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)

A MAN COULD GET KILLED (1966)

 

This convoluted spoof of the spy movies of the 1960s is a real obscurity. The story, should you choose to try and follow it, involves a search for stolen diamonds in Lisbon and the killing of a government agent. Enter William Beddoes (James Garner), an American banker, who is mistaken for the agent sent to replace the dead one. Beddoes is reluctantly pulled into the world of spy/counter spy along with the dead agent's lover (Melina Mercouri). Also dragged into the confusion are an American smuggler (Tony Franciosa) who gets romantically involved with an American girl (Sandra Dee). Much of the screen time features the four stars engaging in various car chases throughout the Portuguese countryside.

Apparently, there was more excitement behind the camera than in front. James Garner and Tony Franciosa didn't get along and their one screen fight turned into a near brawl. The original director, Cliff Owen, was replaced by Ronald Neame, which made the production go on longer than intended. Sandra Dee was near the end of her career as a star actress at Universal and begged the studio not to make her do the picture. Miss Dee: "So I spent a miserable four months in Lisbon, little fishing villages and Rome, making a picture that should have taken eight weeks. We had two changes of directors, and I ended up playing COME SEPTEMBER, all over again." James Garner called the film "disappointing".

The most memorable thing about the film is the lovely theme music by Bert Kaempfert, which won a Golden Globe for Best Song in a Motion Picture. The theme, originally called Beddy Bye, was later given lyrics and became the hit song Strangers in the Night when recorded by Frank Sinatra.

Tony Franciosa, Sandra Dee and James Garner