William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s Yogi Bear (1961)

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s Yogi Bear (1961)

Hanna and Barbera celebrate the adventures of Yogi Bear, living in Jellystone Park, who loves to steal “pic-a-nic” baskets. Yogi’s accomplice BooBoo, a bear cub, helps loot baskets from tourists. Yogi and BooBoo love sandwiches, sausages, cakes,...
Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast (1964)

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast (1964)

Hemingway’s “Scott Fitzgerald”  in A Moveable Feast recounts their sudden friendship. Among his anecdotes is their picnic on a drive from Lyons to Paris in 1925. Hemingway was uneasy with Fitzgerald’s character peculiarities, especially his...
Ian Fleming’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964)

Ian Fleming’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964)

On a Sunday in August, Commander Caractacus Pott announces Mimsie, the mother, Jemima and Jeremy, eight-year-old twins: “Today is going to be a roaster,” he said, “a scorcher. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s for us to take a...
NASA’s Gemini 3 Spacecraft (1965)

NASA’s Gemini 3 Spacecraft (1965)

NASA’s space food makes a picnic. Aboard Gemini 3, “The Molly Brown,” Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and John Young rocketed and enjoyed a picnic of corned beef sandwiches purchased at a local deli in Cocoa Beach. As Grissom began to eat it, the...

James Beard’s Menu’s for Entertaining (1965)

Tucked into Beard’s many cookbooks are informative and playful suggestions for picnicking. He writes, “Wherever it is done, picnicking can be one of the supreme pleasures of outdoor life. At its most elegant, it calls for the accompaniment of the best...
Pierre Franey’s Chefs’ Picnic on Gardiners Island (1965)

Pierre Franey’s Chefs’ Picnic on Gardiners Island (1965)

Franey, executive chef of Le Pavilion, New York’s only four-star restaurant, and Craig Claiborne, the New York Times food critic, planned an August picnic on Gardiners Island. * It was staged in August 1965 and ironically reported in a Life magazine issue...
Jacqueline Wheldon’s  Mrs. Bratbe’s August Picnic  (1966)

Jacqueline Wheldon’s Mrs. Bratbe’s August Picnic (1966)

When a child is murdered at Bratbe’s picnic, a public and family scandal erupts. Then it begins to rain. Hytha Bratbe’s picnic is an annual event for about 800 invited guests, including the Prime Minister, at her estate in the West Sussex Downs, surpassing...
Joan Lindsay’s Picnic a Hanging Rock (1967)

Joan Lindsay’s Picnic a Hanging Rock (1967)

Ironically, the picnic at Hanging Rock overpowers the narrative though it is the novel’s shortest section. The events and ambiance are so actual that readers accept the narrative at face value. Lindsay helped set this delusion by suggesting, “Whether...
Fernando Botero’s Picnic in the Mountains (1966)

Fernando Botero’s Picnic in the Mountains (1966)

Botero’s picnics express moments of happiness, abundance, and love of life in the landscape with ample food, wine, and other provisions. Sometimes, his picnickers are so relaxed they fall asleep. His early exploration of the picnic theme, Picnic in the Mountains,...
Ted Hughes’s Iron Man (1968)

Ted Hughes’s Iron Man (1968)

Five years after Sylvia Plath’s suicide, Hughes wrote Iron Man as entertainment to help their children Frieda and Nicholas deal with their mother’s death. The story is a fantasy about a colossal Iron Man (from somewhere unknown in the universe) with an appetite for...