Theme from A Summer Place

Max Steiner...what a talented little dude he was. A whiz kid, Steiner trained at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory, at a time when the influence of Brahms was all over the German landscape. It’s safe to assume that Steiner had his counterpoint and orchestration chops together before he left Vienna and arrived in the USA while still in his early 20’s.

Along with Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Dmitri Tiomkin and Alfred Newman, Max Steiner created the blueprint for a Hollywood scoring style whose influence continues to be felt to this day. Highly dramatic in tone, marked by orchestral forces that feature large string sections, many of these early scores showed the influence of the late 19th century masters, Brahms in particular. Steiner’s most memorable contribution may be “Tara’s Theme,” the over ripe, string-centric piece that nailed the weepy longing for the good old days (let’s leave slavery aside for the moment) sentiment at the core of Gone With The Wind.

In 1959 Steiner was tapped to score A Summer Place. Starring Richard Egan (a man’s man!), Constance Ford (what a prude) as the parents of a (nearly) chaste Sandra Dee...ah, forget the plot; just say that this flick introduced the viewing public to the hunky Troy Donahue and was quite successful.  

The composition that came to be known as the “Theme from A Summer Place” was a leitmotif called the “Molly and Johnny Theme” used in the film to amplify the excitement, danger, and melancholy surrounding the characters played by Dee and Donahue. How perfectly Steiner captured this nexus of emotions... and so economically.  Did anyone ever squeeze more drama into the plebeian I,VI,II,V harmonic structure that girds the A section of this piece?

There are about four zillion versions of this beautiful theme, but the two most popular were recorded by Percy Faith in 1960, and The Letterman (with lyrics contributed by Mack Discant) five years later.  Percy Faith is an interesting player in the history of the recording business. Dismissed by many as a lightweight, the Godfather of Easy Listening music managed to capture the collective imagination for over a decade.

Faith’s recording of “Theme from A Summer Place,”which won the Record of the Year Grammy Award in 1961, was the first movie theme and first instrumental to achieve this distinction. By the way, Faith, Elvis and The Beatles are the only artists to have the best selling single in two different years-this record and his arrangement of “The Song From Moulin Rouge” were hugely popular.

Percy Faith kept the core of the film arrangement intact, but made several important changes. For starters, he transposed the piece up a fourth. This transposition replaces the darker tone with a breezier sound. Faith also chucked out the lame backbeats on two and four that define the original as a composition in 4/4 featuring triplets, a rhythm that weighs down the forward motion somewhat. His arrangement has a true 6/8 feel that helps move the track along. Finally-I’ll wait while you instantiate Spotify and call up both versions-take a listen to the bridge. In Steiner’s version the second half has a melodic line that awkwardly outlines the tri-tone; Faith smooths the line out in a way that’s much more natural. The Lettermen and all other versions that I’ve heard use this construction.

What an era, defined in part by stories like the one detailed in “Theme from A Summer Place.” Sex, it’s bad, it’s fun, kids think about it once in a while but know that it’s wrong, wrong, wrong!  

Ah, the good old days.