For the past few evenings, I’ve been time traveling back to the early 1960s, thanks to the new Warner Bros. DVD set “Romance Classics Collection” which was officially released on Tuesday.
Tha package includes four soapy-but-fascinating movies that few people under the age of 50 are likely to have heard of — “Parrish” (1961), “Susan Slade” (1961), “Rome Adventure” (1962) and “Palm Springs Weekend” (1964).
All of these films were rendered obsolete by the sexual revoltion that would explode at the end of the 1960s — by 1969, the notion of a whole drama devoted to whether or not a young couple would “go all the way” would have been hooted off the screen.
The world view and the characterizations in these soaps made them virtually unwatchable for my fellow members of the Woodstock Generation, so TV screenings dwindled in the 1970s and ’80s.
Now, enough time has passed that the pictures have become deeply nostalgic for folks who were teens 50 years ago, and camp classics for everyone else.
Watching these movies in 2009, it’s hard to believe young Americans were ever so “innocent” when it came to depictions of romance and sex on screen.
The four movies in the Warner DVD set all followed in the wake of the huge 1959 Warner Bros. hit “A Summer Place” which made a star out of the handsome and now long forgotten actor Troy Donahue.
Troy played the love interest of Sandra Dee in “A Summer Place” and this hot younger duo shifted the audience’s attention away from the older couple who got top billing — Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire.
Troy was mocked by most of the men who were dragged to the soap opera — there’s a scene in the 1959-set Barry Levinson comedy, “Diner” (1982), in which the young male characters are stunned that the women in their lives could fall for such a shallow dreamboat. “What kind of a name is Troy?,” one of the guys asks his friend.
Donahue was no actor, but he acquired millions of fans. Contract holder Warner Bros. started churning out over-heated romances for its new star. One of the most interesting aspects of the new DVD set is the reminder that Donahue was such a big star that he received top billing over Claudette Colbert, Lloyd Nolan and other veterans who appeared in these early ’60s romances.
“Parrish” will be especially interesting to Connecticut viewers since much of the movie was shot on location in upstate tobacco country. The film has been gorgeously remastered and is worth watching for its travelogue element alone.
The most entertaining movie of the bunch is “Rome Adventure” which introduced Suzanne Pleshette. While she is billed under Troy and Angie Dickinson and Rossano Brazzi, Pleshette is the real star of this spirited romance in which a Connecticut college librarian is forced out of her job because she endorses an “obscene” romantic novel. The young woman decides to get a taste of real romance by heading off for Rome.
Pleshette is charming and director Delmer Daves (who also did “A Summer Place”) makes Italy as much of a star of the film as any of the actors. Back in 1962, European travel was not so common for middle-class Americans, so it is easy to imagine the oohs and aahs that greeted the stunning location footage that dominates many scenes.
Pleshette fell for Donahue in real life, too, and their very brief marriage was much gossiped-about at the time.
Donahue’s career went into a terrible tailspin when his sort of movie went out of fashion — Warner Bros. dropped the actor in 1966 and he descended into drug and alcohol abuse. During the 1980s, it was reported that Donahue was living as a homeless person in Central Park.
John Waters used Donahue for his camp, has-been aura in the 1990 “Cry-Baby.” The actor spent the subsequent decade working in grade-Z films and died of a heart attack at the age of 65 in 2001.
