“Heroic Survivors of the Picnic.” is Gwen Raverat’s bittersweet memory of a miserable picnic. It’s the next-to-last anecdote in her memoir Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood. I think she means to suggest that life was no picnic but that she...
Benuzzi’s original title for his memoir was Fuga sul Kenya – 17 giorni di liberta [Escape on Kenya – 17 days of liberty]. But being deeply impressed by Vivienne de Watteville’s Speak to the Earth, her memoir of camping on Mount Kenya, * he renamed the...
Dodge’s To Catch a Thief does not have a picnic episode. See David Dodge. To Catch a Thief. New York: Random House, 1952; Alfred Hitchcock. To Catch a Thief (1955). The screenplay by John Michael Hayes is based on David Dodge’s novel (1952), Hilary Radner. “To Catch a...
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)...
Stevens’ barbacoa picnic in Giant is sure-fire-cinema. When Virginia-born-and-bred Leslie Lynnton attends her first Texas picnic, she faints. Barbacoa is an acquired taste at a picnic or elsewhere. It may be delicious, but it is not for the squeamish. Leslie...
Vanderbilt doesn’t care whether you cook out at a picnic or bring everything along. What does matter is to picnic in temperate weather and a style. Her recommendations in the Complete Book of Etiquette are tried and true cold fried chicken, little cold veal or...
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...
Uglow titled this Musicians, but it’s very like a picnic. Featured Image: Musicians (1953) oil on canvas. Swansea, England: National Museum of Wales
Leo Colston’s memories of Brandham Hall fifty years earlier are an infinite source of trouble. Now about sixty-two, he is still trying to understand why. Sometimes Leo is called Mercury or the postman because he’s the go-between surreptitiously delivering...
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...
