Tagline: It’s unrelenting moments, Its tragedies and splendors!
Splendor in the Grass movie storyline. It’s 1928 in oil rich southeast Kansas. High school seniors Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis are in love with each other. Bud, the popular football captain, and Deanie, the sensitive soul, are “good” kids who have only gone as far as kissing.
Unspoken to each other, they expect to get married to each other one day. But both face pressures within the relationship, Bud who has the urges to go farther despite knowing in his heart that if they do that Deanie will end up with a reputation like his own sister, Ginny Stamper, known as the loose, immoral party girl, and Deanie who will do anything to hold onto Bud regardless of the consequences.
They also face pressures from their parents who have their own expectation for their offspring. Bud’s overbearing father, Ace Stamper, the local oil baron, does not believe Bud can do wrong and expects him to go to Yale after graduation, which does not fit within Bud’s own expectations for himself. And the money and image conscious Mrs. Loomis just wants Deanie to get married as soon as possible to Bud so that Deanie will have a prosperous life in a rich family. When Bud makes a unilateral decision under these pressures, it leads to a path which affects both his and Deanie’s future.
A tragic, coming-of-age melodrama set in the mid-1920s in a small, rural Kansas town, from playwright William Inge’s original, award-winning script. Star-crossed, teenaged sweethearts, poor HS senior Wilma Dean “Deanie” Loomis (Natalie Wood) and rich Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty in his film debut) fall deeply and passionately in love, but are repressed by the sexual mores of the time, their class differences, and disapproval from their parents – especially her prudish, puritanical mother (Audrey Christie) and his rigid, domineering father (Pat Hingle).
Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 Technicolor drama film that tells a story of a teenage girl navigating her feelings of sexual repression, love, and heartbreak. Written by William Inge, who appears briefly as a Protestant clergyman and who won an Oscar for his screenplay, the film was directed by Elia Kazan and features a score by jazz composer David Amram.
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Directed by: Elia Kazan
Starring: Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, Barbara Loden, Zohra Lampert, Fred Stewart, Martine Bartlett, Marla Adams, Sandy Dennis, Gary Lockwood, John McGovern, Jan Norris
Screenplay by: William Inge
Production Design by: Richard Sylbert
Cinematography by: Boris Kaufman
Film Editing by: Gene Milford
Costume Design by: Anna Hill Johnstone
Set Decoration by: Gene Callahan
Music by: David Amram
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: October 10, 1961
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