Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and Johnson’s film strongly solidified the character of Tom Wrath as a symbol of mid-twentieth Century America, the rising generation of white, well-educated men striving for wealth and power in mid-century 19th...
Ernest Hemingway thought Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was trash. However, Americans still readjusting to World War Two and its aftermath thought made it a best-seller. Within a year of publication, Nunnally Johnson directed a faithful film...
The picnic episode is the eye of a romantic hurricane in which two might-be lovers, Marylee Hadley and Mitch Wayne, are momentarily at ease. Marylee chooses the picnic ground because it’s where she and Mitch played and picnicked when they were teenagers. She remembers...
Fisher sets rules for picnics in stone. In “The Pleasures of Picnics,” she declares people who do not like picnics must be “dismissed immediately.” Fisher’s “true” picnic (and maybe yours?) must be outdoors and away from home....
The Sleep-Tite company picnic is the musical centerpiece of Abbott and Donen’s The Pajama Game and is a reworking of Bissell’s 7 ½ Cents, for which he wrote the screenplay. Once a year, company management and union employees meet on common ground to...
The picnic in Dick’s Eye in the Sky is characteristic of his style of mixing shifting planes of reality and illusion, laced with sardonic humor. The picnic takes when the real world collides accidentally with an alternate world it’s the result of an...
Sirk’s Interlude is ninety minutes of adultery that ends when Helen says, “We have no chance. It’s impossible,” and Tonio replies, “You are right.” Salzburg is all sunshine when Tonio takes Helen for a picnic in his red...
No food. Diners sit at long tables waiting. Spencer said he forgot it, but this seems disingenuous and intentionally humorous because it defies the expectation that a picnic will include abundant food and drink. See Stanley Spencer. Dinner on the Hotel Lawn (1956-57)....
When Aaron Schuman asked Klein if he dreamed in black and white, Klein shot back, “In black and white, of course.” But his photograph Tatiana + Marie Rose + Camels, Morocco, he had it both ways. Featured Image: William Klein. Tatiana + Marie Rose + Camels, Morocco,...
Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy, and Swee’pea picnic on the back of a whale. Ha! ha! See Crosby Newell. Popeye Goes on a Picnic. Illustrated by Bud Sagendorf. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1958
