Book Adaptations: A Summer Place (1959)

This week Samantha compares the novel and movie versions of A Summer Place.

The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit is a book heralded for being representative of a generation of men returning from WWII, where they had purpose and power, and working in stale office jobs that offered no excitement or fulfillment. I read it and loved it, especially after getting wrapped up in the Mad Men phenomenon which explores similar themes, and as a result decided to seek out Sloan Wilson's other books. A Summer Place is probably his second most famous novel. It was serialized in McCall's magazine, and the film was heavily marketed toward women.

It concerns wealth and class and how it changed after WWII. Sylvia Raymond is a rich girl who spent her summers in Pine Island, Maine in the 1930s with the smart set. Ken Jorgenson was an employee at the resort, but he was the same age as the kids vacationing there, and he had eyes for Sylvia, even though it was assumed she would wind up with someone like wealthy Bart Hunter. In order to discourage her relationship with Ken, her mother explained, "I want you to realize that when a woman chooses a husband, she gets more than a man; she marries a whole way of life. Some ways of life would be a whole lot more fun for you and more meaningful than others. My point is that when you find yourself thinking seriously of a young man, you should look beyond the man himself, and see what he stands for. Love should be more than just an animal attraction."

Years later, the tides have turned. Bart has not managed his inherited wealth well; the resort that one drew the elite has fallen into disrepair and lost popularity. He and Sylvia are married but unhappy. Ken on the other hand used his brains to make more money than he could ever spend. He is saddled with an ultra-conservative wife who imposes her insecurities onto their daughter Molly. They all come together once again, and their children become romantically entangled.

Sylvia has a daughter in addition to a son in the book, and when she and Bart get divorced, Johnny goes with his father and Carla goes with her mother. For the movie, screenwriter, director and producer Delmar Daves streamlined the cast by getting rid of the daughter. I imagined someone darker, like Suzanne Pleshette as Sylvia while reading, instead of Dorothy McGuire who is less glamorous. Richard Egan was a fantastic casting choice for Ken and Arthur Kennedy is likewise wonderful as the alcoholic but still genteel Bart.

In the novel, it is Sylvia who taunts Ken by undressing in front of windows, not Molly teasing Johnny. ("Sylvia pulled back the draperies and, standing before the open window, breathed in the cool air and the fragrance of the garden. While unfastening the hooks at the side of her blue evening gown, it occurred to her that perhaps Ken might be watching, but on the other hand, he probably was in bed. Slowly she undressed, and feeling a new kind of exaltation, let the night air blow over her body, evaporating the small beads of sweat on her skin, making her so cold that she suddenly shivered.")

The relationship between Sylvia and Ken is also more problematic in the book. When they're teenagers, he rapes her. It is painted to be romantic, the moment when her barriers come down and she is forced to acknowledge that she has a sexual appetite. However, the decision is undeniably forced upon her. The movie has no choice but to approach the topic gingerly, and only alludes to a sexual history between the two. Without the gory details, we can only guess about their past, which gives it less depth.

Molly and her father have a very close, frank relationship in the book. He doesn't shy away from talking about uncomfortable subjects with her, which is made all the more jarring by the contrast of her buttoned-up mother and her refusal to even acknowledge sex. Although I've seen the clips of her confrontation with her mother used in a documentary context to show how powerful movies could be during this era, I found the relationships in the movie to be shallow in comparison to those in the novel.

HELEN: I don't want her stared at. KEN: So you insist on de-sexing her. As though sex was synonymous with dirt.

Screenland's reviewer Rahna Maugham called the film, "A sudsy melodrama that takes a long time running through the machine, this guarantees a merry emotional binge for them that's vulnerable." Film Bulletin said, "Mounted in striking Technicolor, Daves has woven the various plots into a cohesive whole." Indeed, his attempt to make the racy material palatable for the screen is successful. Through carefully chosen dialogue, the audience gets the message without explicit scenes. The action is never boring, though, because he uses opulence and tension to keep the viewer engaged.

For example, my imagination was severely limited in the scene where Molly and Johnny get lost at sea during low tide, so the film's depiction was much more exciting. It is a harrowing scene because we get a sense of the danger, not just of the two being stranded, but that they could have easily drowned.

This scene gives the couple an excuse to "spend the night together," even though it is completely innocent due to getting lost in a storm. It gives people ammunition to gossip about their relationship. The studio attempted to give the public an excuse to gossip about the hot young actors by pairing them up on a series of dates, though Dee admitted later it wasn't a real romance. Donahue played a series of hunky young man parts which lead to him being name-dropped in a song in Grease.

The movie is a feast for the eyes if you're a fan of Mid-Century Modern aesthetics, especially the beach house they rent, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The Clinton-Walker house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and sold in 2023 for $22 million. A Summer Place also has reverence for the older, outdated vacation spots that have worn down with time and without maintenance. They can be nostalgic and haunting the way looking at clickbait compilations of abandoned houses can be.

Another element exclusive to the movie is the theme song written by Max Steiner. It was recorded by Percy Faith for Columbia and released as a single two months before the film was released. It spent an unprecedented nine weeks at number one, a record not broken by any other instrumental on the Billboard charts. Faith won a Grammy for Record of the Year for his work.

"Despite its accent on heavy breathing, A Summer Place is a well-made bit of entertainment," wrote Harrison's Reports. "It is sleek and svelte in the best tradition of popular films and occasionally displays touches of bright and mature dialogue and situations. Dorothy McGuire and Richard Egan excel as the married (but not to each other) lovers while Sandra Dee exhibits further evidence that she is a personality to be reckoned with."

James Ivers at Motion Picture Daily said, "Extraordinarily competent performances, delicate direction and tight editing wring every nuance of emotion out of the somewhat artificial story."

This is a wonderful melodrama that reflects the time in which it was written. The sexual revolution of the 1960s was looming. Birth control pills gave women the freedom to sleep with their boyfriends without worrying about the potential for pregnancy. People were talking about sex in a way they hadn't before. A Summer Place exists in a time before those things, when couples who were completely unsuited for each other but had a sexual attraction wound up married to protect their reputations. It shows the fallout of bad pairings and has hope for the next generation. I recommend watching the movie first, then reading the novel which provides more nuance in the relationships.