Theme from A Summer Place

For the album by Billy Vaughn, see Theme from A Summer Place (album).

"Theme from A Summer Place" is a song with lyrics by Mack Discant and music by Max Steiner, written for the 1959 film A Summer Place, which starred Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. It was recorded for the film as an instrumental theme by Steiner. Originally known as the "Molly and Johnny Theme", this lush extended cue,[1] as orchestrated by Murray Cutter, is not the main title theme of the film, but an oft-heard secondary love theme for the characters played by Dee and Donahue. A subsequent recording by Hugo Winterhalter was the first to use the "Theme from A Summer Place" title. The theme has become a canonical representation of the easy listening genre, and is considered by some to be the definitive easy listening track of all time.[2]

Following its introduction in the film by the Warner Bros. studio orchestra, the theme was recorded by many artists in both instrumental and vocal versions, and has also appeared in a number of subsequent films and television programs. The best-known version of the theme is an instrumental version by Percy Faith and his Orchestra that was a number-one hit for nine weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1960.[3]

  1. ^ Hirschhorn, Clive. The Warner Bros. Story, Octopus Books, London, 1979, p. 343.
  2. ^ Keightley, Keir (2012). "Genres: North America". In Horn, David; Shepherd, John (eds.). Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Vol. 8. Bloomsbury. p. 196. ISBN 978-1-4411-6078-2.
  3. ^ Bronson, Fred (1 October 2003). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (5th ed.). New York: Billboard Books. p. 75. ISBN 978-0823076772.