Picnic (1955 Film)

Picnic (1955 film)

Picnic is a 1955 Cinemascope production, the film adapted for the screen by Daniel Taradash from William Inge’s 1953 Pulitzer Prize winning play. Joshua Logan, director of the original Broadway stage production, directed the film version. Picnic was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two.

The film starred William Holden and Kim Novak in leading roles. The supporting cast members were Rosalind Russell, Susan Strasberg, Cliff Robertson, Arthur O'Connell, Nick Adams, Betty Field, Verna Felton and Raymond Bailey

The film dramatizes twenty-four hours in the life of a rural Kansas town set in mid-twentieth century America. It is the Labor Day holiday and an anchorless, ex-football hero drifts in looking to re-connect with his old college friend, son of a wealthy grain elevator operator. This is the story of the proverbial outsider who blows into town and subsequently manages to upturn complacency, shake convention, disrupt, rearrange lives and—reset the fates of all those with whom he comes into contact.