A Summer Place (1959)

A Summer Place
Directed by Delmer Daves
Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by Sloane Wilson
1959/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Molly Jorgenson: I’m… I’m sure everything’s clean, mother.

Helen Jorgenson: You can never be too sure.[/box]

We can see the eventual inevitable demise of the Hayes Code in this and other Peyton Place style melodramas.

Bart Hunter (Arthur Kennedy) is the scion of one of the most prominent families on Pine Island.  He is married to Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire) with whom he has a teenage son, Johnny (Troy Donahue).  Bart’s alcoholism has brought the family to hard times and they must now rent out their mansion for summers to make ends meet.  They receive an offer from the wealthy Jorgenson family.  Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan) used to work on the island as a life guard and Bart is not looking forward to him lording his new wealth and social standing but beggars can’t be choosers.  Ken comes with his prudish, social climbing wife Helen and lovely daughter Molly (Sandra Dee).

Ken and Sylvia had been lovers as teenagers and hardly a day passes before they are seeing each ofther on the sly.  Molly and Johnny also form an immediate, if more chaste, romance.  Ken’s wife seems to have been looking for an opportunity to cash in on a scandalous divorce and that is just what happens.  The parents try to separate the children permanently by sending them to different boarding schools but nothing can conquer their desire for each other.  With Beulah Bondi as a wise spinster aunt.

This is well-made melodrama but had some drawbacks for me.  I wish they hadn’t made the scorned spouses so utterly despicable.  Both are such terrible human beings that there hardly seem to be any ethical or moral questions involved in the infidelity.  Sex is a subtext to almost every situation, but in that late-50’s whitewashed way that makes it all seem pretty smarmy.

The Max Steiner theme music for the film became a major pop hit at the time and has been covered numerous times and used as background in many TV shows.

Theme music set to clips