Here Is A Question For Everyone On Here--What Do You Think Happened To Deanie??????????????????????????

                                    I am sure that ninety per cent  of my readers on here have seen,  at least once, the 1961 fiilm,  "Splendor  In The Grass," which turns 60, this year.  One's perceptions of what one sees over  time,  can change  one's outllook on  the  film.  When I first saw the film,  as a teenager,  I  related  to Deanie; the classroom scene,  which I will try and  include here, encapsulates how  I felt about my own adolescence.

                                 Mind that I say this is  how  I felt,  not what I experienced.  

                                 Later, as an adult, when watching  the film, I no longer demonized the  parents,  as  I  did in my teens.  They were as misguided as their children, and trapped in the times  they were living in.  And  I  am  sure,  for all that we have progressed, the trajectory of  the  story would play out similarly today.

                                  For  those unfamiliar  with this film,  let me  give  you a cultural context.

                                  Back  in 1953, playwright William Inge wrote a one-act play called "Glory In The Flower."  The title, like  that for 'Splendor,' came from  Wordworth's poem "Ode On  Intimations  Of  Immortality."    In this short play, appear  two characters, named Jackie, and Bus Riley.  Inge would later write a play about him  called "Bus Riley's Back In Town."  In "Glory,' he is back, too, having left town because he impregnated his underaged girlfriend,  Jackie, resulting  in her having to have an abortion.  This  play is  set  in the  Paradise  Bar.  Since Inge is  the author, the location has to be somewhere in Kansas.

                                  

                                    Bus is a  failed  movie  star,  not  unlike Chance Wayne,  in Tennessee  Williams' "Sweet Bird Of  Youth."  Jackie is  a spinster piano teacher.  They meet  in the bar and have a sort of reunion,  though they are years beyond youth.   Those who know "Splendor In The Grass" consider these the foreshaows of Bud and Deanie from "Splendor In The Grass."  So, some consider this an answer to the question I posed, but  I do not think  so.

                                    Now, Bus Riley was written about in a play called "Bus Riley's Back In Town."  It was first  presented at  Penn  State  University in 1958, and a movie  was made of it in 1965, starring Michael Parks, Ann-Margret,  and, as Judy, Janet Margolin.  Judy is the Deanie of the piece, losing her home and  her mother  in a fire. Bus, a failed actor, working as a mechanic, which he feels  is  beneath him,  is drawn to  Judy, but is enticed by the more seductive  and manipulative Laurel,  played of course,  by Ann-Margret.  Living with his  mother and sisters, Bus ditches Laurel for Judy,  and begins a contented life.  Here,  the characters of Bud, Deanie, and Ginny Stamper (Bud's sister) are foreshadowed.

                                         Finally, it all came together, with  "Splendor In The Grass."  While  Inge and Elia Kazan were working on his play, "The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs," Inge  told  the  director a story about two people he  knew while growing up in Kansas.  I have not been able to find out what exactly Inge told Kazan,  or who these actual people were, but this is how "Splendor In The Grass" emerged.

                                             For the uninitated, let me  bring  you up to date--

                                             "Splendor In The Grass" is set in Kansas, in 1928, just before the Great Depression,  which will become important, later.  High school seniors Bud and Deanie (Warren Beatty and Natallie Wood) are their school's "Golden  Couple."  Their parents have their own goals and expectations for both--but are they right?   Bud's father (Pat Hingle)  wants his son to take over the oil  business he wants to leave him, after he graduates from Yale.  But Bud,  good looking,  scion of the town's wealthiest family, is a dumb  jock, who wants only to be a farmer  on his father's  farmland.

                                                  Deanie's mother is the feminine  counterpart of Bud's  father.  She would  love  Deanie to score a match with the town's richest family,  but browbeats her continuouly about how sexual  their relationship  is  or is not getting, to the point of  infantalizing her.

                                                      As if this is not enough trouble,  along  comes  Bud's sister,  Ginny (Barbara Loden,  in a brilliant  performance) newly arrived from Chcago, after having a marriage annulled, and an  abortion.  Ginny hates  the town, and its conventions, warns Bud not to conform. But Bud lacks Ginny's gumption,  which is  too bad for him, and his father; Ginny,  properly guided, would have  been better to have  run the  business.

                                                        Things culminate on New Year's Eve, as things segue into  1929.  Deanie and Bud declare their love,  but, after witnessing his sister being gang raped that night, Bud  decides  to cut off ties with  Deanie, which she does not understand, and Bud cannot articulate.  As a result, Bud wanders off with town tramp Juanita Howard (Jan Morris), pushing  himself to physical exhaustion and  a bout  with penumonia.  Deanie, tragically, seeks into a deep depression, culminating  in a nervous bereakdown, an attempted suicide, and incarcertaion  in a mental institution in Wichita,  a standin  for the Payne Whitney clinic, where Inge actually did some time,  himself.

                                                           Two and a half  years past; it is 1931.  Bud has flunked out of  Yale,  his father  loses  everything in  the stockmarket crash and committs  suicide, while  his  mother is passed among  family members, the  quintessential poor relation.

                                                               Meanwhile, Bud has married a working  class girl  he met in New Haven,  Angelina,  played  by Zohra Lampert.  They have a boy, Bud, Jr, and another child on the way.  Home from her incarceration,  Deanie  goes  to see Bud, meets his  family, and both Deanie and Angelina seem  to size each  other up; Deanie realizes that Bud has married down, Angelina,  that somehow  Deanie  will  always be the love  of her husband's  life.

                                                                That's it, in a nutshell.

                                                                OK.  Here is what we  know  about Deanie.  She is to marry a man  named  John , a young  doctor back in Cincinattti, whom she met in the hospital. Her mother is not a bit happy about where she met this guy, or that she will  be living in Cincinatti.  And she is worried that the  hospital  told  Deanie to blame her.

                                                                   By the end, more  is  known about Bud, than Deanie.  So,  to my reades, especially the girls,  out there, I would like to know--        

                                                                      Was Deanie's marriage a happy one?

                                                                        Did she  have  children?  If so,  was she careful  not to raise  them  the way her mother raised her?  If no children,  was it because of her mother?

                                                                         Did Deanie go off the rails, again?

                                                                          What kind of life could she have lived, having been through so much, when young?

                                                                             Let me  know  what  you think, girls.  I am curious  to hear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!