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Picnic Overview:

Picnic (1955) was a Drama - Romance Film directed by Joshua Logan and produced by Fred Kohlmar.

Academy Awards 1955 --- Ceremony Number 28 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best Supporting ActorArthur O'ConnellNominated
Best Art DirectionArt Direction: William Flannery, Jo Mielziner; Set Decoration: Robert PriestleyWon
Best DirectorJoshua LoganNominated
Best Film EditingCharles Nelson, William A. LyonWon
Best Music - ScoringGeorge DuningNominated
Best PictureFred Kohlmar, ProducerNominated
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Picnic BlogHub Articles:

Picnic and Written on the Wind

By Rick29 on Aug 12, 2024 From Classic Film & TV Cafe

Kim Novak and William Holden.Picnic (1955). Joshua Logan, who directed the stage version William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, also directed this screen adaptation. Set in a small Kansas town, the story revolves around Hal Carter (William Holden), a charming drifter who arrives in town seeking... Read full article

William Holden romances Kim Novak in “Picnic”

By Stephen Reginald on Sep 12, 2023 From Classic Movie Man

William Holden romances Kim Novak in “Picnic” Picnic (1955) is an American drama film directed by Joshua Logan and starring William Holden, Kim Novak, and Rosalind Russell. The film is based on the Broadway play of the same name by William Inge. The movie features Susan Strasberg, C... Read full article

“Ain’t she sweet?” Kim Novak in Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955)

By Virginie Pronovost on Feb 27, 2022 From The Wonderful World of Cinema

We sometimes forget that Kim Novak is one of those classic actresses still with us today. I’m not sure why that is, except maybe that she’s not so much in the public eye anymore. Et pourtant… She was pretty much an icon of her time, maybe not like Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly were... Read full article

COMEDY GOLD #18: The picnic from To Catch a Thief (1955)

By Carol Martinheira on Aug 16, 2019 From The Old Hollywood Garden

COMEDY GOLD #18: The picnic from To Catch a Thief (1955) On August 16, 2019August 16, 2019 By CarolIn Uncategorized To Catch a Thief (1955, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) boasts not only two of the most beautiful people who have ever lived as its leads, but also some of the mo... Read full article

Picnic (1956, Joshua Logan)

By Andrew Wickliffe on Jun 4, 2019 From The Stop Button

Picnic is all about sex. It can never talk about being all about sex because it’s from 1956 and it’s set in small-town Kansas anyway and no one in small-town Kansas was going to be talking about sex. Not when schoolteachers like Rosalind Russell are trying to ban books for even hinting at sex. B... Read full article

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Picnic Quotes:

Flo Owens: Where is everybody?
Helen Potts: At a picnic everybody disappears. Don't you remember, Flo?
Hal Carter: I gotta get somewhere in this world. I just gotta.
Rosemary Sidney: [Giddily to her schoolteacher friends just prior to eloping] So long, girls! You know what you can tell the principal for me!
Howard Bevans: [to Rosemary] If a woman's going to ask me to marry her, the least she could do is say "Please."
Hal Carter: What's the use, Baby? I'm a bum. She saw through me like an x-ray machine. There's no place in the world for a guy like me.
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Picnic Facts
Finnish censorship certificate # 044220.
The house where Rosalind Russell lived with Kim Novak's family was located in Nickerson, Kansas, and was actually across the street from Reno Community High, where Russell's character taught school. Location shooting wrapped in nearby Sterling, Kansas, where the lake and bathhouse scenes were filmed. The movie's Labor Day festivities called for Sterling Lake to be filled with rowboats, which were in short supply since boating wasn't normally allowed. To make up the shortage, anyone who supplied a rowboat stood a good chance of being a movie extra. Sterling was also where William Holden hopped the Missouri Pacific freight train that was then tracked by cinematographer Haskell Wexler in a memorable closing aerial shot.
In 1957 a marketing investigator, James Vicary, announced that for six weeks he had included subliminal messages in showings of this movie. The messages supposedly said: "Eat popcorn, drink Coca-Cola." According to Vicary, the sales of this products increased from 18% to 57%. Even though his experiment led him to fame, Vicary never gave details of how he came to his conclusions, and admitted in a later interview that everything was just a marketing trick.
The last aerial shot of the bus and the train was filmed by Haskell Wexler, who was - at that time - James Wong Howe's assistant.
William Holden almost turned down the film because he thought he was too old at 37 to play Hal Carter.
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