Themes: Mothers and Daughters, Suburban Dysfunction, Generation Gap
Main Cast: Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Lee Philips, Lloyd Nolan, Arthur Kennedy, Diane Varsi
Release Year: 1957
Country: US
Run Time: 157 minutes
Plot
Grace Metalious' once-notorious bestseller Peyton Place is given a lavish -- and necessarily toned-down -- film treatment in this deluxe 20th Century-Fox production. Set during WWII, the film concentrates on several denizens of the outwardly respectable New England community of Peyton Place. Top-billed Lana Turner plays shopkeeper Constance McKenzie, who tries to make up for a past indiscretion -- which resulted in her illegitimate daughter Allison (Diane Varsi) -- by adopting a chaste, prudish attitude towards all things sexual. In spite of herself, Constance can't help but be attracted to handsome new teacher Michael Rossi (Lee Philips). Meanwhile, the restless Allison, who'd like to be as footloose and fancy-free as the town's "fast girl" Betty Anderson (Terry Moore), falls sincerely in love with mixed-up mama's boy Norman Page (Russ Tamblyn). And while all this is going on, "white trash" Selena Cross (Hope Lange) is raped by her stepfather, drunken school caretaker Lucas Cross (Arthur Kennedy). Other characters essential to the action are wealthy Rodney Harrington (Barry Coe), who must pay the price for his dalliance with Betty Anderson; Nellie Cross (Betty Field), Selena's long-suffering mother; and the town's Voice of Reason, Dr. Swain (Lloyd Nolan). This 166-minute soap opera (whittled down to 157 minutes before release) culminates in a spectacular murder trial which lays bare the deep, dark secrets of Peyton Place. Filmed on location in Camden, Maine, Peyton Place was a huge moneymaker (even those who felt that the film was but a heavily laundered shadow of the Metalious original were pleased with the professionalism of it all); it not only spawned a 1961 theatrical sequel, but also a long-running prime time TV serial. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The controversial, massively popular Peyton Place is a melodramatic soap opera of Herculean proportions. The filmmakers attempt to cram every gossipy degradation possible into the 157-minute running length, and, though the end results are actually less explicit than Grace Metalious' source novel, the film still caused quite a stir at the time. Peyton Place exposed the post-war cynicism that lurked beneath the genteel facade of the 1950s; it tempted moviegoers with the expectation of propriety, and they showed up in droves. Though the film's histrionics and suggestiveness have become somewhat passé over the years, the movie still has its own kitschy charm. Peyton Place and its TV spin-off spawned at least a decade's worth of similar soap-opera-type films. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Jack Martin Smith - Art Director, Lyle Wheeler - Art Director, Charles LeMaire - Costume Designer, Adele Palmer - Costume Designer, Mark Robson - Director, David Bretherton - Editor, Franz Waxman - Composer (Music Score), Edward B. Powell - Musical Direction/Supervision, Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup, William C. Mellor - Cinematographer, Jerry Wald - Producer, Bertram Granger - Set Designer, Walter Scott - Set Designer, L.B. Abbott - Special Effects, E. Clayton Ward - Sound/Sound Designer, John Michael Hayes - Screenwriter, Grace Metalious - Book Author
The film is an exposé of the lives and loves of the residents of a small New England mill town, where scandal, homicide, suicide, incest, and moralhypocrisy hide behind a tranquil façade in the years immediately preceding and following World War II. At the core of its plot are three women. Constance MacKenzie is a prim and proper sexually repressed woman who had an affair with a married New York City businessman and bore him a child out of wedlock. She has struggled to shield her daughter Allison, a high school senior and aspiring author, from her tarnished past, leading her to believe she returned to Peyton Place with her newborn baby after her husband died. Selena Cross, Allison's best friend, is a good girl living on the wrong side of the tracks. She murders her stepfather Lucas after sexual abuse and her trial is the focus of the latter part of the film.
Other characters include Allison's classmate and confidant Norman Page, anxious to gain his independence; bad girl Betty Anderson, who longs to have a relationship with wealthy Rodney Harrington; and new school principal Michael Rossi, who attempts to crack Constance's icy veneer.
Production
Less than a month after the book's release in 1956, producer Jerry Wald bought the rights from author Grace Metalious for $250,000 and hired her as a story consultant on the film, although he had no intention of actually allowing her to contribute anything to the production[citation needed]. Her presence in Hollywood ensured the project additional publicity, but Metalious soon felt out of place in the film capital. Horrified by the sanitized adaptation of her book by screenwriter John Michael Hayes, who was forced to contend with the Hays Code, and his suggestion Pat Boone be cast as Norman Page, she returned to her home to Gilmanton, New Hampshire. She eventually earned a total of $400,000 in profits from the film, which she hated.[2]
The film was shot primarily in Camden, Maine, with additional exteriors filmed in Belfast and Rockland in Maine and Lake Placid in New York. It premiered in Camden two days before going into general release in the US on December 13, 1957.
Peyton Place was the second-highest grossing film of 1958, although in the first few months of its release it did not do well at the box office, until a real-life tragedy gave it an unexpected boost. On April 4, 1958, star Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl killed her mother's abusive lover, mobster Johnny Stompanato, and was placed in Juvenile Hall. The press coverage of the subsequent investigation boosted ticket sales by 32%, and the film eventually grossed $25,600,000 in the US. A coroner's inquest ruled the murder justifiable homicide, and the district attorney chose not to charge Cheryl with the crime, although he declared her a ward of the state and placed her in the custody of her grandmother. Turner feared the negative publicity would end her career, but it led producer Ross Hunter to cast her in the 1959 film Imitation of Life.[3]
While Peyton Place was "an enormous critical and commercial hit,"[1] most critics made note of the fact that the most salacious elements of the Metalious novel had been laundered or eliminated completely. In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther remarked, "There is no sense of massive corruption here."[4]Variety noted, "In leaning backwards not to offend, producer and writer have gone acrobatic. On the screen is not the unpleasant sex-secret little town against which Grace Metalious set her story. These aren't the gossiping, spiteful, immoral people she portrayed. There are hints of this in the film, but only hints."[5]TV Guide said, "This is the kind of hypertensive trash that gives melodrama a bad name, cynically tempering its naughty bits with smug moralizing. The fact that the film won an "A" rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency, meaning it was deemed "acceptable to all," is a dead giveaway."[6]
Nominations
The film received nine Oscar nominations, including four honoring supporting performances, which set a record for that time. It would later be matched by Tom Jones, The Last Picture Show, and The Godfather Part II.[1]
^The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties by Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002, pp. 248-251, ISBN 0-393-04321-5
^The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties, pp. 259-261
^The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties, pg. 253
