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Sandra Dee special feature:
Come September
 COME SEPTEMBER is significant for two distinct and very important reasons. Firstly, it showcases the considerable acting talents of two of the most popular Hollywood stars of the 1960s, ROCK HUDSON and SANDRA DEE. If I were asked to justify the phrase “considerable acting talents” when applied to these two people, I would answer, without hesitation, that both were pretending to be something they were not, and doing it very successfully indeed. Literature asks for a “willing suspension of disbelief”; motion pictures ask for the same thing, but on two dimensions, firstly that you believe what you are watching in terms of the plot, and secondly that you believe the people playing the parts are those people.
ROCK HUDSON was one of the most successful male movie stars of the 20th century, and even though he usually played the same kind of character, this almost always typified the essentially male, all-American good guy. At six feet four inches tall, he was a true idol. I loved his films, I “idolised” him in the sense that I would happily have changed places with him as an actor, though that obviously did not extend to his personal life. It was only during the last years of his short life (he died aged 60) that he admitted to having contracted AIDs and was dying from that disease. He claimed to have caught it through a contaminated blood transfusion, but it later transpired that he was gay, and had been for most of his adult life, despite being married for three years. It is his ability to conceal this fact so successfully whilst acting rugged male parts that fulfils the willing suspension of disbelief so comprehensively. A foil to Doris Day in a series of frothy comedies, Hudson remained everyone’s ideal male partner throughout the sixties, and it was his death from AIDs that persuaded then-president and long-time friend Ronald Reagan to take action to promote safe sex in the hope of protecting people fromthe savage illness.
COME SEPTEMBER is itself a frothy comedy, enhanced for meby the inclusion of the delightful SANDRA DEE as the main female lead, despite the presence of a lightweight GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA who, though breathtakingly beautiful, only comes into her own when she rows with Hudson in her native Italian. The attraction of SANDRA DEE was her absolute perfection. She personified beauty, and one has to remember, of course, that at the time she made the film, she was just sixteen years old. The plot is simple. ROBERT (ROCK HUDSON) owns a villa in Italy which he visits once a year, normally in September, coinciding this visit with spending time with the lovely LISA (GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA). As the villa is empty eleven months of the year, the majordomo, played by WALTER SLEZAK, has been converting it into a hotel, the HOTEL DOLCE VISTA, with paying guests. When Robert decides to visit earlier in the year, all is thrown into confusion because there is a party of young American undergraduate girls staying there, including SANDY (SANDRA DEE) and chaperoned by BRENDA DE BANZIE. Throw in a party of undergraduate boys, led by BOBBY DARIN, playing TONY in his first motion picture role, and you have a recipe for delightful lightweight, harmless comedy focusing on the attempts of the boys to seduce the girls away from the overbearing protection of Robert. Sandra Dee steals the film, and one has to marvel at how well she acts for one of such tender years. Her mother had lied about her age when getting her into motion pictures in the first place, and Dee already had a number of films under herbelt by this time.
More importantly, how she was able to conceal the darkest ofsecrets, of how her stepfather had sexually abused her from the age of eight, and managed to portray the delightful Sandy is nothing short of miraculous. You could be forgiven for thinking that Sandra Dee was the happy-go-lucky teenager in real life that she portrayed in the film. The ending, of course, focused on Hudson and Lollobrigida resolving their differences and getting married – cue end titles. A brief scene just two minutes or so beforehand hinted at a partial resolution between Darin and Dee, but the chemistry between these two was almost tangible at this point, and, of course, they were married a few short months later. It’s a pity more of Dee’s films aren’t available on DVD. I’d welcome the opportunity to revisit A SUMMER PLACE
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