Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (U.S. title: Season of Passion) is a 1959 Australian-British film directed by Leslie Norman and starring Ernest Borgnine, Anne Baxter, John Mills and Angela Lansbury.

[1] It was written by John Dighton based on the 1955 Ray Lawler play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

For sixteen years Roo has spent the summer with barmaid Olive, bringing her a kewpie doll, while Barney romances Nancy.

In the seventeenth year, Barney arrives to find that Nancy has married; however Olive has arranged a replacement, manicurist Pearl.

Roo has had a bad season, losing his place as head of the cane cutting team to a younger man, Dowd.

Barney tries to smooth things over between Roo and Dowd, who falls for Bubba, a girl who has grown up with the cane cutters.

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a pioneering Australian play written by Ray Lawler and first performed at the Union Theatre in Melbourne, Australia on 28 November 1955.

The play had reportedly been recommended to Harold Hecht of HHL by Laurence Olivier, who directed the London production.

In its announced planning Doll would star Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth who had just successfully paired in HHL's Separate Tables,[4] a film which coincidentally featured Australian Rod Taylor, a perfect fit were initial considerations to proceed for the young buck Dowd.

In January 1958 it was announced the lead roles would be played by Lancaster, Rita Hayorth and possibly James Cagney.

[9] In addition to Lancaster, Hayworth, who was married to producer James Hill, was also dropped in September 1958, and replaced by Anne Baxter.

[5] Dighton travelled to Australia with his wife to research the script, arriving 3 March 1958 (at which time the film was still to star Lancaster).

[18][19] Dighton told the press he was not sure why he had been given the job of writing the script but assured Australian journalists "We will probably have to change the more abstruse terms but I intend to stick as closely as I possibly can to the original story.

For one scene, Sydney residents on the shore were asked to leave their lights burning to provide a romantic backdrop to the action.

"Put Boston Irish, midwest American, cockney British and tropical ginger in the mixmaster and you've got Australian.

[28] During filming Anne Baxter met Australian farmer Randolph Galt and they fell in love and later married.

)[31] The film's world premiere was held on 2 December 1959 at Hoyt's Century, Sydney, in front of the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Edward Woodward.

[36][37] The film was later paired as a double bill with The Happy Thieves (which was produced by James Hill, one of the three partners in Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions) when it showed in New York in 1961.

[38] Lindsay Browne of the Sydney Morning Herald said "tenderness has gone... in the screen version... the film runs efficiently and eventfully according to its own approach and somehow rather emptily too.

[41] Variety wrote the film "emerges as a lusty, hearty pic with comedy skillfully balancing the poignancy.

"[45] According to Filmink magazine, "No one likes this film version, most blaming the happy ending, miscasting and change of locale.