LAST SUMMER 1969

The occasion of a recent TCM screening of this forgotten minor masterpiece from the late ‘60s jogged my memory back to when the film collaborations of the matrimonial/professional team of director Frank Perry and screenwriter Eleanor Perry represented the bright promise of the New Hollywood. Their films, David and Lisa (1962), The Swimmer (1968), and especially the excellent Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), felt almost European in their blending of arthouse aesthetics with exploitable, mainstream commercial themes.  

Goodbye, Gidget. Farewell, Frankie and Annette
An awful lot had changed since the release of the final Beach Party movie in 1966

I was 13 years old when Last Summer, and, in truth, I had no business seeing so adult a motion picture at such a young age. I may have had no business seeing it, but I wanted to see it like crazy. But thanks to having a much older sister who served as the accompanying “adult guardian” making possible my admission to a slew of age-inappropriate movie farein previous years—Barbarella, Rosemary’s Baby, Bonnie and Clyde, and Secret Ceremony, to name just a few—I had already convinced myself that I was far too mature an adolescent to waste time on the movies marketed to my age demographic. 

The MPAA movie rating system was in its infancy then (when G, M, R, and X were the designations), and I had self-seriously deemed that anything below an “M” was simply not worth my time. After all, I wasn't a child!

Of course, I know now that this attitude was as much born of fervid sexual curiosity (aka, adolescent horniness) as intellectual inquisitiveness, but when you’re that young, there really isn’t all that much of a difference between the two.

Last Summer premiered in New York with an X-rating. By the time it opened
in San Francisco two months later, it had been edited down to an R-rating

The release of Last Summer was on my radar because I had read that it was to be given an X-rating, and back then, to me, X-rated meant sophisticated. To my mind it was a rating that, in keeping with the critical and boxoffice success of the recent X-rated release Midnight Cowboy (1969), held the promise of being just the start of a whole slew of Hollywood movies made for grown-ups (and me, of course) that were free to tell important, contemporary stories unencumbered by the constraints of censorship or the worry of meeting the bland criteria of "wholesome family entertainment."

And indeed, for a time, that appeared to be the case. There came a string of films with intriguingly elevated themes that fell under the X-rating umbrella: Greetings! (1968), The Damned (1969), Medium Cool (1969), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Last Tango in Paris(1972). But soon the “X” rating was appropriated by the porn industry, and whatever chance an "X-rating" had of signifying hands-off censorship interference was short-lived.  

Barbara Hershey as Sandy

Richard Thomas as Peter

Bruce Davison as Dan

Catherine Burns as Rhoda

I saw both Midnight Cowboy and Last Summer within months of each other, and the reason I'm harping on the whole "X-rated" thing is that it became part of Last Summer's lore, and contributed to a lot of misremembering on my part. At the time, everyone was talking about these two high-profile, controversial, X-rated features. John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy maintained its X for the duration of its run, but Last Summer, after playing briefly in NYC with the "X" tag, Frank Perry agreed to delete a couple of swear words and a few frames from the film's harrowing climax to give his film an R-rating before going into wide release. 

What TCM screened a few weeks ago was said to be the R-rated theatrical release from 1969, and likely the same film I saw back then. But over the years, there have been so many edited versions of Last Summer in circulation (remarkably, I don't think it ever had a VHS or DVD release) that I have my doubts. This isn't helped by my having two bootleg versions of the film, one running about a minute and forty some seconds longer than the other. (The extended time seems due to longer shots in the final sequence. The longer version is recognizable by the inclusion of Bruce Davidson's line "She's gonna swallow her braces," after Barbara Hershey's remark "You look like you're gonna choke.")

This shot, part of an extended verbal exchange, was missing, along with several other brief cuts
to this sequence, from the version of  Last Summer broadcast on TCM 

So, despite what I do and don't remember about the version I saw back in 1970, at least we know there are at least two different cuts of Last Summer floating around. 

Both Midnight Cowboy and Last Summer received high praise from critics, Midnight Cowboy going on to make history as the first (and to date only) X-rated movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. But somehow, Last Summer, despite having garnered a Best Supporting Actress nod for newcomer Catherine Burns, and launching the long careers of its other young stars, managed to fall through the cracks. All but forgotten due to the film's unavailability. 

Affluent teens vacationing on Fire Island with their disinterested parents 

bond after saving the life of an injured seagull

With its title a darkly ironic harkening back to the innocent, sun-and-sand Gidget movies of the sixties, or those sexually innocuous Frankie & Annette Beach Party romps, Last Summer is perhaps one of the harshest eviscerations of adolescent social dynamics I've ever seen. Neither a youth-pandering idealization of the Pepsi Generation of the sort typified by late-'60s films like The Graduate and Easy Rider, nor one of those nostalgically sentimental coming-of-age films that would later flourish in the '70s (The Summer of ’42, The Last Picture Show, American Graffiti), Last Summer is adolescence presented as a state of proto-barbarism. Where the youthful cry for "freedom" is met with the notion that, if left to their own devices, would the Love Generation be any less savage than the Over-30 set?

In a scene emphasizing Sandy's sexual acquisitiveness and dominance over the boys' relative sexual hesitancy, Sandy and Dan come across two lovers making out on a remote stretch of beach. When it's discovered that the lovers are men, Dan wants to leave, but Sandy insists they stay and watch. 

A trio of teens vacationing with their parents on Fire Island strike up an intimate friendship when callow, future fratboy Dan (Davison), and sensitive go-alonger Peter (Thomas) come upon sexually precocious brainiac, Sandy, tending to a wounded seagull on the beach (Sandy: Well you asked me, so don’t think I’m boasting, but my IQ is 157.”) Bonding over their shared isolation, sexual restlessness, and an overweening, heretofore unplumbed disdain for the feelings of others, the threesome find the dynamics of their tightly-knit group challenged with the appearance of Rhoda, a bright but shy and awkward outsider who insinuates herself into the fold.

The vulnerable don't stand much of a chance with this crowd. Rhoda is introduced committing a simple act of deceny (which already makes her a misfit): she tries to get the trio to stop tormenting the seagull they're attempting to turn into a pet.  

Plump and pale to their tall and tawny; braces-wearing and happy to act her age to the trio’s fevered acceleration into adulthood; it’s fairly obvious from the start that Rhoda’s emotional self-assurance and killjoy, sober decency is a wrong mix for this crowd. Yet the point is keenly made by the film that in adolescence, the pain of loneliness can be so acute that even the belittling company of those who fail to see your value is sometimes preferable to being alone.

In Rhoda, Sandy finds another "project" ...like the seagull. 

Here, Rhoda models the update from her "old lady" bathing suit 

Last Summer's poignancy is derived from the realization that, what with all four teens coming from broken or troubled homes, they could have been helpful to one another, and that the summer would wind up being memorable to them for a lot of good reasons. But, being at its heart an existential parable on power, hurt people hurting others, and the question of whether cruelty is a choice or an instinct, Last Summer leaves our young protagonists irrevocably changed, and unlikely for the better. 

"You have an unmapped face. It doesn't come right out
and say what's going to become of it."

The gentle connection that Rhoda and Peter begin to develop stands to threaten the dynamic of "the trio." 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

 Like so many of my favorite films from this era: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Midnight Cowboy, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, even Rosemary's Baby; Last Summer is for me a marvelous example of how fascinating American movies were becoming in the late-60's, early-'70s when they began to venture into realms of storytelling that were not overtly tethered to their commercial potential. 

Sure, there's always the marketable angle of sensationalism, and films like Last Summer were more than willing to make their boldness and daring a part of their marketing. 

But what made the films of this era different from those released even a few years earlier (and, sadly, just a decade later) was their willingness to go to the darker places of the American myth and challenge our concepts of ourselves and the world we live in. 

So often, I find movies today tend to feed us comforting images of ourselves and set out to reinforce tissue-thin myths we harbor about everything from gender politics to racism. Although I don't require it in every film I see, I must say I enjoy it when movies hold up a mirror to American culture that reveals the decay behind the gloss, proposing, in the exposure, that we have the potential to do and be better.  

Again, the vulnerable are seen as targets, not subjects of empathy

Last Summer doesn't shy away from the exposing the privileged arrogance of the of these blond teens who, sheltered in their all-white enclaves make comic/idiotic jokes in the contrived slave dialect of Gone With the Wind, or, in this painful scene, make blantantly racist jokes at the expense of Anibal Gomez (Ernesto Gonzalez), a sweet and lonely Puerto Rican computer date set-up for the reluctant Rhoda.

Movies in the '60s/'70s were comfortable with revealing the darker shades of human nature. In fact, one of my strongest memories from this period in filmmaking was the distinct impression I was never going to see a movie with a happy ending again. I enjoyed seeing movies that made me think, made me feel...but at times it seemed as if every movie released during my teens ended in some devastating tragedy. Even the musicals were downers: Sweet Charity!

PERFORMANCES

Relying perhaps on type-casting and using his young cast's relative acting inexperience to their benefit (Last Summer is the film debut of all but Barbara Hershey, who appeared in Doris Day's last film, With Six You Get Eggroll, just the year before), Frank Perry gets natural and surprisingly complex performances out of everyone, particularly Catherine Burns. Although lacking in the sort of easy, obvious camaraderie Peter Bogdanovich was able to achieve with his cast in The Last Picture Show--most apparent in a visibly forced, "beer as truth serum" sequence that gives credence to Hershey's claim years later that despite the intimacy required of their roles, the cast didn't become close during the making of the film--each actor achieves a kind of heroic bravery in allowing themselves to be presented so honestly and unpleasantly.

When Last Summer was released, the entire cast was applauded for their performances, but it was Catherine Burns who emerged as the breakout “star,” garnering the lion's share of the film's best reviews and Last Summer's sole Academy Award nomination. Though reunited with Richard Thomas in 1971's Red Sky at Morning (a film I haven’t seen), Hollywood didn't seem to know what to do with her, and so after being wasted in a few TV movies and disposable roles in episodics, she bowed out of the industry for good, becoming a published author. She passed away in 2019.

The role of Mr. Caudell, Sandy's sexual assaulter dubbed "Snow White" due to his inability to tan, is played by character actor Peter Turgeon. Recognizable to fans of Airport (1970) as the annoying passenger who eventually gets slapped by a priest. 

Barbara Hershey's assured and dynamic performance as the dreamgirl sociopath is one that has really stayed with me over the years. Carnal, conniving, straightforward, and deeply troubled, I think her characterization is so genuinely terrifying because she is just such a recognizable brand of emotional/intellectual bully. Long a favorite of mine and a definite object of a boyhood crush, Hershey's impressive and enduring career includes BAFTA and Oscar nominations. 

Barbara Hershey (born Barbara Hertzstein) briefly changed her name to Barbara Seagull out of guilt surrounding the death of the seagull that was accidentally killed during the filming (the scenes involving the bird are another reason why Last Summer is a very unsettling affair).

Poster for the 1975 heist film Diamonds, featuring Barbara Hershey with her "Seagull" billing

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Perhaps the parallel symbolism is all too heavy-handed for some, but what I loved about this film in 1969 and what still stands up marvelously in 2013 are the parallels drawn between the film's early sequences involving the attempt to rehabilitate and then train the wounded seagull, and the introduction of the character of Rhoda into the group. The foreshadowing of the film's agonizing denouement is as clear-cut and unalterable as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but what grips me is what lies behind why it happens at all.

To see this film now is to understand what occurs inside any group or individual in power when threatened with the loss of that power. Whether it be the behavior of the GOP in the last election or the reluctance of certain states to grasp the inevitability of marriage equality, it all fits and paints an ugly portrait of cowardice cloaked in entitled domination. To find all of this within a teenage coming-of-age film is just brilliant, and provides one more reason why it's such a shame this film is so hard to track down. 

That Sandy would most likely be happiest were Dan and Pete to be somehow merged into one person feeds the already heady homoerotic sexual tension that exists within this tripartite friendship.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

For years on the internet, there have been reports of Last Summer finally getting a DVD release. Its reemergence on cable TV and a recent American Cinematheque screening of a long-lost, uncut 16mm print hint that perhaps one day soon this might very well be the case. I certainly hope so. 

Not only is it one of Frank and Eleanor Perry's best films (and Frank Perry doesn't deserve to be remembered in perpetuity for being the man who gave us Mommie Dearest and Monsignor,  does he?), but I also think it's one of the more important and representative films of a significant era in American film.  

Scene from "Last Summer" (1969)

BONUS MATERIAL

I read Evan Hunter’s 1968 novel Last Summer not long after seeing the film. Eleanor Perry’s screenplay is surprisingly faithful to the source material, and it's every bit as disturbing as the film. The novel provides a bit more backstory to the characters and is told in the form of a flashback memory recounted by an emotionally shattered Peter to his psychiatrist. In 1973, Evan Hunter wrote a sequel to Last Summer titled Come Winter. I don't know if any significance should be placed on the fact that while I read it much more recently than Last Summer, I nevertheless can't recall a thing about it. 

A deleted scene from Last Summer featuring Ralph Waite as Pete's father. Waite and Thomas would go on to appear on TV as father and son for five seasons of The Waltons.

The Manor (2021)
Bruce Davison and Barbara Hershey were reunited as co-stars for this Gothic horror film set in a retirement home. Oh, if only some clever writer had thought to make this an extended sequel to Last Summer. Would Dan and Sandy have changed?  Would that summer have scarred them for life? 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009- 2013