'A Summer Place' Revisited

The Boston Herald

The last time I saw them they were two kids, in love, newly married, kissing in front of God and everyone as the boat that dropped them off at Pine Island sped away. The music soared, the lights came on, the film went black and that was it. Johnny and Molly were together.

Fast forward 38 years.

To celebrate the start of a summer season of classic films, American Movie Classics dusted off the 1959 Warner Brothers hit "A Summer Place," and showed it Tuesday night at the Guild Theatre in New York City. Most of the invited guests were media people born well after the movie was made. But scores of older people showed up uninvited, to get a glimpse of its two stars.

When Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue emerged from a limo there was a collective, audible "They look great." And they did. He's still tall, blonde, tanned and in good shape, though weathered by the sun. She's blonde, smooth-skinned and pretty, though achingly thin.

Of course, in real life they're not a couple at all. In real life they're yesterday's stars, two actors whom millions of '60s teenagers adored. They were on top of the world for what seemed like a long time, but that was once upon a time. But on this night they are resurrected from their lives of anonymity to be feted again.

They sat and answered questions about a movie they made four decades ago and they were funny and gracious and accommodating. He was glib about his age and the passage of time. She said she has never seen "A Summer Place" and doesn't watch any of her films because she hates herself on the screen, a stunning admission because most every girl who was young when she was young, wanted to be her.

She's a grandmother now. Her son, son of the late Bobby Darin, has a 10-month-old daughter.

She didn't stay to watch the movie this time either. And maybe that's a good thing because, though she was wonderful up there on the screen, all youth and beauty and an innocence you don't see anymore, the crowd just didn't get it. They liked the film, but they laughed at it. They groaned at its dialogue and roared at its old-fashioned morals and preachiness.

The story is about adultery and pre-marital sex and the price exacted for both. Ken and Sylvia are the adulterers. Molly and Johnny, their respective kids, are young and way too much in love.

The audience, a post-sexual revolution crowd, laughed at the very idea that either adultery or pre-marital sex was a big deal or deserved to exact any kind of price. They roared at the commotion a simple affair caused. They groaned watching Molly, a high-school girl, wrestle with her sexual desires.

"We've got to be good, Johnny," she says to her boyfriend, after a passionate, long-awaited kiss.

"She's a tease," a woman sitting behind me said. "Just do it and get it over with," she added.

Of course, Molly does "do it" and gets pregnant. Pregnancy was the price of sin then. That was the theme of many popular movies in the early '60s. "The Restless Years," "Parrish," "Susan Slade." You have to be good. When you're not, see what happens.

Before the pill and legal abortion and recreational drugs and casual sex and one of every two marriages ending in divorce, and dysfunction ad nauseam, this, the consequence of sin, was drama. Now it simply doesn't play.

It couldn't have been like that, a young woman said at the end.

But it was. Sloan Wilson, who won the Pulitzer for "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," a stunning portrayal of what corporate life does to a man, wrote "A Summer Place." It was not invention. It was a reflection of the times.

They weren't innocent times. People have always broken the rules. But people used to know that when you break them, there is always a price to pay.