A Summer Place (film)

Delmer Daves directed the movie, which stars Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire as a couple, and Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue as their respective children.

The film contains a memorable instrumental theme composed by Max Steiner, which spent nine weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1960.

[2] Alcoholic Bart Hunter (Arthur Kennedy), his long-suffering wife Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire) and their teenage son Johnny (Troy Donahue) operate a crumbling inn on Pine Island off the Maine coast.

Bart receives a reservation request from an old acquaintance, Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan), who was a lowly lifeguard on the island twenty years ago but is now a millionaire research chemist.

Bart wants to refuse the reservation, but Sylvia insists that he accept because they badly need the money, even going so far as to move themselves into the small guest house so their own master bedroom suite can be rented to Ken and his family.

Helen and Ken have an unhappy marriage, sleep in separate bedrooms and frequently argue, including over proper behavior standards for their daughter.

Helen tries, unsuccessfully, to put on airs and impress the upper-class residents of the island, while Ken is not interested in pretense and is even happy to talk with older people who remember him from when he worked as a lifeguard.

Ken and Sylvia suspect that the teens are sleeping together and are concerned about the possible ill effects, but in view of their own past history, feel they cannot order Molly and Johnny to stop.

"[5] Howard Thompson of The New York Times called it "one of the most laboriously and garishly sex-scented movies in years" with "Max Steiner's music hammering away at each sexual nuance like a pile driver".

In 1960, the Percy Faith version reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for nine consecutive weeks, a record at that time.

[2] The theme has been covered in instrumental or vocal versions by numerous other artists, including The Lettermen, Andy Williams, The Chordettes, Cliff Richard, Julie London, Billy Vaughn, Joanie Sommers, and The Ventures, and has been featured in many other films and television programs.

Troy Donahue co-starred in The Crowded Sky, another Warner Brothers film released about ten months after A Summer Place.

The 'I washed my hair for you scene' can be seen on the 1990s show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the first-season episode: "Honeymoon in Metropolis".

Lois is spending the weekend at the Lexor hotel in town for relaxation but is getting bored with the love stories being shown on television.

[8] The 1997 thriller-comedy Con Air features the song during a scene in which a character played by Dave Chappelle is thrown out of an airplane.

The theme song is used in a comedic scene of two separate seductions in National Lampoon's 1978 blockbuster comedy, Animal House.

Drive-in advertisement from 1959.