Picnic

Of the Owens sisters, 19-year-old Madge is "the pretty one" and high-school senior Millie is "the smart one" although each would like to be perceived to be a little more like the other. Millie makes no effort to be feminine, believing it will put her deeper into Madge's shadow in comparison. Madge wants to be more than just an object to be looked at. She believes her current boyfriend Alan Benson sees her solely in that light. He wants to marry her, but she isn't sure she loves him. Madge's mother Flo wants her to marry wealthy Alan if only to get her into a better life than she had with her deadbeat husband who left them, so that they had to open their home as a boarding house to make ends meet. Alan's father, who owns most of the grain elevators in their small Kansas town, feels that Madge isn't good enough for his son. On Labor Day, Alan's old fraternity brother Hal Carter, whom he hasn't seen since their college days, unexpectedly arrives in town. Hal is a drifter who comes from a poor family and could only afford to go to college, where he was eventually dismissed for poor grades, because of a football scholarship. Hal is at the end of his rope and has come to ask Alan for a job, somewhat naively believing he can get a white-collar office job complete with a secretary. Hal is all bravado, which captivates some and puts off others, but overall he's seen as a fresh breath of masculinity by most of the women in town. As Hal spends time with Alan, the Owens, spinster schoolmarm Rosemary Sydney (the Owens' boarder), and Rosemary's somewhat beau Howard Bevans, over the course of the day, mostly at the town's annual Labor Day picnic, Hal and Madge each find in the other something that is missing from their lives that they believe could be fulfilled by the other--which would be against Alan's plans--while Rosemary, who believed she was still young and desirable, comes to certain realizations about her life.