Hollywood icon of teenagers

Troy Donahue, a 1960s Hollywood heart throb and star of that seminal teenage romance, ``A Summer Place,'' died on September 2. ANAND PARTHASARATHY writes...

A COOL and dark theatre. The screen lit up by a lushly photographed film in glorious summer hues.

The syrupy strings of Max Steiner over the credit titles - headed by two of Hollywood's hottest heart throbs: Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee... In the fading days of 1959, ``The Summer Place'' was the quintessential screen experience for an eager new audience of teenaged cinema-goers.

The blonde, blue-eyed Troy Donahue, was the epitome of this movement which tried to fashion teen pin-ups and idols out of the young stars of the early 1960s. The formula remained unchanged for nearly five years: take a best selling novel - the steamier the better; hire Delmer Daves to direct the screen version and Steiner to write a romantic score.

Team Donahue with one of an interchangeable trio of young female stars: Sandra Dee, Suzanne Pleshette, Connie Stevens. You couldn't go wrong: the kids marched into theatres in droves.

On September 2, Troy Donahue died of a heart attack in a Santa Monica hospital in his native California at the age of 65.

His last film was only three years old - but hardly anyone remembered what it was (most of his recent works were made for Cable and TV).

But in the first half of the 1960s, he was the unchallenged head of Hollywood's lineup of handsome hunks, whose roles invariably threw them into the deep end of teenaged romance.

In the most famous film of the genre, ``A Summer Place'', Donahue and Dee find themselves on an island resort, playing a pair of youngsters, replicating an adult romance between her father and his mother (Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire).

The Steiner theme tune became an anthem of cinematic romance. In ``Susan Slade'' made in 1961, he is paired with Connie Stevens. McGuire returns to play Connie's mother - pretending to be the mother of her daughter's illegitimate child.

In ``Parrish'' released that same year, Donahue, who is the heir to a plantation, tangles with his step father - and finds himself in love with three women.

In ``Rome Adventure'' (1962) - his fourth film in a row, directed by Delmer Daves, he is a student who vies with an older man (Rossano Brazzi) for the love of a visiting American teacher (Suzanne Pleshette).

In ``Palm Spring Weekend'' (1963), he joins Connie Stevens on a beach holiday. The series was nearing the end by 1964 in ``A Distant Trumpet'', where Donahue is the commandant of a cavalry outpost who has to take on the Indians - while sorting out his romantic entanglements with multiple women.

The genre had run out of steam: audiences demanded something more than contrived romance with a hint of adultery. There was a new generation of film-makers who added a little more finesse into their depiction of teenaged trauma and angst: in products like ``The Graduate'', ``West Side Story'' and ``To Sir With Love''. Just beefcake was out - and so was Troy Donahue.

But while it lasted, Hollywood's preoccupation with intense young kids and their coming-of-age problems, created necessary viewing - and half a dozen screen heroes and heroines.

It was Troy Donahue's lot to lead the pack, albeit briefly.

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