A SUMMER PLACE (1959)

 

I love to revisit this movie that played in theaters when I was only eight years old. Not that I ever would have been allowed to go and see it! Well, hang on a second and I'll correct myself; my parents took us to the drive-ins quite often and my sister and I watched a few movies that featured, shall we say, slightly risqué content. ANATOMY OF A MURDER, also released in 1959, comes to mind. Not to mention THE BRAMBLE BUSH (1960), a hot mess of adultery and corruption starring Richard Burton. Maybe my folks were more liberal minded than I always thought. Or maybe they just didn't investigate film plots as diligently as they might have.

Eventually, A SUMMER PLACE would play on television enough times in my young life for me to practically memorize the dialogue. And, of course, the beautiful theme song from the film, composed by Max Steiner and recorded by Percy Faith, would play on our transistor radios all through 1960 and beyond, becoming the dreamy background music for our own adolescent, and pre-adolescent romances. I look at this film now with a sense of nostalgia, because 1959 was indeed another world. Social and sexual mores have changed completely. But this was still within my living experience, unlike the films of the 1930s and 1940s. It's a totally different kind of nostalgia to reflect on my own young world and a world I never lived in. The simple fact that this once-shocking movie could play, uncut, on TV in the 1960s is evidence of how rapidly social mores were changing in my young life. And yet, even when I see this movie now, I remember how and why it was considered to be shocking. Young people seeing this for the first time in the present age would probably find it hilarious. But I could be wrong.

The story involves two generations of illicit lovers. Ken Jorgensen (Richard Eagan) and his wife, Helen (Constance Ford), are bringing their teenaged daughter, Molly (Sandra Dee), for a summer vacation at a resort on Pine Island off the coast of Maine. The resort belongs to Bart Hunter (Arthur Kennedy) and his wife, Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire), the parents of young Johnny (Troy Donahue). The resort had once been Bart's family estate, but he has allowed it to fall into ruin while losing the family fortune. He and Sylvia now have to rent rooms in order to survive. Ken and Sylvia had been young lovers many years ago on the island, but Sylvia chose to marry the wealthy Bart instead of the working-class Ken. Lonely and broken hearted, Ken, who eventually became successful and wealthy, married Helen on the rebound. Both married couples are unhappy and frustrated.

Once reunited, Ken and Sylvia can't help renewing their love affair. At the same time, Molly and Johnny are immediately smitten with each other. Molly's mother, a cold, shrewish woman who disdains any kind of human sexual feeling, warns Molly to keep away from Johnny, while Ken tries to be understanding and not make his daughter be afraid of her sexuality. After a time, the affair between Ken and Sylvia is exposed and the two couples are divorced. Ken and Sylvia are married, while the two teenagers are attending private schools miles apart and are forbidden by Helen to see each other. The two teens nevertheless continue to communicate and meet in secret. Both are sickened by what has transpired with their parents.

Johnny and Molly become lovers and find themselves expecting a child. Unable to find anyone to marry them, they go to Pine Island, hoping Bart, now in the final throes of alcoholism, will help them. When he refuses, they go to Ken and Sylvia, who welcome them. Sylvia tells Johnny: "We live in a glass house. We're not about to throw any stones." After getting married, the two teenagers return to Pine Island for their honeymoon.

While social mores, certainly those involving unexpected pregnancies, are much different today, I think the sincerity of the story and especially the heartfelt performances by the talented cast of actors will be able to affect modern audiences. The film was directed by Delmer Daves and was based on Sloan Wilson's best-selling novel of 1958. Harry Stradling provided the sumptuous color cinematography.

Richard Eagan, an actor with a forceful, masculine presence, and Dorothy McGuire, possessing a calm, reserved demeanor, make an intriguing match as the star-crossed adult lovers. I do find it slightly hard to believe that these two people, who have torn apart two families by their passionate affair, seem to fall so easily into a comfortable middle-aged marriage, complete with twin beds, discussing the runaway libidos of their children with great trepidation. Still, the actors have strong chemistry between them. And they certainly find a romantic house to live in. The producers used a house built by Frank Lloyd Wright, located in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California as the couple's home. The movie slows down long enough for Sylvia to give Molly, and the rest of us, a guided tour.

Top dramatic acting honors go to Arthur Kennedy as the self-pitying, alcoholic Bart, a man tortured by his own failures as a husband and by his wife's betrayal, and also to the marvelous Constance Ford who plays Helen. Ford was an expert at playing hard, cold, vindictive women, even though she was a very beautiful and desirable women herself. She easily steals any scene she happens to be in, including when she slaps Molly and knocks her right into a Christmas tree. 

The real attractions for moviegoers at the time were the fresh young stars Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue, both visions of almost impossible blonde beauty. Donahue, born in 1936, was a little too old to be playing a teenager, and had already been serving an extensive apprenticeship as an actor in films and television, finally making a major impression in a brief scene in IMITATION OF LIFE (1959). He would be one of the most popular stars in Hollywood for the next few years, but his career would start to falter in the late 1960s as his acting limitations became evident. The years that followed would prove increasingly difficult, both personally and professionally. But Donahue fought his way back and became quite the busy actor in the 1980s and 1990s. He passed away in 2001 at the age of 65.

Sandra Dee, born as Alexandra Zuck, had been a successful child model before she broke into films in UNTIL THEY SAIL (1957). Her progress was rapid, and in 1959 she appeared in no less than five major films, two of which, GIDGET and IMITATION OF LIFE are also considered to be classics. There is a dispute regarding her birth year. Officially, she was born in 1942. But according to her son, Dodd Darin, whose father was singer/actor Bobby Darin, Dee was actually born in 1944. This would make her fourteen or fifteen years old in these films of 1959, and only sixteen when she eloped with Bobby Darin in 1960. Whatever the truth is, Dee was a gifted and sensitive actress. Like Donahue, she was a major star for the next several years. Truthfully, I believe her career peaked in 1959. By the late 1960s, she, too, began to struggle. Unfortunately, her life proved even more troubled than Donahue's. She worked only sporadically in the 1970s and eventually went into seclusion, suffering from bulimia and alcoholism. She attempted a resurgence of her career in the early 1990s but was unable to make much progress. She passed away in 2005 from kidney disease. After all these years, and in spite of her difficult life, Sandra Dee remains a beguiling image of innocent beauty, an enduring symbol of that other world that I still remember and can always return to when I visit A SUMMER PLACE.

A Summer Place 1959 Official Trailer Sandra Dee, Richard Egan Movie HD

A Summer Place (1959, theme)

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR WIFE (1960)

 Life can sometimes be difficult for those of us who are "completist" collectors. We are called upon to endure an excruciating series of bad films and TV shows in order to get our grubby claws on the various forms of physical media featuring our favorite stars and directors. The weird thing about this lifestyle is that the thrill of finding some obscure item or other, oftentimes after years of searching, is as important and rewarding as the item itself. When a collector is driven to complete the filmography of a beloved actor/actress/director, all that matters is having something on the shelf, in its proper order, naturally.

In the case of my admittedly pathological obsession with Barbara Steele, I may never reach my goal of owning all of her film and TV appearances. It's not because her body of work is so extensive, because, God bless her, it really isn't. The problem is that most of her films were low budget projects made in several European countries. Some of them are so obscure, they don't seem to exist anywhere, certainly not in any form of commercial home video release in the United States. 

Still, the search continues. I mean, we all need a hobby, right? 

I was able to find a good bootleg copy of this brainless, seriously unfunny comedy that was released by the Rank Organization in 1960. This was Barbara's fourth and final film for the studio before they sold her contract to 20th Century-Fox in Hollywood. The cover of the DVD-R is purposely deceptive in using a still photo of the actress from Fellini's 8 1/2 on the cover, as the goal is to attract her fans. As it says on the back cover: "Here's a movie for Barbara Steele fans. Her role is not large, but it's important to the plot--and she looks gorgeous!"

The stars of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR WIFE are Veteran English actors Donald Sinden and Peggy Cummins. Miss Cummins is remembered for her iconic role in the classic Noir, GUN CRAZY (1950) and is also known to horror fans for NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1958). Sinden and Cummins play a middle class married couple with the unlikely names of Pelham and Gay Butterworth. Gay's wealthy aunt has died without a will, which means that Gay will very likely inherit a lot of money. However, her husband unfortunately finds the will hidden away in an old desk. The will complicates matters beyond all comprehension, and no inheritance will be forthcoming unless the couple gets divorced. Not wanting to give up their domestic bliss, the couple tries renting out rooms in the rather large house in order to make money and pay off their considerable debts. This brings a succession of quirky characters into the film. Chaos ensues, complete with an endless string of physical comedy bits and personality clashes, none of them generating much laughter. Steele gets to play a seductive young model named Juliet Frost, who catches the eye and interest of Pelham Butterworth. 

As the plot develops, the couple indeed end up getting divorced after Gay finds Pelham in a compromising position with the flirtatious Juliet. This means she gets the inheritance, and SURPRISE, the estranged couple find their way back to each other's arms as the film ends. Any viewer who is still awake at this point will certainly share in the joyous conclusion.

It's hard to believe anyone at Rank thought this movie would make audiences laugh. It's a real disappointment, especially considering the talented players involved. Sinden, Cummins, and all the various supporting players give their best efforts, but they're all let down by a dull script and unimaginative direction.

As for La Steele, she is indeed gorgeous and shows lots of "femme fatale" potential that, sadly, was not explored very often in her subsequent film career. Her next film assignment, after reporting to Fox in Hollywood, would be a loan-out to an Italian director named Mario Bava for a little horror flick called LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO, later to be known as BLACK SUNDAY. That would send her on a trajectory into the Gothic horror movement, a movement that she would come to symbolize. But in this little English comedy, she demonstrates her ability to be sexy and contemporary, possessing a confident style and stunning beauty that could have enlivened many other cinematic genres. She is without a doubt the best thing, indeed the only thing, that makes this silly comedy worth watching and owning. Yes, the search was worth it!!