REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION. Made for TV. Universal/NBC-TV; telecast 07 Jan 1967. Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Peter Lawford, Lola Albright, Walter Pidgeon, Michael Ansara. Teleplay: Gene R. Kearney; director: William Hale.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION.

   How I Spent My Summer Vacation is a splashy, colorful and cheerfully cheesy made-for-TV exercise in adolescent paranoia that landed right on the cusp of my teenage years. As such, it will always keep a place in my heart, if not on any 10 Best list.

   Robert Wagner, in his last “juvenile” part, stars as a college drop-out, just out of the Army and bumming around Europe, who runs into wealthy former school-mate Jill St. John and gets invited to spend the Summer cruising the Mediterranean on her Daddy’s yacht. It quickly develops that Jill’s parents (Peter Lawford and Lola Albright) disapprove of Robert, and the cause of this parental censure surfaces just as quickly: he’s gauche. Not a lovable klutz or an alienated loner, just awkward and sophomoric — the kiss of déclassé.

   Assuming that you weren’t a high school prom queen or captain of the football team, perhaps you can relate to the feeling. I know I could. Which is where Vacation takes its cue and proceeds to run the table with it. Faced with Lawford/Albright’s constant belittling — and flummoxed by the ease with which they do it — Wagner decides on a puerile revenge; he begins gathering evidence of what he thinks are Lawford’s criminal activities.

   What follows borders on a teenage dream, as our hero skulks nimbly about, snapping a photo here, jotting down a detail there, keeping one step ahead of his quarry and jotting it all down in a notebook labeled “How I Spent my Summer Vacation.” Even better, as the fantasy proceeds to its climax, writer Gene Kearney (whose talents seem confined to the small screen for his whole career) keeps spinning it further and further out, in true dream-fashion as we get shifting realities, dark plots, mysterious fortress hide-outs and the whole thing related in flashback to a super-villain (Walter Pidgeon) who seems unsettlingly fatherly — the perfect touch for a tale of adolescent angst —leading to a conclusion that… well to say any more would spoil it.

   Don’t take this Vacation expecting artistry, but if you have any feeling for that turbulent rebel mood of the 60s you may find this one a lot of fun.

Editorial Comment: This film has been reviewed once before on this blog, the earlier occasion by David L. Vineyard. (Follow the link.)