CATCH A CLASSIC

A Summer Place (1959) TCM, 2:30 p.m.

Even if you’ve never seen the 1959 drama A Summer Place, you likely know the famous melody introduced in it. Created by the film’s composer, Max Steiner, as a secondary theme signifying the romance between young Molly (Sandra Dee) and Johnny (Troy Donahue) — with lyrics added by songwriter Mack Discant — this tune was known at first as the “Molly and Johnny Theme.” But it quickly became better known as “Theme From A Summer Place,” even as it developed a life of its own outside the film. The film in which the tune debuted was a box-office hit, and while “Theme From A Summer Place” may have aided in that success, it wasn’t the only reason for it. Beautifully shot along the Northern California coast as a stand-in for Maine and filled with more delicious melodrama than your average soap opera, A Summer Place further established Dee — following a breakout appearance in Imitation of Life earlier in 1959 — as a star and gave Donahue a leading-man break that made him a screen sex symbol. What also helps is that the plot’s hot-and-heavy drama doesn’t only come from the youngsters. Molly and Johnny are the respective children of former teenage lovers Ken (Richard Egan) and Sylvia (Dorothy Mcguire), each of whom is riding out an unhappy marriage to another person. When they find themselves together again on Pine Island in Maine — back in that special summer place they shared 20 years earlier — Ken and Sylvia find their old feelings resurfacing just as their kids are also developing feelings for each other. All these elements of sight and sound combine to make A Summer Place a quintessential celluloid version of one of those steamy paperbacks you might pull out for a quick summer read at the beach.

WARNER BROS. / PHOTOFEST