Lee Eisenberg With the '50s coming to a close, audiences were probably looking for a movie to break away from the decade's repressed mores. Boy did they get one! "A Summer Place" contains what were probably some of the most candid discussions of sex to grace the silver screen up to that point (by which I mean that the words "sex" and "pregnant" get used in the movie). But more importantly, the movie hints at what "The Graduate" would deal with head-on less than a decade later: the hypocrisy of the parents' generation. The parents act like nice, upstanding members of the community, while in reality they're a bunch of cold, spiteful individuals (not to mention bigoted; one of them doesn't want to be around "Jews, Catholics, Italians, Poles, French, Germans, Blacks, Latinos or Asians")*.Obviously it was still going to be a few years before cinema could deal with these issues directly. But for a movie to even mention sex, adultery and divorce in the oh-so-wholesome Eisenhower era was a major leap (at least for 1959). As for Sandra Dee, it's understood that she usually got cast in "cute" roles. I bet that if the executives hadn't tried to control her career so much, she would've graduated to serious roles. Who knows? She just might have become her generation's Meryl Streep. From what I've read about her, she was smarter than these ingenue roles implied (as she put it, she soon figured out that the producers just considered her a piece of property). It was probably some consolation to her that San Francisco's Castro Theater held a retrospective of her movies in 1998, which she attended as guest of honor.*"Dirty Dancing" also addressed this, showing how the supposedly liberal parents didn't want their daughter to associate with the "wrong" kind of people.

wes-connors Lifeguard turned millionaire Richard Egan (as Ken Jorgenson) returns to the beautiful coastal Maine town where he, twenty years earlier, taught soft-focused Dorothy McGuire (as Sylvia) how to swim. According to town gossip, the couple participated in some other, more prurient activities. For some reason, Mr. Egan left Ms. McGuire to hook up with frigid Constance Ford (as Helen), while McGuire married impotent alcoholic Arthur Kennedy (as Bart Hunter). Presently, the well-heeled Jorgenson family rents from the down-on-their-luck Hunter family. As their marriage partners are unsatisfying, Egan and McGuire are tempted by adultery...However, the real focus is on the couples' teenage children. The Jorgenson daughter is sexy teenage Sandra Dee (as Molly), who has discovered, "I bounce when I walk." This catches the attention of hunky Hunter son Troy Donahue (as Johnny). The bright blond youngsters discover the joy of sex has consequences. Written produced, and directed by Delmer Daves, "A Summer Place" features great color photography by Harry Stradling and a shimmering soundtrack by Max Steiner. In an arrangement by Percy Faith and His Orchestra, the theme song became one of the most successful instrumental records ever. The film made Mr. Donahue star.****** A Summer Place (10/22/59) Delmer Daves ~ Sandra Dee, Troy Donahue, Richard Egan, Dorothy McGuire

rpvanderlinden This movie has only one thing on its naughty little mind - sex. There are those who are getting it, those who aren't getting it but want it, and those who aren't getting it and are pretending they don't want it. One character in the latter category bandies words like "slut" and "harlot" about freely, but she didn't fool me. The four adults have managed to screw up their relationships, but the two very cute teenagers, played by Sandra Dee and Troy Donohue, look as if they'll get by okay if they just follow their hearts. I can't pretend that this is a great movie, but I had fun watching it. That's because the dialogue is way over the top and the actors deliver it with relish. In particular, Constance Ford (as Dee's evil, neurotic mom) and Arthur Kennedy (as Donohue's drunken sot of a dad) get all the best verbal poison arrows, and some of them are quite funny (sometimes unintentionally so). At one point Dee asks Donohue straight out: "Have you been bad with other girls?" That's the temper of the screenplay - everybody says precisely what's on their minds. I have to give the film credit for depicting the utter helplessness of adults in trying to manage their children's lives. Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire (as lovely as ever) try to behave with stoic dignity which is hard to do when you're sneaking out to the boathouse for a midnight rendezvous and maybe a little you-know-what. The Technicolor location photography is very beautiful, with California doubling, I hear, for New England. And I enjoyed the costumes (okay, okay, I also enjoyed what was in them).

BigBobFoonman I have always stopped and listened to the music theme of this movie whether it be in an elevator, grocery store or radio.....I see a beautiful woman walking on a beach when I hear it....Just saw the movie last night for the first time. SWEET HAY-soos....what a morality tale!.....there was never an answer given as to what the right thing was to do for the 2 sets of lovers in this story....and that is as it should be.....no answers....no comfort.....when pheromones strike...when the groin takes the heart with it.....Strangely discomforting and sad movie....way ahead of it's time. Richard Egan and Arthur Kennedy did good work as the men, Richard Egan was surprisingly convincing as a real man with a romantic heart....a man well aware that humans must have been an evolutionary mistake...the loins of animals, and the high moral brains of whatever space aliens came down and decided to play pool with the DNA of Earth.Sandra Dee should have been Natalie Wood....nuff said......Dorothy McGuire is the 50s equivalent of heartbreaking beauty.....hell, I was in love with her by the end of the movie.....Troy Donahue did well...I'll always wonder if he was gay...but his acting chops were good in this film.The saddest thing about this movie is how serious unwed sex, adultery and illegitimate babies were taken in the 50s, and how accepted and laughably commonplace they are today. I mark the beginning of the end of the USA as the Woodstock music festival.