Summer of the Seventeenth Doll [Season of Passion] ** (1959, Ernest Borgnine, Anne Baxter, John Mills, Angela Lansbury, Vincent Ball) – Classic Movie Review 9657

Director Leslie Norman’s 1959 black and white comedy drama Summer of the Seventeenth Doll [Season of Passion] stars Ernest Borgnine, John Mills, Angela Lansbury and Anne Baxter, and Norman brings back Dana Wilson, the little girl from his 1957 hit The Shiralee.

Ray Lawler’s apparently fine play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll reaches the screen in this enfeebled, sluggish, compromised film version, in which Australian sugar cane cutter workers Roo (Borgnine) and Barney (Mills) arrive each summer in the city of Sydney for a long vacation to romance their women. But the one girl, Olive (Baxter), has new plans and the formidable Pearl (Lansbury) has replaced the other regular girl.

There is a good cast (although the stars are not entirely ideal, especially vocally, with everyone struggling to sound Aussie) and competent, professional work all round, and it is enjoyable enough. But the international production by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions has removed the piece’s Australian-ness and, with it, its special life and soul.

Lawler’s tale, as adapted by screenplay writer John Dighton, and the personnel still appeal, though.

Also in the cast are Vincent Ball, Janette Craig, Ethel Gabriel, Deryck Barnes, Tom Lurich, Al Thomas, Dana Wilson, Al Garcia, Frank Wilson, Jessica Noad and John Hamblin.

Burt Lancaster originally intended to have starred, along with Rita Hayworth and James Cagney.

Leslie Norman is remembered as the director of The Night My Number Came Up (1955), The Shiralee (1957), X the Unknown (1956), Dunkirk (1958), and The Long and the Short and the Tall [Jungle Fighters] (1961).

Leslie Norman (1911–1993).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9657

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