{"id":59450,"date":"2026-02-11T08:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T13:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=59450"},"modified":"2026-02-11T00:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T05:32:23","slug":"splendor-in-the-grass-1961-good-girls-wont-but-natalie-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=59450","title":{"rendered":"Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty Experience Splendor in the Grass<\/i> (1961)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

In Splendor in the Grass<\/em><\/a> (1961), young love is thwarted by societal standards and a meddling father, and the moral of the story might be that sexual repression is not good for the soul. Natalie Wood<\/a> and Warren Beatty<\/a> (in his first film) star as high school sweethearts “Deanie” Loomis and Bud Stamper in director Elia Kazan’s<\/a> bittersweet love story set in 1928 Kansas. Days of learning and nights of passion consume them, but they dare not consummate their relationship sexually. Good girls don\u2019t, and good boys won\u2019t respect you if you do. Bud is a football and basketball star whose domineering father, Ace (Pat Hingle<\/a>), has his son\u2019s life planned out for him. He will attend Yale and then work for his family’s oil business. Bud\u2019s family is rich, while Deanie\u2019s dad is a grocer (an understated Fred Stewart) and her mother (a terrific Audrey Christie<\/a>) a busybody. Deanie will go off to college and then, naturally, marriage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bud wants to wed Deanie right after high school and go to agricultural school, but Ace nixes that idea. He convinces him to go to Yale before getting married. He also suggests that there are “other types” of girls for what he needs. Bud is sexually frustrated and even tries to talk with the family doctor, who seems clueless to answer his questions. Bud decides not to see Deanie anymore to counter his feelings and takes up with Juanita (Jan Norris), who seems to be more willing to give him “what he needs.” Deanie is devastated and has a heartbreaking incident in class that reveals her mental state is precarious.<\/p>\n

Deanie decides to go to a dance with one of Bud\u2019s friends, Toots (Gary Lockwood<\/a>). She cuts her hair and dresses more provocatively. Seeing Bud there with her friend Kay (Sandy Dennis<\/a>), she tells him she misses him and tries to seduce him, but he rebuffs her, telling her she\u2019s a “nice girl.” She takes off with Toots and ends up at a Lover\u2019s Lane spot complete with waterfalls. Running away after fending off Toots’ advances (all while calling him Bud), a distraught Deanie winds up trying to go over the falls but is saved by some men. She is taken to the hospital, where a doctor recommends a mental institution stay.<\/p>\n

While Deanie is institutionalized, Bud goes to Yale but is flunking out, which prompts a visit by Ace to the college dean. Bud tells the dean what he really wants to do (farming), but it’s clear that Bud\u2019s father won\u2019t allow that, despite the dean telling him that Bud shouldn\u2019t be there. Ace says he\u2019s taking Bud to New York for the weekend, and he\u2019ll have him back on Monday to start fresh. In New York they go to a nightclub where famed hostess Texas Guinan (Phyllis Diller<\/a>, making her movie debut) is performing, and Ace notices a chorus girl who looks like Deanie. He tells Bud she\u2019s \u201cthe same damn thing\u201d and \u201cjust as pretty\u201d (as if people were just interchangeable) and sends her to Bud\u2019s room, but he’s not interested. Meanwhile, the stock market is crashing (it\u2019s 1929), leading a bankrupted Ace to commit suicide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Deanie stays at the mental institution for two and a half years. While there she meets John, another patient, and they plan to marry. The first day she is home she is visited by her friends June and Hazel and asks them about Bud. They say they don\u2019t know anything, but in one of the most poignant scenes in the movie her dad reveals to her where Bud lives. Her friends take her there and she sees him. He\u2019s a farmer now, married to Angelina (Zohra Lampert), a waitress he met in New Haven, and already a father to son Bud Junior. The ending is a heartbreaker. Deanie asks Bud if he\u2019s happy and he answers, \u201cI don\u2019t ask myself that question very often\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s the point, you have to take what comes.” True, but devastating.<\/p>\n

Natalie Wood was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, and the film won for Best Screenplay by playwright William Inge<\/a> (Bus Stop<\/em>, Picnic<\/em>), who appears in the film as a preacher. I became a lifelong hater of actor Pat Hingle, so believable was he in his role. As Bud\u2019s tarty sister Ginny, Barbara Loden (who would later marry director Kazan) has some nice moments, and Joanna Roos, who plays his mother, contributes some priceless looks.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the film’s title? That’s courtesy of a poem Deannie is asked to comment on in class: Wordsworth\u2019s Ode on<\/em> Intimations of Immortality, <\/em>which features the\u00a0lines “The radiance, which was once so bright, is now forever taken from our sight, though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, or glory in the flower, we will grieve not but find strength in what remains behind.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Splendor in the Grass (1961), young love is thwarted by societal standards and a meddling father, and the moral of the story might be that sexual repression is not good for the soul. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty (in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":59461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,34],"tags":[1452,6487,1678,1760],"coauthors":[1739],"class_list":["post-59450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-articles","category-staff-notes","tag-1960s-movies","tag-elia-kazan","tag-natalie-wood","tag-warren-beatty"],"yoast_head":"\nNatalie Wood and Warren Beatty Experience Splendor in the Grass (1961) - MovieFanFare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty are 1920s teens in a doomed romance in the 1961 drama "Splendor in the Grass," reviewed at MovieFanFare.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=59450\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty Experience Splendor in the Grass (1961) - 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