In Joshua Logan and William Inge‘s Picnic (’55), William Holden played a drifter named Hal Carter — former high school football star, failed Hollywood actor. Carter was supposed to be somewhere in his mid to late 20s, but Holden was 37 and looked it. By today’s standards he could easily be mistaken for a 45 year-old. Picnic was shot in Hutchinson, Kansas in the spring-summer of ’55. Holden was “reportedly nervous about his dancing for the ‘Moonglow’ scene. Logan took him to Kansas roadhouses where he practiced steps in front of jukeboxes with choreographer Miriam Nelson. Heavy thunderstorms with tornado warnings repeatedly interrupted shooting of the scene in Kansas, so it was completed on a backlot in Burbank, where Holden (according to some sources) was ‘dead drunk’ to calm his nerves.”