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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1950s
    Movies - 1950s Movies - S 2 Mins Read

    Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959)

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    Roo (Ernest Borgnine) is a burly, bombastic man with a domineering manner. Barney (John Mills) is a wiry little Don Juan of a fellow (“Whenever I see a good looking woman I feel as if somebody’s just given me a birthday present”).

    For 16 years the two friends have worked as sugar cane-cutters in Northern Australia, returning at the end of each seven-month season for their five-month summer layoff in Sydney with their sweethearts.

    But it has gone on too long. Time has been passing more rapidly than both men imagined.

    Roo, for instance, discovers he is not quite so tough as he used to be, and another young worker called Dowd (Vincent Ball) succeeds in claiming his throne as leader of the cane-cutters’ gang.

    There’s also a shock in store for Barney when he arrives back in Sydney to spend the 17th successive summer with his sweetheart. Roo’s woman Olive (Anne Baxter) is waiting, but his own girl has married another man.

    Olive has brought along widowed manicurist Pearl (Angela Lansbury) as a replacement for Barney, and for a while, the two cane-cutters imagine they will still be able to enjoy their usual spree.

    But there are quarrels, fights and scenes – and the summer which usually ends with Roo giving Olive a little doll as a remembrance gift has suddenly lost its glamour.

    Released in some markets as Season of Passion.

    Roo
    Ernest Borgnine
    Barney
    John Mills
    Olive
    Anne Baxter
    Pearl
    Angela Lansbury
    Bubba (Cathy)
    Janette Craig
    Emma (Mother)
    Ethel Gabriel
    Johnny Dowd
    Vincent Ball
    Bluey
    Deryck Barnes
    Vince
    Frank Wilson
    Dino
    Al Garcia
    Nancy
    Jessica Noad
    Spruiker
    Al Thomas
    The Atomic Bomber
    Tom Lurich
    The Bomber’s Daughter
    Dana Wilson

    Director
    Leslie Norman

    Video

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    Put some beefiness into your mid-week menu with these recipe ideas published in a Birds Eye advertisement from the Radio Times on 30 September 1965.

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    They were awful. An overpowering savoury flavour that lingered in your mouth for hours. Heaven knows what unmentionable parts of a bull went into making them 😳

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    This is what they promised us when I was a kid. What happened? 

All I have is 700 channels of rubbish on the TV in High Def, TikTok, Facebook and a phone I can take photographs with . . .

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    I thought we would have moving pavements by now when I was a kid 😂

    Totally agree!!!

    The new Tesla, 4.6 next century.

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    We appear to be going backwards

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    The Jetsons strike again.

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    That is so sad to hear 😥 rest in peace 🙏 🕊 xx

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