Splendor in the Grass

Deanie (Natalie Wood in an Oscar-nominated performance that marked a career turning point toward complex adult roles) is a teenager eager to do what's right in her 1920s Kansas town. But the emotions she shares with boyfriend Bud (Warren Beatty in his screen debut) are too strong. Soon the conflict between respectable behavior and human desire will push Bud to physical collapse. And Deanie to madness. Director Elia Kazan encouraged Pulitzer Prize winner William Inge (Bus Stop, Picnic) to turn a true story he heard during his Midwestern youth into an Academy Award-winning script. The result, Splendor in the Grass, remains as poetic, penetrating and powerful today as it was two generations ago.