Troy Donahue is top billed in this Delmer Daves melodrama but the star is actually Connie Stevens, quite good in a part that was probably offered to Sandra Dee. She plays the title role, a young naïve 17 year old who has spent the past decade living in Chile with her mother (Dorothy McGuire) and mining engineer father (Lloyd Nolan). He decides to retire and on the cruise back home she is romanced by a wealthy mountaineer (Guy Williams) who knocks her up and then falls off a mountain. The family decide to raise her illegitimate daughter as McGuire's.
I know illegitimacy was a bigger deal in 1961 than it is today, and this is no doubt my modern morality talking, but the central concept of the film didn't ring true for me. Maybe if the family had been aristocrats, or politicians, or it had been set 50 years ago, I would have gone for it. But the Slades have spent ten years in the desert - they hardly know anyone except Nolan's boss (Brian Ahern as one of the most kindly tycoons ever depicted on screen), his wife and kids. They live out in an impressive isolated house by the lake so rarely deal with gossips. I didn't feel there was a reason to maintain the deception - at least not one strong enough to sustain a film. Yes, Stevens is wooed by stuff Bert Convy, Ahern's son - but she doesn't really love him so there are no stakes there either... especially with kindly aspiring writer Troy Donahue waiting in the wings to love her.
If Nolan had political aspirations I would have bought it. Ditto if he and McGuire had been controlling psychopaths - but they are depicted as loving, caring parents and the family very close. Or maybe if William's family threatened to take the kid away (as it is they do disappointingly little with that side of the story... we meet William's dad in one scene and that's it).
It's a shame because apart from that (admittedly big) problem, this was an entertaining film. It's a simple story cleanly told (unlike Parrish which was all over the shop), Delmer Daves handles it with aplomb, there are some impressive visuals (the lake house, the mines), Stevens is good enough to carry the film on her shoulders, Troy Donahue is well protected (despite a few laughable lines of dialogue where Stevens compares him with Robert Louis Stevenson and a moment where he cries out in pain about his father's death), there is solid support from McGuire and Nolan, especially the latter (he makes several difficult scenes work, such as Nolan thanking God for his life). Mrs Howell from Gilligan's Island appears as a Mrs Howell type and there's a lush music score, including a reprise of the theme from A Summer Place.
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