According to one source on IMDb, it may have been her choice to avoid movie fame:
“She turned down the lead femme role opposite Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront (1954) because she preferred the dramatic stage to the Hollywood studio system where she was unhappily being promoted as a sex symbol. At the time she was earning acclaim in “Picnic” on Broadway. Eva Marie Saint was assigned the movie role and subsequently won an Oscar. Janice eventually lost her Warner Bros. contract due to this “misbehavior”.

While I have many friends who think that Ralph Meeker might have been just the right mixture of appealing roughness and sensuality for the role taken by Holden in Picnic, I wonder if a young Paul Newman from the stage production might have handled it?

In terms of boarding houses, I particularly like the one in Washington D.C. in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” where Klaatu hides out as “Mr. Carpenter” while the heat is on. Those were the days, when a mom would, without much consternation, let her young son gad about the city with a virtual stranger, as Pat Neal did with her precocious kid. I also love Frances “Aunt Bee” Bavier looking for Reds in every corner.

Great post, Moira!

That’s a good point about Picnic, Al—though it seems more like a woman’s nightmare to me.

Still, to me it seemed that most of the female characters were so trapped in society’s conventional expectations for them, they didn’t have a clue that life with a man might be feasible, but wasn’t the solution to life’s challenges. I really found it a bit unlikely that, as played by the conflicted William Holden, the women could all have lusted for him, especially since he seemed to be a victim as much as a symbol of a “virile stranger” who ultimately, was an unwitting catalyst to the epiphany experienced by several of the women characters.

One of the limitations of Inge‘s naggingly powerful story is that each female character sometimes seems to represent an aspect of a possible response to the world, with Mom Betty Field representing bitterness and materialism, Rosalind Russell‘s desperate school teacher a frantic desire to have a valued place of her own in society, etc.

The story is somewhat redeemed for me by the glimpses we see of female characters with some half-perceived insight into their status. Though she’s a minor character, the philosophical, quietly observant and generous-spirited Verna Felton as the older neighbor Mrs. Potts is perhaps the most evolved character, since she seems to have compassion for males as well as women, realizing that it wasn’t fair to expect any poor guy to solve the problem of living, ( especially since each man also had a boatload of societal expectations of his own).

Millie Owens, (Susan Strasberg) since she is quite young, and confused, (but has a healthy skepticism mixed in with her envy of her sister’s beauty), is one character who may have the compassion and understanding as well as independent streak that will help her college-bound character survive.

Though I don’t think that Kim Novak was able to fully mine the values of her part, (too shy or too lacking technically at that stage of her career?), but she played her character in a way that was quite touching, despite the sometimes ham-fisted statements she has to repeat. Novak gave her character enough tentative definition to show that her Madge (what a good name for her) seemed to have a sound enough instinct to know intuitively that life without love or risk was a living death. I don’t think she and Holden‘s characters had much chance together, but their attempt to become a couple seemed to be a leap in the dark by two people who were only vaguely aware that they needed something or someone beyond their superficial selves.

Btw, I agree with your father about Arthur O’Connell‘s portrayal of his character. He was funny and real and never missed a note in his realistic performance. It probably helped a great deal that he had played amiable Howard Bevans for over a year in the stage production. If only Joshua Logan could have gotten as realistic a portrayal as his from all his actors.

There also seems to be a need for the proprietoress (it was rarely a man, since this seems to have been a “respectable” way for women to make some money years ago), to maintain a line of behavior among the residents–sometimes it was too strict, but as the straitlaced Ms. Bacall‘s character demonstrated in The Shootist (1976), it could also be intended to allow all parties to have their privacy and dignity, with just a flicker of warmth.

I like your suggestion that Roz would have had an epiphany after leaving her small town in Picnic, and become a Hildy Johnson! I would have settled for her developing into Louise Randall Pierson from Roughly Speaking (1945)!

I recently watched THE SHOOTIST with John Wayne, and his character spends his last days in Lauren Bacall’s boarding house, where she provided meals, clean towels and linens, and help getting out of the tub when he fell. She even sent his clothes to a dry cleaners. Seemed like a much better deal than I have in my apartment.

(I bet Roz would fix that typewriter in the lawyer’s office.)

In Lady With Red Hair (1940) which focuses on the travails of the real Mrs. Leslie Carter (Miriam Hopkins) and David Belasco (played by Claude Rains, who steals the show, as usual as the legendary producer) has some vivid scenes at the dining table. This forgotten little movie features a particularly motley bunch of boarders with theatrical roots, especially Victor Jory, as an acid-tongued failure who never has a good word for anyone! Btw, “Lady” will reappear on TCM as part of Claude Rains Summer Under the Stars Day on Wednesday, August 6th at 4:30 AM ET.

I really hope you’re right about Howard (Arthur O’Connell) and Rosemary (Rosalind Russell). Maybe they moved to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Howard went to work for a lawyer and Roz could substitute teach and fill in on those days when the lawyer’s hard-pressed secretary wangled a well deserved vacation? Or am I confusing things a bit too much?

As always, thanks for your incisive observations. They are very welcome.

Madge and Hal – somehow, and sadly, I never could see that as lasting.

Food always seems to be an issue in boarding houses: the dubious fare in “Stage Door”, the hurt-your-eyes-looking-for-the-meat in “True Grit”, and the Cohans being moved to the end of the table when times were tough in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.