern) attends to feverish Bud in the locker room and recommends hospitalizing him - he may have pneumonia. In the hallway of the hospital with Deanie listening intently from a short distance away, the doctor speaks with Mr. Stamper and wonders if Bud will recover: "I'm not a religious man, but I know what every doctor knows - you can't...reckon with the will of God." That night, Deanie prays with Reverend Whiteman to heal Bud: "All I can think of is, 'Dear God, make him well, make him well.'" Agonizing over her ex-boyfriend's health, Deanie kneels in the pew: "Oh, please God, make him well. Make him well." Sometime later, in Doc Smiley's office, Bud is recovering his strength - and receiving a sunlamp treatment. When he turns to the unhelpful doctor for advice about his relationship with the "mighty attractive" Deanie, Bud describes the painful toll it has taken on him, and his father's suggestion to find a girl who is more accommodating: I'm pretty nuts about Deanie Loomis...I mean I love her and she loves me. But it's no fun to be in love. It hurts. Every time that we're together, I have to remember things - you know what I mean?...And I can't just go back to seeing her again, not like the way we were doing. We'd go out every night and I'd kiss her - I'd just go home. I mean, a guy can go nuts that way...My dad said that I should get another kind of a girl...but when you don't really want another girl...I don't know.

 

It is late springtime and from a long shot, Bud and Juanita bask in the hot afternoon sun on the rocks in front of the waterfall. Unable to restrain his sexual needs, he has chosen to have a tryst with the most promiscuous girl in the school. In contrast to his date with Deanie at a distance from the falls in the film's opening, he is now at the foot of the falls with Juanita. She rubs his bare chest and kisses it, whispers into his ear - and then they playfully cavort in their underwear under the falls. She giggles as they lovingly embrace, with soaked and clinging undergarments, within the roar of the gushing water. In the school corridor - now without Bud and knowing that he is dating Juanita, a lonely and melancholy Deanie walks alone to her English class, disengaged and out of synchronization with her surroundings. Miss Metcalf recites from William Wordsworth's 1807 poem: What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind She then calls on an inattentive Deanie to interpret its meaning in front of the class. Deanie rises and reads the phrases aloud from her textbook, with tears welling up in her eyes and an uncomfortable lump in her throat, and then she interprets the lines with great difficulty - with Juanita looking up from the seat in front of her. She strains not to reveal the pain in her heart, suddenly realizing that her relationship with Bud may be over, and that her youthful ideals must give way to adulthood: Well, I think it has some...Well, when we're young, we look at things very idealistically, I guess, and I think Wordsworth means that when we grow up, that we have to forget the ideals of youth and find strength...

Mrs. Loomis: Stop it! Stop it!
Deanie: I'm a lovely virginal creature who wouldn't think of being spoiled! (She stands up in the tub and steps out with her arms outstretched.) I've been a good little girl, Mom! I've been a good little, good little, good little girl! I've always done everything Daddy and Mommy tell me. I've obeyed every word. I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!

 

After confessing her prudish celibacy and that she's been 'a good little girl," she screams invectives of hate at her mother and runs naked toward her room. [Although Natalie Wood had agreed to be filmed nude in the scene, potentially the first ever by a major star in a mainstream film, Hollywood censors cut the shots of her nudity. What is left is a brief shot of her running naked away from the camera toward her room, with only a brief view of her buttocks.] Mrs. Loomis stands helplessly and watches from downstairs with her terror-stricken husband. Deanie's bare legs (on her bed) are all that is visible as she wails in her bedroom ("Leave me alone...I'm not spoiled.") In her locked room, she chops away at her long hair with an oversized pair of scissors - to create a more daring, hardened, flapper-style curl.     Her parents consider taking their daughter to a psychiatric institution in Wichita for mental rehabilitation, but the overbearing Mrs. Loomis denies the seriousness of the crisis and the reality of Deanie's illness: "I can't believe it's that serious. She's bound to get over it in a little more time. There's never been any mental trouble in either of our families." Toots arrives to ask Deanie to attend the school prom with him. She is reluctant and vows she'd be "an awful drip" - but then consents - determined to warm up her cold-hearted ex-boyfriend and show him how appealing and seductive she can be. Deanie leaves for the Bon Voyage Grads dance (held in the school gym) in a red, slinky outfit, as she hears her mother call out from the porch: "I'll leave the door open...Don't stay out too late!" Toots listens to Deanie's criticism of her over-protective mother: She's been saying that to me ever since I was knee-high. I used to think it meant something, but it doesn't. It doesn't mean a thing. Her girlfriends happily embrace her as she appears - she instantly scans the couples for a glimpse of Bud. She notices him dancing with her friend Kay. When Kay asks Toots for the next dance, Deanie seeks out Bud and becomes reacquainted with him in the parking lot. She smokes cigarettes inexpertly, and then takes Bud's arm. He is tentative about speaking of their past, but Deanie can't restrain herself:   Deanie: I know why you've quit coming by...I've got to talk about it, Bud. All I've done the past couple months is just - just sit home and think about it... Bud: Deanie, I want to tell you something. (He puts his arm over her shoulder.) Every night after dinner, I have to force myself from going to the telephone and calling you. Deanie: Oh, Bud!!! Bud: Deanie, I think about you all the time but - Deanie: Oh, Bud!! (She melts into his arms and hugs him.) Where's your car? Oh, come on.   She guides him to his car and makes desperate sexual advances toward him - to consummate her feelings for the greatest love of her life. Lustfully, she risks everything when she begs him to make love to her. Again he rejects her during the failed reunion - for not being 'herself' ("a nice girl") and for denying her pride. Her emotional frailty causes her suicidal thoughts and tortured madness to resurface: Deanie: Bud, please Bud, please. Bud: Deanie, cut it out. Deanie: Now, Bud. Bud: Deanie, you're a nice girl. Deanie: I'm not. I'm not a nice girl. Bud: Come on, cut it out. Deanie: (enticingly) I just can't go on like this anymore. Bud: Now come on, Deanie, we're gonna go back inside. Deanie: No. Bud: Come on. Deanie: No. I don't want to go back inside...I wanna stay here with you...I want you. Bud: This isn't the way it should be. Deanie: Why? Why not? Why not? Why don't you, Bud? Why don't you? Bud: Deanie, you're not yourself. Deanie, where's your pride? Deanie: My pride? MY PRIDE!! (He slaps her face as she becomes hysterical.)... Bud: Stop it, Deanie! (He shakes her to make her come to her senses.) Stop! Deanie: Oh, God. I haven't any pride. I HAVEN'T ANY PRIDE! Bud: Oh God, Deanie, what am I gonna do with you? (He hugs her.) Deanie: I don't care what you do. I don't care what happens. I haven't any pride. I just want to die. I just want to die. She runs off into the night away from him - into the arms of Toots. He picks her up and lifts her into his car. He bends over her, caresses her face, and then kisses her. Deanie responds to his advances, but then fights him off when they park at lover's lane by the waterfalls - hidden by huge Stanoer oil pipelines. He glares at her when she protests with her fists and mistakes him for Bud ("Stop it, stop it. Don't, Bud, don't!") While Bud is in front of the Loomis house calling up at Deanie's window, she walks on the rocks by the waterfall and then runs across the dam's wall. Despairing over Bud, she jumps into the river - submerged up to her neck - and begins swimming toward the falls. Just in time, she is rescued from drowning herself by onlookers. In the waiting room where Deanie has been hospitalized, Mrs. Loomis blames her daughter's (she calls Deanie her "baby" and her "little girl") troubles on Bud: "I don't want to see you ever again...He's the cause of all her trouble. He's the cause. What did you do to her tonight?" Deanie is diagnosed as being "in a very nervous condition" by Doc Smiley. Mr. Loomis has resolutely decided to sell their Stamper oil stocks and "send that girl off to Wichita." To complicate matters, Bud vehemently rebels against his father and vows to marry Deanie: "I'm legal age. I don't care what he says, Doc. I'm gonna marry her." But after seeing her delirious instability for himself (off-screen), Bud is advised by the doctor to postpone any marital plans: "Do you want to help Deanie? Then, stay away from her." When the camera cuts to a medium-shot of her face in bed (with a white highlight around her eyes), Bud breaks down in the hallway. She hears his self-pitying bawling and asks the tight-lipped nurse: Who's that? Who's there? Who's there?...Was somebody here? Somebody was here. Somebody was here. A melancholy saxophone provides the audio backdrop as the camera pans down on a view of the campus of New Haven's Yale University and Bud in his dorm room - depressed, he wastes his time smoking cigars and playing solitaire, a prelude to getting kicked out. Meanwhile, Deanie is institutionalized - she passes the time by rocking back and forth in a chair by an open window. In a small Italian pizza restaurant, the black-haired waitress Angelina (Zohra Lambert) prevents Bud from ordering more "home brews" by suggesting that he order a pizza to fill his stomach. Amazingly, the Kansas-bred Bud asks: "What is pizza?" Likewise, Angelina has not heard of his home state "right in the middle of the USA." When she asks, "You must have a sweetheart out there," he responds simply: "I did."

 

In her occupational-therapy class at the Wichita hospital, Deanie wears an artist's smock and paints a still-life portrait, even amazing herself ("I never thought I could do this well, really") and a handsome male patient named Johnnie Masterson (Charles Robinson) who is making a metal-work sculpture next to her. He has been hospitalized with aggressive tendencies due to the pressure his perfectionist father put on him as a medical student to become "the greatest surgeon who ever lived." Her parents visit for the first time since her hospitalization - six months earlier, and Deanie is at first overjoyed to see her mother. She is embraced by her clutching mother (who calls her "my little baby") and her father (who calls her "our little girl"). Mrs. Loomis assuredly denies that there is any psychiatric problem: "She's just as sound and normal as the next one...There's nothing the matter with you. You just remember that. You - are - perfectly - all right." Deanie, who becomes visibly disturbed by the visit under the watchful eye of a stern-faced Nurse, isn't allowed to make plans to have dinner with her parents, and she leaves them after a very short visit. During an office visit with Dr. Judd, her psychiatrist, Deanie criticizes her parents for treating her like a child: "Don't they realize I'm me." She is advised to "accept them as people with a lot of faults maybe." She has also lost contact with Bud:   We've given up writing. I guess he's probably away at school. I don't know. No one ever writes me anything about him. I guess they're afraid that it would upset me. The understanding doctor senses that she hasn't gotten over Bud (or her mother's domination) and it would affect her if she saw him again: "Well, maybe you'll feel a little stronger about it in time." On their porch, Mrs. Loomis complains about Deanie's Freudian psycho-sexual therapeutic treatment and its cost: "I'll bet they've been practicing some of that Freud on her too. Oh, I've read about him. All he's concerned about is sex. And it's costing us every blessed penny we made on our stocks." They are stunned when a radio report from Wall Street flashes the announcement of the crash of stock market prices "in the most disastrous trading ever encountered on the New York Stock Exchange. Fourteen million dollars was lost in a nationwide attempt to unload." In his hotel room in New Haven, Connecticut (while visiting his boy in college who is "flunking every course" but "doin' just fine"), Mr. Stamper is listening to the same radio reports of the stock market crash in the fall of 1929, and speaking on the phone. He exhorts his business partner to not "get panicky" and "sell out." An anonymous-looking man who has been paid to spy on Bud's social activities at school arrives with information on "what's wrong with him" - he has been 'eating up his time and energy' by becoming involved with a waitress in a pizza place. Later, in Dean Pollard's Office at the university, the forceful, determined Mr. Stamper is incensed that his subdued son is indifferent to his studies and doing his best to flunk out and "disappoint" him, but still makes excuses for him anyway: He just hasn't been applying himself. I know my boy. He could pass any course you people offer up here with flying colors - straight A's! In confidence, Bud explains to the Dean why he hasn't been interested in his work at Yale - he has no aspirations other than to ranch - that's all he ever wanted to do: "I never wanted to do a thing but ranch - but Dad..." Mr. Stamper is summoned to New York due to the financial crisis ("the whole town of New York is jumping out of windows. I mean they're quitting"), but before he leaves with Bud for a weekend of carousing in the city, the Dean recommends that Bud drop out. Not a very good listener, Mr. Stamper is desperate that his son remain in school - and again blames Bud's failures on his association with the seductive wiles of a lower-class female:   Don't give up on him...I had to go through something like this with him once before. He falls for some little girl and then that's all he can think about...I THINK THAT'S IT! I THINK THAT'S IT! I think I've known him a little bit longer and a little bit better than you have. I had to break up something like this once before and I see I'm gonna have to break it up again. (He slaps his hand on the Dean's desk.) Once again dominating his son's life with rigid and obsessive aspirations for his success, Mr. Stamper takes Bud to a posh New York nightclub for a night on the town. He drinks and generously offers $50 to a cute salesgirl selling kewpie dolls from a tray. Silver-haired entertainer Tex Guinan (impersonated by Phyllis Diller in a cameo), the owner and hostess of the club, walks among the tables jovially greeting guests and delivering a comedy routine: "Hello suckers. I think I smell fresh money tonight. I'm glad you didn't let a little thing like the stock market crash keep you from coming out tonight. Tonight, as I was walking down Park Avenue to get a taxi, I had to dodge the bodies jumping out of the windows. But let's don't be morbid." At their cocktail table, Bud listens to his father justify his coarse discouragement of a romance with Deanie. With an additional bribe to raise his boy's libido and spirits - he proposes a Deanie 'look-alike' for his companionship that night - he points to a red-outfitted chorus-line dancer on the stage: I may not be around too much longer...it may be that I haven't always done the right thing by you, boy, and I'm sorry. Anything I might have taken away I-I'd like to make it up to you...(pointing) Up there on that stage - Deanie...Exactly, the same damn thing exactly. The same damn thing, just as pretty. Just as pretty! You've never been fair to me. I did that for your own good. How'd you like to be married to her now? Did you ever think about that?...How'd you like to be married to Deanie with her in that institution?...What the hell difference does it make?...That's the same thing exactly. Just as pretty...You look up there at that...You want that? You want it, son?...You can have it, boy. I'll get it for you. You can have anything you want, anything you want, boy. This world is your oyster. Embarrassed when his father leaps up to the stage to grab the attractive brunette, Bud leaves the noisy nightclub. That night as he sleeps in his hotel room, a knock on the door awakens him. He opens up his door - and is bewildered to find his father has purchased for his pleasure the Deanie-Girl hooker from the stage. She ushers herself in. A cutaway to Mr. Stamper's room shows him looking at a long string of ticker-tape curled on the floor. His fortune obliterated, he contemplates suicide from his hotel window. Early that morning, another knock awakens Bud from sleep. [The prostitute's red dress has been tossed on his dresser, but she is nowhere in the room.] He is summoned by officials to an alley next to the hotel to identify his father's blanket-covered body lying on the wet concrete. Bud peacefully tells the policeman: "I'll take him home." The giant pendulum of a clock in the psychiatrist's office tick-tocks loudly as Deanie awaits her departure from the sanitarium. She is dressed in a bright-blue outfit, with a string of white pearls around her neck, white gloves, and wide brimmed white hat for the journey - after being institutionalized for almost two and a half years. She describes her feelings of going home after recovery: "Like going to a foreign country." A former patient Johnnie, who has returned to Cincinnati and is practicing medicine, has proposed marriage and she is contemplating her future with him - though she still loves Bud: "It's different from the way that I felt about Bud - but I love him." The doctor asks a crucial question about her homecoming - and encourages her to 'face her fears': Will you see Bud when you're home?...Do you think you'll be very happy married to John if you still don't know how you feel about the other young man?...When we face these fears, they sometimes turn into nothing. A taxi delivers her to the front of her home. After a dissolve, her mother helps her unpack her things in her room upon her return, and worries about her agreement to marry someone in the East - someone possibly with mental problems of a different political persuasion: "What do you know about this young man you're marrying? After all, you met him in a mental hospital. Are you sure he's all right?...Is he a New Dealer?" She laments, with self-pity, about the thought of losing her daughter, and is concerned that doctors blamed the parents for her wrongful upbringing: "I could cry, just cry, when I think I'm gonna lose my little girl...Deanie, did those doctors at the hospital say your mother had raised you wrong, or something? Did they blame your father and me in any way?" Now calm and with inner peace, Deanie thoughtfully consoles her own mother - with a kiss and embrace: I don't blame anyone, Mother...I love you, Mother. As Deanie puts things away in her dresser, she notices the bare imprints on the wall where Bud's pictures used to be, and the taped outlines on her mirror of his pictures - she tentatively reaches out toward the blank spaces. Her mother babbles behind her about the difficulties of parenting and guiding children toward "happy, normal lives": You know, it would be nice if children could be born into this world with an absolute guarantee that they were going to have just the right kind of bringing up and all lead happy, normal lives. Well, I guess when we get born, we just all have to take our chances. Deanie learns that Bud's sister Ginny "got killed in a car accident" - a fate that a self-destructive, 'bad girl' deserves ("Oh, we all knew something like that would happen, the way she carried on"). And "the Stampers are almost extinct in this town now...Their home has been turned into a funeral parlor."   When girlfriends Hazel (Crystal Field) and June arrive to welcome her home, Deanie joyously and affectionately greets her old high school friends. Deanie readies herself to go on a ride with them - to see Bud. Still with hope in her heart, she selects a special white dress, white pearls, and broad-brimmed white hat from her upstairs closet. Downstairs, Mrs. Loomis ominously and insistently warns her friends about keeping her away from Bud:   The very first thing she did was ask about him. And then she laid on the bed and cried and cried. Oh, I thought maybe the years away, she'd forget about him. Now I want you to promise me. The doctor says she's perfectly all right now, but there's no use in asking for trouble. Keep her away from him. When her friends cooperate with Mrs. Loomis and refuse to tell Deanie where Bud is living and can be found, she finds an ally in her father - he reveals Bud's location on a local farm: "He's staying out at his father's old ranch." [This is the farmhouse where she shared a double-date with Bud and his sister years earlier.]  She walks over to her trusting father who demonstrates confidence in her new-found emotional health (contrary to her mother's opinion), and kisses him warmly on the forehead. With her friends, they drive along a dusty road to Bud's farm property and ramshackle ranch house. She fears that seeing Bud again may rekindle their deep, glorious, and hopeless love - and the emotional breakdowns as well. At an apprehensive Deanie's urging, Hazel locates Bud, with greasy hands and overalls, working on a hay truck behind the house. He boasts "we're eating regular." He is also hesitant about seeing Deanie with his dirty hands, but agrees to speak to her. They spot each other between a long row of tall green bushes - he's in work clothes while she is beautifully dressed in her white outfit with white gloves. They tentatively wave, and then Deanie runs up to him while holding onto her white hat to keep it from falling off her head. They try to remain lighthearted as she looks deeply into his face:

 

 

Bud: Long time no see. Deanie: A long time. Bud: It's good to see you, Deanie. Deanie: Thanks, Bud. (The wind stirs the bushes behind him. She laughs nervously.) Bud: Hey, you wanna meet my family? Deanie: Of course. Deanie is introduced to Bud's hospitable, pregnant wife - the Italian waitress from New Haven, Connecticut that he married and impregnated during his first year in school before he dropped out. Deanie is stunned but not overcome after learning he has a family - an infant named Bud, Jr., and another on the way. Lovingly, Deanie holds the baby boy up in her arms and lets him play with the pearl string around her neck. Now a little older and more sophisticated, she can see that her high-school hero is burdened by a pregnant wife and a run-down farmhouse.

 

 

As they walk to the car, the short visit has confirmed for Deanie that her former lover hasn't matured much since she last saw him as a high-school senior. But his lifestyle has changed radically from one of wealth and prosperity to the hard-working life of a rancher/farmer. And he seems only half-satisfied with married life. They both have had to accept compromises in their bitter-sweet lives ("You gotta take what comes") - no longer able to dwell obsessively on recovering the intense happiness (and its attendant agony and confusion) that they once experienced. Although she still loves him warmly, she discovers that the affection that they once had could never be recovered: Deanie: You're happy, Bud? Bud: I guess so. I don't ask myself that question very often, though. How about you? Deanie: I'm getting married next month. Bud: Are you, Deanie? Deanie: (She nods.) A boy from Cincinnati. I think you might like him. Bud: Gee - things work out awful funny sometimes, don't they, Deanie? Deanie: Yes, they do. Bud: I hope you're gonna be awful happy. Deanie: Well, like you, Bud. I don't think too much about happiness either. Bud: What's the point? You gotta take what comes. Deanie: Yes - well - Bud: Deanie! (She turns toward him.) I'm awful glad to see you again. Deanie: (She sighs and affectionately flitters her eyelids.) Thanks, Bud. Goodbye. Bud: Goodbye. When he returns to the house, Angelina senses that Deanie was once Bud's closest love in his life. As the three girlfriends drive off, Deanie is asked about the love of her life: Hazel: Deanie, honey, do you think you still love him? She removes her white hat and looks ahead to her new future with a wise, unspoken understanding and acceptance. She has calmed inner conflicts, disappointments, and struggles and put herself back together after the painful shattering of her intense, first youthful love. With new awareness, she realizes she has outgrown the very different, still good-natured Bud that she once loved and worshipped. Deanie has put aside youthful exuberance, grieving, and denial of love to move forward. She has also gained strength from what remains - the memories of her "splendor in the grass." As she narrates (in voice-over) and remembers the words of the Wordsworth's poem Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, taught to her by her schoolteacher, Deanie peacefully and fully answers the question about her loss of love - one that has finally been resolved: Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower We will grieve not, but rather find Strength in what remains behind. [The final lines of the film, the telling of Wordsworth's poem, are the second instance of Deanie's recitation of the words.] Splendor in the Grass There is a miracle in being young...and a fear.     Note:  What I gained from Bud and Deanie seeing one another again, is that they stil love one another.  A Love that will never stop.  But, they have to move on in/with their lives.

     Splendor In The Grass Poem

     Splendor In The Grass Poem