| A Summer Place | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 88 reviews)
Sales Rank: 222
Category: Video
Actors: Richard Egan, Dorothy Mcguire, Sandra Dee, Arthur Kennedy, Troy Donahue
Director: Delmer Daves
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Label: Warner Home Video
Format: Color, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: VHS Tape
Running Time: 130 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6301706587
UPC: 085391159339
EAN: 9786301706582
ASIN: 6301706587
Release Date: January 27, 1993
Theatrical Release Date: November 18, 1959
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Think A Summer Place, and you'll probably be humming Max Steiner's wonderfully romantic instrumental theme song, a hand-holding hit in 1959. The movie itself is similarly irresistible, a colorful soap opera about the passions of a pair of dewy-eyed teens and their straying parents. At an island resort in Maine, Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue (the reigning teen idols of the day) fall hard for each other. What they don't know is that her father (Richard Egan) and his mother (Dorothy McGuire), lovers 20 years earlier, have rekindled their affair. Both, inconveniently, have spouses, which is what makes this a soap opera. Lovers of camp will find much to savor in the incredible '50s attitudes, and in the innocence of supervirgin Dee ("Johnny, have you been bad with girls?"). Yet the sincerity of writer-director Delmer Daves, cowriter of An Affair to Remember, comes shining through the corn; and the grown-up affair anticipates The Bridges of Madison County by 30 years. --Robert Horton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 83 more reviews...
 A Summer Place October 3, 2008
I remember this movie from my youth and it was still as wonderful as it was then. I loved it! Glad I have it for my collection. Ordering process was easy and I got it fast. Thanks AMAZON
Teen Idols In A Summer Place... September 25, 2008
Classic stuff with a great cast, Dorothy M, Sandra D, Troy D, etc. This entertains today as it ever did decades ago. Max Steiner wrote volumes of movie music, but this is perhaps his most popular. Excellent cinematography. Happy to report, Amazon erred by describing this aspect as 1.33:1. I took a chance and discovered it's really widescreen. Great price for the whole picture.
a summer place August 30, 2008
Talk about morals! Talk about scandal! This movie spoke of the moral standard of the time. Still, all in all, it is a worthwhile movie to see. May cause some to re-evaluate the way they see things. Maybe! All the characters in the lead gave some good performances & the supporting cast was just a talented. Can't help but admire the music!. Wow, what a score!
 DeJa Vu August 28, 2008
My wife and I enjoy Sandra Dee movies and one of my favorite songs is the Theme for a Summer Place. My wife and Daughter-in-law watched the movie and both enjoyed it thoroughly.
Don't judge by the DVD cover! July 27, 2008
This film, from my birth year, I knew only as hearsay, as a Monterey/Carmel tourguide. In fact, I even would point out the wrong house on the 17-Mile-Drive as a Warner Brothers' property where it was filmed, and my (mostly older) tourists would cry out, "Oh, wow!" The themesong I had on CD, playing it for that part of the drive between Bird Rock and the gate to Pacific Grove. Yes, for years I have done all this, yet never bothered to look for the film.
Finally, now that I am laid up with an Achilles tendon rupture, out of work for weeks, I asked my brother, who was often at the library, could he bring me some DVD's, anything, I am so bored at home and can't go out, can't drive, etc. So he picked this one out because he thought it looked "racy", like some kind of beach party with Annette Funicello.
Lo and behold, the front cover is false - yes, it is about teenage love and lust, but it is more about adultery and the incredibly difficult bind young wannabe-lovers face: they have no money, haven't even finished school, and cannot marry so young, but they cannot resist their libidos, wind up pregnant and have to get married. Meanwhile, Wilson Sloan, the novel writer behind the script, pushes the rationale for this ill-advised shotgun wedding through the life stories of these kids' miserable parents: the boy's mother and the girl's father had been in love in their teenhood, in the same Pine Inn, 20 years earlier, yet because of class differences - back to money again - could not marry.
I may be getting old, but I see the father, Richard Egan as the heartthrob in this movie, who seems very cozy physically with his "harlot" daughter (as her mother would call her). He's rugged, handsome, well-built, rich, educated (research chemist), willing and able (fixes roof leaks in storms), polite, tolerant, kind-hearted, and even sympathetic with his frigid and bitter wife. Apparently some women, older than me, tell me that that was the case, not the young studmuffin, our girl's teenage lover.
This is a feel-good, Happy-End film, where teenage pregnancy is accepted in the end and a shotgun marriage allowed by the wealthy and tolerant father, newly married to the boy's mother. But in reality, most people could never let their kids marry so young without a disaster financially, so often girls were "disappeared" to "maternity homes", where the babies were put up for adoption, and several lives at least were made miserable. Most illegitimate children became stigmatized, unlike today, so a boy and girl were much more afraid of the consequences.
Several questions in this film came up for me:
Did neither of these savvy young people hear of condoms? Esp. the boy, already away at college with other lusty boys?
Did no one consider that perhaps the girl's mother was so cynical and bitter because she had become a mother? That it was difficult and sad, and that she wanted to spare her daughter from it as long as possible? In other words, it wasn't sex that scared her, but pregnancy and the long, hard road called "raising a child". Also, wouldn't then a viewer consider, this luscious morsel (SAndra Dee) become just like her mother, esp. by having a child so early in life, unmarried to boot, no high school diploma, no fun, no dances, no football games, etc? WOuld she not become just as bitter as her mother, realizing her young life had stopped?
No doubt the boy would be financed to go back to college and continue his freedom there, while she would be home for years, bored and lonely, with a baby, unable to be with young friends. No one here in these reviews mentions these realities as a main reason a MOTHER would protect her daughter from any possibility of early pregnancy and illegitimate kids; some boys DO NOT STICK AROUND! Then try finding a husband later, with a "B******d" you have to raise alone! Girls and their parents were very, very, very, VERY afraid of such consequences.
Notice that Dorothy McGuire and Arthur Kennedy, mother and father of the boy, do not reprimand him for his possible sexual dalliance in the boat/overnight camping incident. No one thinks him a fool, wrong, etc., and no one asks if he used protection, to avoid a shotgun marriage. It really all did come down on the girl in 1959, and yes, it was still like that in my high school in the 1970's, granted, it was a girls' CAtholic high school. Yes, one girl disappeared, Karen S. in sophomore year, off to Germany to have a kid. The rest of us found out and were terrified.
We knew it meant no chance for college, for a career or even for fun. I knew it meant financial ruin and no chance to travel abroad, my big dream.
We also knew that a child had to be supported, that work/slavery and money worries would eat up our lives if we married too young - for we were not the rich kids in this film.
I think this film tries very hard to show that love should triumph, and yes, one always hopes for it, esp. when young. But an older eye, an eye jaded through years of working and seeing life's hardships, sees that the young people do not realize the hell that they're about to enter too soon. The boy's drunken father tells him to forget the whole think, for "in vino veritas". He speaks to his son while quite drunk, but the message is the same for the girl, who listens outside. He is warning them that they are throwing away their youth, their young freedom. Surely this point of view could not be lost on them entirely? Sandra Dee, in soft light, tells him that he has forgotten one thing, "Love". Apparently, she's banking on someone else to pay the "bills", something she doesn't mention, having never known poverty or even one job yet.
Meanwhile, the boy knows his parents' Pine Inn is in ruins, can bring no income without the money to fix the old broken-down property; he was raised on penny-pinching and is no fool. Is he banking on the girl's father, so he has no fear of his financial future with a baby?
I loved the film's location, down on the rocky beaches of the 17-Mile-Drive, where no one in his right mind goes out in the water. If you even climb out on those rocks, as honeymooners do for photos, then chances of slipping and drowning in the undertow are high. But never mind! Great evocation of old, leisurely, upper-class vacations on the Maine Coast!
The old morals seem sappy perhaps, but are the economic issues any different today? If single Moms, teenage girls, got no help from welfare, wouldn't they think twice? I know we did!
Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire, as the adult "adulterers", are the real hot item for all you curious souls; plus the beautiful house and peaceful, seaside vacation dreaminess.
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