The love of high school sweethearts Deanie and Bud is weighed down by the oppressive expectations of their parents and society in smalltown Kansas in 1928, threatening the future of their relationship.
It's 1928 in oil rich southeast Kansas. High school seniors Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis are in love with each other. Bud, the popular football captain, and Deanie, the sensitive soul, are "good" kids who have only gone as far as kissing. Unspoken to each other, they expect to get married to each other one day. But both face pressures within the relationship, Bud who has the urges to go farther despite knowing in his heart that if they do that Deanie will end up with a reputation like his own sister, Ginny Stamper, known as the loose, immoral party girl, and Deanie who will do anything to hold onto Bud regardless of the consequences. They also face pressures from their parents who have their own expectation for their offspring. Bud's overbearing father, Ace Stamper, the local oil baron, does not believe Bud can do wrong and expects him to go to Yale after graduation, which does not fit within Bud's own expectations for himself. And the money and image conscious Mrs. Loomis just wants Deanie to get married as soon as possible to Bud so that Deanie will have a prosperous life in a rich family. When Bud makes a unilateral decision under these pressures, it leads to a path which affects both his and Deanie's future.—Huggo
Bud and his high school sweetheart, Deanie, are weighed down by their parents' oppressive expectations, which threaten the future of their relationship. Deanie's mother and Bud's father caution their children against engaging in a sexual relationship, but for opposing reasons: Deanie's mother thinks Bud won't marry a girl with loose morals, while Bud's father is afraid of marriage and pregnancy that would ruin Bud's future at Yale.—Jwelch5742
In 1928, In Southeast Kansas, the teenage sweethearts Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis and Bud Stamper are deeply in love for each other. However, Deanie dodges from Bud's sexual advances since her mother advises her to keep her virginity and reputation unharmed. Bud's father, the oil tycoon Ace Stamper, also advises Bud to give time to Deanie since he plans that his son goes to Yale. Further, he tells him to date easy girls, instead of Deanie. Meanwhile. Bud's sister Ginny Stamper returns from Chicago with bad fame and rumors of an abortion from a married man. When Ginny is gang raped at a New Year's party, the disturbed Bud breaks up with Deanie. Then Bud's pal Allen "Toots" Tuttle invites Deanie to go to a party and she accepts to date him. She sees Bud and tries to convince him to have sex with her, but he refuses. She leaves the party with Toots, and he parks his car near a waterfall to have sex with Deanie. However, she flees and tries to commit suicide, jumping into a small lake to reach a waterfall, but she is rescued. Her parents sell their oil stock to pay an expensive mental institution for Deanie in Wichita. Soon there is the Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression. Deanie stays for two and half years institutionalized, where she befriends Johnny Masterson, who is a medical student, while Bud fails in Yale and befriends the waitress Angelina while his father loses his fortune. Will Deanie and Bud meet each other again?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Deanie would risk everything to be with Bud. Bud is afraid of his father, the most powerful man in a small Kansas town in 1928. Deanie will have to wait until Bud spends four years at Yale. In the meantime he can't spend a lot of time with her, because Deanie isn't that kind of girl. His sister Ginny, back from Chicago, is a constant reminder just how bad a bad girl can be.—Dale O'Connor <[email protected]>
Kansas, 1928
Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis (Natalie Wood) is a teenage girl who follows her mother's advice to resist her desire for sex with her boyfriend, Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), the son of one of the most prosperous families in town. In turn, Bud reluctantly follows the advice of his father, Ace (Pat Hingle), who suggests that he find another kind of girl with whom to satisfy his desires.
Bud's parents are ashamed of his older sister, Ginny (Barbara Loden), a flapper and party girl who is sexually promiscuous, smokes, drinks, and has recently been brought back from Chicago, where her parents had a marriage annulled to someone who married her solely for her money. Rumors in town, however, have been swirling that the real reason was that she had an abortion. Being so disappointed in their daughter, Bud's parents "pin all their hopes" on Bud, pressuring him to attend Yale University. The emotional pressure is too much for Bud, who suffers a physical breakdown and nearly dies from pneumonia.
Bud knows one of the girls in high school, Juanita (Jan Norris) who is willing to become sexually involved with him, and he has a liaison with her. Some months later, depressed because of Bud ending their relationship, Deanie acts out by modeling herself after Bud's sister, Ginny. At a party, she attends with another boy from high school, "Toots" Tuttle (Gary Lockwood), Deanie goes outside with Bud and makes a play for him. When she is rebuffed by Bud, who is shocked, since he always thought of her as a "good girl," she turns back to "Toots," who drives her out to a private parking spot by a pond that streams into a waterfall. While there, Deanie realizes that she can't go through with sex, at which point she is almost raped. Escaping from "Toots" and driven close to madness, she attempts to commit suicide by jumping in the pond, being rescued just before swimming over the falls. Her parents sell their stock to pay for her institutionalization, which actually turns out to be a blessing in disguise, since they make a nice profit prior to the Crash of 1929 that leads to the Great Depression.
While Deanie is in the institution, she meets another patient, Johnny Masterson (Charles Robinson), who is working out anger issues targeted at his parents, who want him to be a surgeon. The two patients form a bond. Meanwhile, Bud is sent off to Yale, where he fails practically all his subjects. While at school, he meets Angelina (Zohra Lampert), the daughter of Italian immigrants who run a local restaurant in New Haven. Bud's father travels to New Haven in an attempt to get the dean to not kick Bud out of school in October 1929. While in New Haven, the stock market crashes, in which Ace loses everything. He takes Bud to New York, where he commits suicide. Bud has to identify the body.
In 1931, Deanie returns home from the asylum after two years and six months, "almost to the day." Ace has lost everything, and his wife has gone to live with relatives; whereas Bud's sister has died in a car crash. Deanie's mother wants to shield her from any potential anguish from meeting Bud, and so pretends to not know where he is. When Deanie's high school friends come over, her mother gets them to agree to feign ignorance on Bud's whereabouts. However, Deanie's father refuses to coddle his daughter, and says that Bud has taken up ranching and now lives on the old family farm. Her friends drive Deanie out to meet Bud. He is now married to Angelina, and they have an infant son, "Bud Jr.," and Angelina is expecting another. Deanie lets Bud know that she is going to marry John, who is now a doctor in Cincinnati. During their brief reunion, Deanie and Bud realize that both must accept what life has thrown at them, as Bud says, "What's the point? You gotta take what comes." They each relate that they "don't think about happiness very much anymore."
As Deanie leaves with her friends, Bud only seems partially satisfied by the direction his life has taken, and he takes the moment to reassure Angelina, who he notices has realized that Deanie was once the love of Bud's life. Back in the car with her friends, they ask her if she is still in love with Bud. She realizes that she still loves him warmly, but that they can never recover that blazing love of youth which they once had. She does not answer her friends, but Deanie's voice is heard reciting four lines from Wordsworth's poem:
"Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind."
