Ford’s “Banquet at Calanques” makes his life in 1932 seem picnicky. He remembered that brilliant day and the “Homeric feast” enthusiastically. But by the time it was published in 1937, Ford was at various times ailing and depressed,...
Rumor has it that at a studio script reading of Browning’s Freaks, Irving Thalberg, MGM’s production head, is reputed to exclaim, “I asked for something horrifying. Well, I got it.” But when Freaks was released, it failed. Unlike...
Bridge’s Peking Picnic is autofiction based on her life as the wife of the British Oriental Attaché in Peking. The romantic interlude suggests that Bridge’s real-life marriage to Owen O’Malley was no picnic. It’s the story of picnic romance...
Sample’s Church Super is his judgment of his wife Sylvia’s hometown in Westmore, Vermont. It’s dour and static. The supper is ordinary, but many details tell otherwise. Though the minister calls the picnickers for grace, many are already eating. A...
The poise of a young couple picnicking in Fleetwood-Walker’s Amity is ingratiating. The young man stares at the young woman, who looks lost in thought. She twirls a daisy, suggesting youth and innocence. The picnic basket beside her shows apples, a symbolic suggestion...
There is no picnic scene in Ah, Wilderness! There is a Sachem Men’s Club picnic on Strawberry Island, but audiences never get to see it. All we know is that Uncle Sid Davis returns home tired and drunk. Featured Image: Eugene O’Neill with his wife and...
McLeod’s It’s a Gift is a testament to W.C. Fields’s comic skill at making a picnic an utterly messy war zone. On their way west to California, the Bissonettes pronounced bis-on-nay and stopped for picnic lunch. Blithely ignoring a “Private...
When Mary Phelps Jacob was nicknamed Polly, when she married her first husband, she became Mary Phelps, Jacob Peabody. Harry Crosby, her second husband, renamed her Caresse Crosby. He liked the alliteration and the pun on caress. When Harry died a suicide in 1929,...
The zany humor of “Just a Picnic at Whipsnade” is Heath Robinson’s trademark. Of the two picnics here, the lion has got the better deal. It also helps to know that Whipsnade is England’s biggest zoo, near Luton, an hour and twenty minutes north of London. Featured...
Betty Boop, a pretty, silly woman with a sense of humor, was created by Max Fleischer but drawn by Bud Counihan. Among the cartoon strip episodes is a picnic poking self-deprecating fun at Betty’s career as a movie star, “And I’m to ride in this...
