A Summer Place │ Warner Archive Collection
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment
by CHAD KENNERK
Delmer Daves’ A Summer Place remains a delightfully glossy cocktail of a melodrama. Memorable for a strong lead performance from a 16-year-old Sandra Dee and an instantly recognisable score by composer Max Steiner, A Summer Place is based on Sloan Wilson’s scandalous 1958 novel of the same name. In addition to directing and producing, Daves adapted the book himself, compressing a narrative spanning more than two decades down into one explosive year. While set in Maine, A Summer Place was actually filmed around the Monterey Peninsula and Carmel, California. The production made excellent use of the natural beauty of the coastline and the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Clinton Walker House, which features later on in the story. Even the day-for-night scenes look particularly convincing in this Warner Archive work that stabilises shadows and preserves colour values from the original nitrate negative, lending the film a depth that it hasn’t had in generations.
On coastal Maine’s Pine Island, Bart and Sylvia Hunter (Arthur Kennedy and Dorothy McGuire) are barely keeping their once-grand family mansion alive by running it as a summer inn with the help of their teenage son, Johnny (Troy Donahue). When Sylvia accepts a reservation from Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan) — a former island lifeguard turned millionaire research chemist — Bart is forced to temper his resentment in lieu of the family’s mounting financial strains. Ken’s arrival, with sharp-tongued wife Helen (Constance Ford) and sheltered daughter Molly (Sandra Dee), stirs up old tensions while young desire blossoms. A tale of teenage love from multiple perspectives, it shocked and titillated audiences in 1959 with frank depictions of sexual desire, alcoholism, and more.
Following a heart attack in 1958, Delmer Daves was instructed by his doctors to avoid physically taxing shoots, including the Westerns that he had become known for, like 3:10 to Yuma and Broken Arrow. Following The Hanging Tree, Daves leaned fully into melodrama with A Summer Place, a mode he would continue with Parrish (1961), Susan Slade (1961), and Rome Adventure (1962) — all with Troy Donahue. Despite some notoriously over-the-top dramatics, Daves’ assured direction and the straightforward performances ground the excess. Following teen idol success in Gidget, Sandra Dee runs the full gamut of emotions, displaying real depth as Molly. Natalie Wood was originally offered the role but declined the part and later regretted it. The conflicts at the story’s centre are genuine and still resonate today. Daves told The New York Times, “I have two kids who are just about the same age of these two in A Summer Place and I know how difficult communication between generations can be.”
Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray release showcases a brand new HD master struck from a 4K scan of the original Technicolor camera negative. Though the classic three-strip Technicolor process had been reduced to the more economical single strip by 1959, the palette is equally expressive, with red — a symbol for lust, passion, and desire — emerging as a dominant colour. Troy Donahue costumed in bright red is a choice that continued in each of his further collaborations with director Delmer Daves, a trademark that may stem from James Dean’s iconic red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). The clarity of the 1080p transfer reveals fine, long-vanished details absent from previous home video releases, bringing back the full cinematic lustre of Harry Stradling Sr’s lush cinematography. Stradling was a 14-time Oscar nominee who served as the director of photography on a long list of impressive studio titles, such as Easter Parade, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Pajama Game, Gypsy, and Funny Girl. He brought home the statue twice for his work on The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and My Fair Lady (1964).
The DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono track also provides further resonance to Max Steiner’s celebrated score. Its famous “Theme from A Summer Place” actually functions as a secondary musical motif for Molly and Johnny. The instrumental was later arranged and conducted by Percy Faith and became a cultural touchstone by hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for nine consecutive weeks, a record at the time. The theme has been covered by numerous performers across decades, including The Lettermen, Andy Williams, and Julie London. It turned up nine months later in The Crowded Sky during a restaurant scene between Troy Donahue and co-star Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Over the years, the theme has appeared in numerous other films, such as Animal House, The Omega Man, Con Air, and Ocean's Eleven. A Steiner Easter egg worth mentioning in A Summer Place sees Sandra Dee’s character recount the plot of King Kong — which also boasts a famous score by Steiner.
As is typical for Warner Archive, the release is light on special features, but includes the original theatrical trailer and the newly remastered 1959 Bugs Bunny short A Witch’s Tangled Hare, which riffs on Shakespeare. A Summer Place is often labelled a guilty pleasure, but as this archival-quality restoration shows, the underrated Daves was creating melodrama just as compelling and visually striking as his contemporary Douglas Sirk. It’s a great example of the adult-skewing content that would later emerge in 60s cinema as the Hays Code collapsed and gave way to the MPAA rating system. Warner Archive’s polished upgrade is a welcome trip back to Pine Island, where waves still murmur and Steiner’s strings still ring.
A Summer Place is available on Blu-ray 14 October from Warner Archive Collection.
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WARNER ARCHIVE COLLECTION offers thousands of film and TV series direct from Warner’s studio vault. With a particular emphasis on high-quality restorations and remasters on Blu-ray disc, Warner Archive Collection brings rare and hard-to-find classic motion pictures and television series to home video. Often appearing for the first time on Blu-ray, titles are chosen each month from the unparalleled library of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which spans more than 100 years of cinema history.
