Last night I re-watched about half of Joshua Logan and William Inge‘s Picnic (’55). Right up to the moment of Bill Holden and Kim Novak‘s sexy lakeside dance.
When she walks down the steps at the beginning, Novak’s moves are saying “okay, I’ve decided…I’d rather have sex with you than with Cliff Robertson, and while I know we’re not going to do it here and now in front of Susan Strasberg, Verna Felton, Rosalind Russell and poor Arthur O’Connell, a man who never had sex once in his off-stage life and whose character will never have sex with the spinsterish Russell…let’s express our mutual longing in a way that is 110% unmistakable.”
Holden was reportedly so nervous about his dance moves, which he was taught by choreographer Miriam Nelson, that he had to get drunk to perform them.