A Summer Place

When Molly is getting ready to go Christmas shopping with her mother, her mother begins to zip up the back of her dress.

Molly breaks away and runs to bed to get letters, argues with her mother, still with her dress unzipped.

When she runs to fireplace to burn the letters, her dress is zipped.

Johnny (Troy Donahue) kisses Molly (Sandra Dee) in the garden with his arms wrapped around hers and hers encircling his lower chest.

A close-up shows her arms wrapped around his neck.

When Ken and Sylvia meet for the first time at the boathouse, Ken is wearing a red shirt (in plain view even in the moonlight) when he closes the back doors.

But when the camera cuts to him getting close to Sylvia, he is wearing a blue shirt.

As the yacht approaches Pine Island the Captain announces Pine Island on the port side, but Richard Egan and Sandra Dee come up on deck and stand on the starboard side of the boat.

When Johnny and Molly meet outside church during Christmas break, except for patches of (fake) snow, all foliage and grass is green.

Ken and Helen Jorgenson (Richard Egan and Constance Ford) have a dead marriage. They haven't slept together for years, by her request.

I was 54 years late, but I finally got around to watching this well-known soap opera. Released in 1959, the story has to do with a couple (Arthur Kennedy and Dorothy McGuire) who own a vacation inn off the coast of Maine.

Considering the puritanical era of the 1950s when "A Summer Place" was originally released - This aspect, alone, is certainly enough to spark some special interest in the viewer and, yes, add plenty of extra spice to this soap-opera-ish Hollywood production about infidelity, adultery, and the awakening of teen lust.'Cause let's face it, folks - By today's standards (60 years down the road) - "A Summer Place" is pretty tame stuff (and, yes, almost laughable in nature).

DVD please? I saw this movie when it aired on A&E, and it captivated me as a child, and still does as an adult.

I think this was my first "favorite" movie and when it came out on video I bought it right away. I still watch it ...

I grew up in Monterey and I recognized a half dozen of the filming locations for this well-loved and enduring movie--most which have been identified in other postings. I'd like to add that the "private girls" school Molly is attending is, in reality, the Monterey City Hall (I obtained my Social Security card there in 1965).

A SUMMER PLACE is just as powerful now as it was 60 years ago. I have the DVD and as yet have never found it on Netflix or any other network.

You can certainly tell this is a Warner Brothers movie. It has no gloss or polish to it.

I was only fifteen when ASP was released so I'm sure I wasn't allowed in the theater since, for the time, the themes were decidedly "adult": alcoholism, teen sex, marital infidelity. (The language was course, but mild by modern standards.