The Truth About Spring


The Truth about Spring is a 1965 American-British Technicolor adventure film directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Hayley Mills, John Mills and James MacArthur. It is a romantic comedy adventure. It was released by Universal.

Plot

Spring lives with her father aboard a run-down sail boat in the Florida Keys. She has lived a simple, carefree, and isolated life. She has never felt desire or love until Ashton joins them for a zany adventure involving buried treasure. In the end no treasure is found, only a long-sunken slaver. However, Spring finds love and a future husband.
Ashton, who is from a wealthy Philadelphia family and graduated from Harvard Law School, comes aboard the Sarah Tyler for some fishing. Instead, he becomes involved in a modern-day pirate adventure. He falls in love with Spring and envies her simple and honest lifestyle. Spring initially dislikes Ashton – a variation of Pride and Prejudice where boy meets girl and girl hates boy. At the end of the film, she realizes she loves him, and, against all sense of propriety, Ashton asks Spring to become his wife.

Cast

The film was based on a novel Satan by Henry de Vere Stacpoole which was published in 1921. The book was filmed in 1925 as Satan's Sister.
The film was announced in September 1963 as Miss Jude with both Mills attached from the beginning. Producer Alan Brown had been associate producer to Samuel Bronston and this would be his first film as production. It was the third movie John and Hayley Mills had made together after Tiger Bay and The Chalk Garden. John Mills said he wanted to use the title Close to the Wind but it was held by another studio.
Location shooting took place in S'Agaró on the Costa Brava in southern Spain and started 22 April 1964. The MGM-British complex at Elstree Studios was also used for some shooting. The film's sets were dersigned by the art director Gil Parrondo.
David Tomlinson later called it "a truly dreadful film but with my new-found Hollywood cachet I was billed as making a 'Guest Appearance' in nice big capital letters".
John Mills later wrote "if the picture had turned out to be half as good as the food, the wine, the time and the laughs we had on that location it would have been a sensation - unfortunately it wasn't."