Frederick Ashton’s Picnic at Tintagel (1952)

Frederick Ashton’s Picnic at Tintagel is inspired by  Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s popular Victorian novel Royal Mount, where sightseers picnic on Tintagel Castle’s ruins. (Discussion of Braddon’s Royal Mount is posted elsewhere on PicnicWit.com)...

Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette (1952)

Vanderbilt doesn’t care whether your picnic is a cookout or you bring food prepared. Menus in  Complete Book of Etiquette are tried and true cold fried chicken, little cold veal or English ham pies, chicken, or potato salad. If you pack in a thermos, Vanderbilt...

“We’re not goin’ on no goddamn picnic,” William Inge’s Picnic (1953)

When Hal Carter tells Madge Owens, “We’re not goin’ on no goddamn picnic,” he means they are “goin'” to make love instead. Madge is willing. They are so passionate, their lust so potent, audiences never notice that when the curtain...

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953)

Beckett’s setting for Waiting for Godot (En antendant Godot) is an empty stage and a tree without leaves. It’s an unlikely place for an unhappy picnic. The picnic begins when Pozzo and Lucky arrive. Pozzo brandishes a whip and holds Lucky at the end of a...

Paul Bowles & James Schuyler’s A Picnic Cantata (1953)

Bowles and Schuyler’s performance piece A Picnic Cantata: for Four Women’s Voices, Two Pianos, and Percussion (1954) is delightfully silly. It’s about a happy picnic that is intentionally nonsensical. The music by Bowles’ and the libretto by...

Nadine Gordimer’s The Lying Days (1953)

It’s a tender moment when Helen Shaw and Joel Aaron climb a hill to picnic and enjoy the view. They do not bring food or picnic gear but sit on the rock facing the sun. They are good friends, not lovers, and Aaron soon will be leaving Joel for Israel. Helen...

Richard Bissell’s 71/2 Cents (1953)

Bissell’s 7 ½ Cents  is a light-hearted comedy about a garment factory in a small town in Iowa. Junction City is a shock to Sid Sorokin, the new superintendent of the Sleep Tite Pajama Company, because he used to be Chicago. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he...

Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed (1956)

The horror of LeRoy’s The Bad Seed is serial killer Rhoda Penmark, a darling little girl with blond pigtails and blue eyes who murders a classmate at a school picnic because she covets his penmanship medal (pun intended). The picnic food is present but...

William March’s The Bad Seed (1954)

Rhoda Penmark is a successful serial killer whose career begins at a school picnic. She looks innocent, a darling little girl with blond pigtails and blue eyes. But Rhoda’s interior is ruthless and murderous. Wanting the penmanship medal for herself...

4-CV Roadside Picnic (1954)

Have a motorcar, have a picnic. Featured Image: Roger-Viollet Agency. Couple Seated before a 4CV. Camargue (France) ( 1954) (File 340.2); http://www.roger-viollet.fr/agence.aspx