***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Sometimes you just can't help yourself. Every once in awhile heady art-house pieces or complex psychological thrillers just won't satisfy the ol' entertainment palate. At those times, I cave in to my craving for sweet, adulterated romantic tripe, look around to make sure nobody's around, and quickly escape back to the days of my own cotton-candy innocence. 1959's "A Summer Place" is the perfect baby-boomer fodder, summer or winter, to recapture those simple, glorious, carefree years when "being bad" for me was maybe throwing a snowball at a passing car or feigning a stomach ache to skip school, while "being bad" for my older teenage brother was getting to go a bit too far with his main squeeze! In Douglas Sirk's glossy, slightly lurid drama, you not only get to revel in a pre-Camelot box-office romance with two of the hottest "teen" stars ever "being bad", you get Max Steiner's luxuriant score, complete with Percy Faith's gorgeous theme song (#1 on the Billboard charts for 9 weeks - the single most successful instrumental pop hit ever!) to keep you in that sentimental "being bad" mood. And just leave it to old Max to know how to underscore adultery and underage coitus and make it all still seem so pure and unblemished.
A vacationing couple with their daughter spend the summer at a remote resort island off the coast of Maine where old love is rekindled and new love blossoms -- both with traumatic results. What this shallow but engagingly cloying beach-towel romance has going for it is its young lovers -- the pristine princess of the screen at the time, the inimitable Sandra Dee, and Hollywood's new flavor of the month, the staid, butter-haired dreamboat, Troy Donahue, as her flawed Prince Charming. Wow...what a couple. Utter perfection they are. And there's nothing more gratifying than seeing two perfect specimens drowning in misery to make you feel good again about your own woeful prom years. By the way, Dee was 17 and Donahue 23 at the time this was released. They, more than anyone, knew how to simulate the strains of aching young love.
On the other side of this love parallel, the always reliable thespians Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire, as Sandy's dad and Troy's mom, denote the older, worldly-wise love set. Meeting again (not quite by happenstance), they reignite the smouldering passion they once shared, fueling it with moonlit encounters. Usually the epitome of candor and responsibility, they throw all caution to the wind in a last ditch effort to fulfill true love's destiny, foreshadowing just what might happen to Dee and Donahue.
As always in these cases, surrounding our two hot, hormonal couples are two necessary evils. Troy and mom Dorothy have their hands full as caretakers for their besotted husband/father Arthur Kennedy, a witty, extremely cynical one-time mariner who, drink in hand, enjoys expounding on the futility of life and love. But the real fun and chief fomenter here is Sandy's conniving, shrewish, abusive mother, played for all it's worth by Constance (Ada on "Another World") Ford. Ms Ford is the gal you love to hate in this picture and she becomes the big selling point in keeping the emotional boiling pot really boiling. Her Maleficent-like glare and ever-controlled smirk will chill you to the bone. Better yet, her frigid, emasculating, vindictive attitudes toward sex and marriage is enough to make a man join the foreign legion. I would venture to guess that the saying "colder than a witch's tit" came from somebody who saw Ford in this wonderfully frosty role.
The most palpable, mouth-watering Dee/Donahue encounter comes at the climactic late-night clinch at the lighthouse (they told their elders they were going to see "King Kong") where the innocent-eyed Dee is about to give in and "be bad." As Troy slowly goes in for the touchdown, Sandy coyly whispers the synopsis of the ape movie to cover their tracks when they get home. God, why couldn't us guys have killer turn-on dialogue like that going in for a touchdown?
Ah, well, suffice it to say that about every situation is wonderfully over-baked and most of the script sanitized to the point of campy hilarity. Why, you'll need a whole roll of extra-strength Bounty just to absorb all of the juicy tidbits that spill out of the mouths of this talented cast. But for every glorious good girl vs. naughty girl confrontation between mother and daughter, you'll have to endure the incessant sermonizing on the magnitude of love from Egan and McGuire. It's still worth it.
Despite the fact that Sandra Dee and the late Troy Donahue's saccharine appeal quickly soured in later years (both of them would suffer from chronic alcoholism), their chemistry here is undeniable and their legacies untarnished. They will go down in the Hollywood annals as the envy of every young couple ever in love and lust.
A vacationing couple with their daughter spend the summer at a remote resort island off the coast of Maine where old love is rekindled and new love blossoms -- both with traumatic results. What this shallow but engagingly cloying beach-towel romance has going for it is its young lovers -- the pristine princess of the screen at the time, the inimitable Sandra Dee, and Hollywood's new flavor of the month, the staid, butter-haired dreamboat, Troy Donahue, as her flawed Prince Charming. Wow...what a couple. Utter perfection they are. And there's nothing more gratifying than seeing two perfect specimens drowning in misery to make you feel good again about your own woeful prom years. By the way, Dee was 17 and Donahue 23 at the time this was released. They, more than anyone, knew how to simulate the strains of aching young love.
On the other side of this love parallel, the always reliable thespians Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire, as Sandy's dad and Troy's mom, denote the older, worldly-wise love set. Meeting again (not quite by happenstance), they reignite the smouldering passion they once shared, fueling it with moonlit encounters. Usually the epitome of candor and responsibility, they throw all caution to the wind in a last ditch effort to fulfill true love's destiny, foreshadowing just what might happen to Dee and Donahue.
As always in these cases, surrounding our two hot, hormonal couples are two necessary evils. Troy and mom Dorothy have their hands full as caretakers for their besotted husband/father Arthur Kennedy, a witty, extremely cynical one-time mariner who, drink in hand, enjoys expounding on the futility of life and love. But the real fun and chief fomenter here is Sandy's conniving, shrewish, abusive mother, played for all it's worth by Constance (Ada on "Another World") Ford. Ms Ford is the gal you love to hate in this picture and she becomes the big selling point in keeping the emotional boiling pot really boiling. Her Maleficent-like glare and ever-controlled smirk will chill you to the bone. Better yet, her frigid, emasculating, vindictive attitudes toward sex and marriage is enough to make a man join the foreign legion. I would venture to guess that the saying "colder than a witch's tit" came from somebody who saw Ford in this wonderfully frosty role.
The most palpable, mouth-watering Dee/Donahue encounter comes at the climactic late-night clinch at the lighthouse (they told their elders they were going to see "King Kong") where the innocent-eyed Dee is about to give in and "be bad." As Troy slowly goes in for the touchdown, Sandy coyly whispers the synopsis of the ape movie to cover their tracks when they get home. God, why couldn't us guys have killer turn-on dialogue like that going in for a touchdown?
Ah, well, suffice it to say that about every situation is wonderfully over-baked and most of the script sanitized to the point of campy hilarity. Why, you'll need a whole roll of extra-strength Bounty just to absorb all of the juicy tidbits that spill out of the mouths of this talented cast. But for every glorious good girl vs. naughty girl confrontation between mother and daughter, you'll have to endure the incessant sermonizing on the magnitude of love from Egan and McGuire. It's still worth it.
Despite the fact that Sandra Dee and the late Troy Donahue's saccharine appeal quickly soured in later years (both of them would suffer from chronic alcoholism), their chemistry here is undeniable and their legacies untarnished. They will go down in the Hollywood annals as the envy of every young couple ever in love and lust.