Splendor in the Grass

Director: Elia Kazan Elia Kazan

Overview

1961's premiere "date" movie represented the screen debut of Warren Beatty. Set in the 1920s, William Inge's screenplay concerns the superheated romance between working-class high schooler Natalie Wood and rich kid Beatty. Trying their best to keep their relationship from going "all the way," Beatty and Wood go through a series of unsatisfying interim romances. The troubled Wood attempts suicide and is sent to a mental institution, while Beatty impregnates freewheeling waitress Zohra Lampert. Wood and Beatty still carry a torch for one another, but circumstances preclude their getting together -- and besides, Wood suddenly realizes that she's outgrown the still-floundering Beatty. Scriptwriter William Inge shows up as a minister in Splendor in the Grass, while comedienne Phyllis Diller does a cameo as famed nightclub entertainer Texas Guinan; also, keep an eye out for Sandy Dennis, making her first movie appearance.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/17/2016
UPC:	0888574407520
Original Release:	1961
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	2:04:00
Sales rank:	15,917

Special Features

Oscar Nominated Cartoon Beep Prepared; Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Natalie Wood	Wilma Dean Loomis
Warren Beatty	Bud Stamper
Pat Hingle	Ace Stamper
Audrey Christie	Mrs. Loomis
Barbara Loden	Ginny Stamper
Zohra Lampert	Angelina
Fred Stewart	Del Loomis
Joanna Roos	Mrs. Stamper
Jan Norris	Juanita Howard
Gary Lockwood	Toots
Sandy Dennis	Kay
Crystal Field	Hazel
Marla Adams	June
Lynn Loring	Carolyn
John McGovern	Doc Smiley
Martine Bartlett	Miss Metcalf
Sean Garrison	Glenn
William Inge	Minister
Charles Robinson	Johnny Masterson
Phyllis Diller	Texas Guinan
Phoebe Mackay	Maid
Jake LaMotta	Waiter
Charles Knox Robinson III	Johnny Masterson
David Amram	Composer

Technical Credits

William Inge

Elia Kazan	Director,Producer
Dick Vorisek	Sound Effects
William Inge	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

As florid and overwrought as the teen scandal it dramatizes, Elia Kazan's lush melodrama may not withstand the test of time very well, but its glamorous histrionics and martyred-lover plot line make it perhaps the quintessential breakup film. Audiences today may have trouble believing that anyone would literally go crazy over losing Warren Beatty to another woman, but Natalie Wood's Wilma does just that, and her eventual tranquility at the insane asylum is hardly the sort of satisfying ending the filmmakers might have intended. But, as with much of the rest of the film, it works on another, more bitterly enjoyable level: the look-what-you've-done-to-me school of Hollywood catharsis (see also Douglas Sirk, Tennessee Williams). Viewed through this prism, the film's earlier half is the most effective, with Audrey Christie supplying the same kind of maternal, puritanical repression Piper Laurie would channel 15 years later for her role in Carrie. Beatty and Wood accurately convey the sort of hormonally induced confusion and angst that most teenagers experience, the former playing the role of the taciturn stud as if he invented it (which, in a way, he did), and the latter turning in perhaps her finest impersonation of a dewy, weepy adolescent (in a career full of them). Her money shot -- in which a post-breakup Wilma interprets the Wordsworth poem that gives the movie its title -- is full of the kind of righteous self-pity that only Splendor in the Grass can provide.