"A Summer Place"

"A Summer Place" premiered in 1959 -- the year before I graduated from high school -- and my husband and I have considered the theme song from "A Summer Place" as our song. I decided it was time to take a trip down memory lane and check the movie out from our library. The theme song hadn't changed but I didn't really remember what the movie was about. It turns out it's nothing like our love story! However, the movie does highlight what that era was like for young people. Boy, have things changed!

Richard Egan plays Sandra Dee's father and her mother is portrayed by Constance Ford. Troy Donahue's parents are played by Arthur Kennedy and Dorothy McGuire. When they all meet up at an island vacation spot, secrets unfold along with romance.

I decided to research what happened to the stars of this movie and was surprised to learn that Richard Egan studied and taught at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, after receiving a B.A. from the University of San Francisco and an M.A. from Stanford. He landed a bit part in 1949 (his first role) in "The Story of Molly X" and was signed afterwards by a Hollywood studio. During WW II he was an army judo instructor which I can well believe looking at his "buff" arms! He died of prostate cancer in 1987 at age 66.

His co-star in the movie, Dorothy McGuire, died of heart failure in Santa Monica at the age of 85. She was actually 5 years older than Egan.

Sandra Dee married Bobby Darrin in 1960 when she was 18 and that marriage ended in divorce. According to her only son, the marriage ended because of her alcohol and drug dependacy, depression, and anorexia but the cause of her death at age 63 was renal failure from kidney cancer.

This was possibly Troy Donahue's first role. He married Suzanne Pleshette in 1964 then they later divorced. He died at age 65 of a heart attack.

Arthur Kennedy died at age 76 of a brain tumor after previously suffering from thyroid cancer and an eye disease.

Constance Ford did an excellent job of portraying Sandra Dee's unloveable mother in this movie!

If you want a glimpse of life in the 1950's, this movie is for you.

pazt