W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (1944)

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (1944)

The lovers’ picnic in Maugham’s in The Razor’s Edge fails. The lovers never touch or kiss or even hold hands. Isabel Bradley is young and socially mercenary. But, her lover Larry Darrell wants to “loaf” to find himself. Isabel confronts...
Evelyn Waugh’sBrideshead Revisited (1945)

Evelyn Waugh’sBrideshead Revisited (1945)

Slightly drunk, Sebastian Flyte looks up at the sky, remarking (mainly to himself), “Just the place to bury a crock of gold,” he says, “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then when I was old and ugly and miserable, I...
Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945)

At the start of their picnic, Anthony Edwardes asks Constance Petersen about sandwiches. “Ham or liverwurst,” he asks. “Liverwurst,” Petersen silently replies with a knowing smile. Because Hitchcock cut the actual picnic from Spellbound, some...
Constantine Alajálov’s Picnic on a Troop Train (1945)

Constantine Alajálov’s Picnic on a Troop Train (1945)

Alajálov commemorated the final year of World War II for The New Yorker (1945) magazine illustrating a coach of a passenger train filled with exhausted, sleeping soldiers and sailors, rumbling on in the dark, while a staid couple eats a picnic meal. The blasé couple...
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Carousel (1945)  

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Carousel (1945)  

Rodgers and Hammerstein II’s joyous clambake is among the significant changes to Ferenc Molnár’s bleak Liliom. It’s a setup for the unhappiness that follows when Billy Bigelow botches a robbery and dies, leaving his beloved Julie Jordan pregnant and alone....
Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi’s Extraordinary Ordinary Day (1945)

Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi’s Extraordinary Ordinary Day (1945)

Astrid Lindgren’s zany picnic is a gastronomical feast. The chief picnicker is Pippi Longstocking, a brash, energetic, good-natured Swedish girl of nine who lives independently packs her own picnic. After zipping through some household chores, Pippi takes her...
Caroline Gordon’s “The Petrified Woman” (1947)

Caroline Gordon’s “The Petrified Woman” (1947)

Gordon’s picnic is a snapshot of the Fayerlees and Meriwether’s Southern family reunion. It’s an August tradition for more than one hundred folks from all over the South and elsewhere. It’s not a happy day. As revealed by Sally Maury, who was...
Robert Norton’s Memories of Edith Wharton Picnicking (1947c)

Robert Norton’s Memories of Edith Wharton Picnicking (1947c)

Norton recalls Edith Wharton “had a passion for picnics, a passion not shared by quite all of her guests, some of whom, unskilled at balancing a loaded plate on their knees, would have secretly preferred a hot square meal served on solid mahogany: but they dared not...